Coulee Conference coaching changes abound for football season

For half the teams in the Coulee Conference, there will be a new head coach roaming the sidelines when the first games of the 2025 high school football season get underway.

Gale-Ettrick-Trempealeau is one of four Coulee teams to undergo a head coaching change since the end of last season. In the case of the Red Hawks, Paul Anderson stepped down from that role after three seasons at the helm.

Under Anderson, who was an assistant on the G-E-T staff for 13 years before becoming head coach and played for the school back in the early 1980s, the Red Hawks went 11-18 overall with an 11-10 mark in conference play. They qualified for the playoffs in both 2022 and 2023.

Taking over for Anderson is Luke Oliver in his first stint as a varsity head coach. Oliver, a 2021 graduate of UW–Eau Claire, has been an assistant coach for several different schools and most recently was the passing game coordinator for Eau Claire Regis.

One of the Coulee’s coaching mainstays, Andy Hulst, resigned as head coach at Westby after 11 years. The Norsemen went 59-49 overall, 37-24 in conference play, made the postseason 10 times and won the 2018 Coulee championship during Hulst’s reign.

Succeeding him in that position is Alex Gluch, a former Westby player under Hulst, who was the All-Coulee quarterback for the conference champion Norsemen in 2018. Hulst is remaining on the staff as an assistant.

The other two Coulee schools with new head coaches are Black River Falls and Viroqua. In both cases, the departing head coach resigned after three seasons like with Anderson at G-E-T.

From 2022 to 2024, BRF went 5-22 overall (4-17 in Coulee play) under Adam Yirkovsky and Viroqua went 6-21 (2-19 in Coulee play) under Taylor Henry. Larry Severson is the new head coach for the Tigers and Jonah Curley is now at the helm for the Blackhawks.