{"id":32349,"date":"2023-08-12T19:31:56","date_gmt":"2023-08-12T19:31:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/baughman-steps-down-as-dove-creek-football-coach\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T07:55:59","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T07:55:59","slug":"baughman-steps-down-as-dove-creek-football-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/baughman-steps-down-as-dove-creek-football-coach\/","title":{"rendered":"Baughman steps down as Dove Creek football coach"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dove
Dove Creek Coach Shane Baughman cheers as Chance Randolph scores in the final seconds to win his match in 2014. Journal file photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

After 29 years of serving as an educator, coach, and administrator for Dove Creek, there\u2019s hardly a community member in Dove Creek over the past generation that Shane Baughman hasn\u2019t impacted.<\/p>\n

Coming off the football program\u2019s first state title in 2022, Baughman brought his storied coaching career to a close, hanging up the whistle after over a decade as head coach and nearly 30 years of guiding student-athletes to success.<\/p>\n

Baughman served the first decade of his coaching career under Dove Creek legendary coach Ken Soper, before taking the helm of the D.C. middle school program. From there, Baughman ascended to the high school head coaching position, taking his middle school offensive coordinator Jason Fury with him.<\/p>\n

It\u2019ll be Fury who replaces Baughman as head coach for the Bulldogs this upcoming fall, and there\u2019s no doubt that Baughman will be keeping a keen watch from the stands.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s come full circle in many ways for Baughman \u2013 \u201cThis last team had quite a few of the kids whose dads I coached when I was assistant coach with Ken (Soper). It\u2019s really fun, to have those conversations with the kids to share stories about when their parents were in school.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baughman came to Dove Creek in the 1990s from Durango, where his father served as wrestling coach, and only imagined that he would be in the area for a short while.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just fell in love with the community \u2013 Dove Creek\u2019s a really special place,\u201d said Baughman after his first year or two teaching in the school district, \u201cthe way that the community cares about each other, and the excitement that they have supporting each other were really appealing for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the past dozen seasons as the high school head coach, the Bulldogs amassed a record of 63-43, but the win-loss record only tells a small part of the success that Baughman\u2019s teams enjoyed.<\/p>\n

\"Dove
Dove Creek Shane Baughman gets a Gatorade shower after his team beat Mancos in 2022. Sam Green\/Special to The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The banner from Baughman\u2019s final season \u2013 the 13-0 state title season \u2013 will hang high in the hallways of Dove Creek High School for decades to come. Yet, the idea of going out \u201con top\u201d wasn\u2019t a factor in Baughman moving away from the role.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d never really thought about that until after I\u2019d made the decision to step away,\u201d said Baughman, \u201cit wasn\u2019t until afterwards when other people I\u2019d run into asked me about it that it started to sink in.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Baughman will be at most of the Dove Creek athletic events this year in his role as AD, stepping away from coaching opened up some much-deserved free time. \u201cI haven\u2019t been able to go hunting since I took over the high school head coaching position, so I\u2019m looking forward to that again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baughman balanced serving as athletic director, principal, and football coach for the past several years, each a full-time job in its own right. \u201cAll the late nights and weekends of film-watching and prepping for games \u2013 it takes a lot of time,\u201d added Baughman regarding his excitement to reinvest that time in different ways.<\/p>\n

Over three decades, Baughman accrued plenty of highlight memories, including from his 25 years as the wrestling coach. \u201cOur wrestling state title in 2007 was really special,\u201d reflected Baughman, \u201cthe program had a great group of kids. Now, I get to see how those young men have grown into their adult lives \u2013 that whole team was so dedicated and how they\u2019ve carried over into the rest of their lives \u2013 I\u2019m fortunate that I got to be a part of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Dove
Dove Creek\u2019s Cole Taber (8) receives a spirited welcome from head coach Shane Baughman (white jacket) upon returning to the Bulldogs\u2019 sideline after scoring a touchdown Saturday afternoon, Nov. 19 against Mancos in the state eight-man semifinals at Soper Sports Complex. (Joel Priest\/Special to The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Seeing the generational development for the recent graduates and current students at DCHS is just as important for Baughman.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m looking forward to seeing how the kids from this football program will also develop into prolific people \u2013 become hard-working members of the community, family men, I feel like I\u2019m going to see the same things I saw with those groups of young athletes from early in my coaching career.\u201d<\/p>\n

While many people have honored Baughman\u2019s contribution to keeping a proud high school athletic tradition at such a high level, he is quick to reflect on all the different facets of the community that helped make him successful.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo many people factor into making these young men and women the gritty, high-character kids that they are,\u201d said Baughman, \u201cthe entire community can celebrate in the success we\u2019ve had \u2013 not just with the state championships \u2013 but more importantly building quality people.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

decades with the Dove Creek program, Baughman goes out on top<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32350,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-32349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32349"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81762,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32349\/revisions\/81762"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32349"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=32349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}