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District approves assistants

By Shawn Linenberger - | Aug 13, 2003

Coaching staffs in Tonganoxie received a boost in experience Monday.

The USD 464 school board Monday approved the hiring of assistants in football, volleyball and soccer.

Football coach Mark Elston brought aboard Greg McDonald, whom the THS coach has been associated with for a just few years.

“I’ve known him since I was 10,” Elston said.

McDonald has 30 years of experience in coaching. He retired in July from the Hickman Mills school district in Missouri and has coached both with Mark Elston and his father, Don Elston.

“He’s a big motivator,” Mark Elston said. “He knows everything we’re doing and has spent a number of years in our system. He’ll be a huge asset to us.”

McDonald will coach linebackers and running backs at THS, increasing the football staff to five coaches.

In volleyball, Tonganoxie now has two former Jayhawks on the sidelines.

New freshman coach Tori Holtmeier played at Kansas in 1998-99, while Chieftain coach Tiffany Parker played for KU from 1994-97.

A Nebraska native, Holtmeier played for current Kansas coach Ray Bechard at Barton County Community College before playing for him at KU as a junior and senior. Holtmeier currently is a paraprofessional at Southwest Junior High School in Lawrence. She also was the head coach at Perry-Lecompton in 2001.

As for Tonganoxie soccer, Jim Davis will join Luke Denney’s staff this fall.

Davis also was on former coach Harold Pittman’s staff until he resigned last year. Pittman, the former associate minister at Tonganoxie Christian Church, left the area for another ministerial position in Oklahoma.