Ed Troxel

Edward Ross Troxel (November 20, 1925 – January 22, 2001) was a high school and college football coach in Colorado, Idaho, and eastern Washington.

His most notable coaching stops were at Borah High School in Boise, the University of Idaho in Moscow, and Kennewick High School.

Born in Kansas in 1925, Troxel grew up in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

His 33-year-old father died after a pipeline welding accident in Oklahoma when Ed was nine, and his high school football coaches had a great influence on him, leading to his career in coaching.

Assistant coach DeLane "De" Pankratz (1930–2020) succeeded Troxel as head coach and Borah continued its dominance in football into the early 1980s.

Troxel moved with his mother Ruth and sister Betty to Colorado Springs in 1940 and served in the U.S. Navy as a teenager during World War II.

After graduation from Western State College in Gunnison, Troxel's first coaching job was in 1949 in tiny Manzanola, 50 mi east of Pueblo.

In four years his football teams went .870 and won two state titles.

Troxel moved to Caldwell, Idaho, in 1953 to coach Caldwell High School, and his Cougar teams had a .790 record in his two years there.

In 1955, he moved to the College of Idaho, also in Caldwell, where he coached the Coyotes in football (.510), boxing, and track.

He was at C of I for three years, but the 16-hour days he was spending at campus forced him to find another job in 1958.

Borah High School, the second public high school in Boise, opened in the fall of 1958 on the southwest side of the city.

Troxel was hired as its first football and track coach, where he instituted a weight-training program that was far ahead of its time.

His Borah track teams won four consecutive state titles (1960–63).

Troxel was at Borah for nine years, and his Lions amassed a dominating .890 record in football, winning the Southern Idaho Conference (and unofficial state title) in their first six seasons and a total of eight times, settling for runner-up once (1964).

One of his most notable football players was Steve Preece, of the class of 1965.

Preece was the option quarterback of the Oregon State teams of 1967 and 1968, "The Giant Killers," and later played defensive back in the NFL for nine seasons.

Following his departure in 1967, a section of the roadway on the Borah campus was named "Troxel Way."

Troxel moved north to the University of Idaho in Moscow in early 1967, as an assistant coach in both football and track.

In football, he served under three head coaches in seven seasons: Steve Musseau, Y C McNease, and Don Robbins.

He was named the head coach for the Vandal track team in May 1970, but stepped down when he became the head coach of the football team in December 1973.

Troxel had turned down the head football job in May 1970 and again in December 1973, but later accepted after persuasion from his players and concessions from the new athletic director, namely a fourth assistant coach.

At the time, it was the Vandals' second-best football record in history, surpassed only by the 1971 team at 8–3.

His annual salary for the first season in 1974 was $16,500, which was $1,500 less than his predecessor Robbins.

That season was the last played outdoors in Moscow, as the new Idaho Stadium was enclosed and became the Kibbie Dome in 1975.

One of Troxel's notable hires was his first offensive coordinator, a 27-year-old Dennis Erickson, hired away from alma mater Montana State, who stayed for two seasons.

Erickson's successor was Jack Elway, recently at neighboring Washington State, but he left in March after just five weeks on staff to become a Division II head coach in southern California at Cal State Northridge.

Despite this turnover at OC before Troxel's third season in 1976, the Vandals went 7–4 (5–1 in the Big Sky), with center John Yarno selected as a Division I first-team AP All-American.

With key players lost to graduation and beset by injuries, Idaho fell to 3–8 in 1977.

and five weeks later, on December 30, Troxel was requested to resign by new UI president Richard Gibb.

The involuntary resignation ended Troxel's four years as head coach and eleven years at the university.

In 1978, Troxel moved west to the Tri-Cities in eastern Washington to coach football at Kennewick High School, a struggling football program that had just one victory in the previous two seasons.

The turnaround was immediate: Kennewick lost its first game under Troxel, but then won six straight and made the AAA state playoffs.

The Lions beat Gonzaga Prep 17–7 in the first round but fell by four to Lewis & Clark in the quarterfinals.

In thirteen seasons, he led his new Lions to a .750 record, with four conference titles.

Kennewick made the state playoffs ten times and posted an 11–10 record in the post-season, advancing to the finals in 1983 (Kingbowl) and the semi-finals in 1984 and 1989.

In April 1989, Troxel was invited back to the Idaho campus by new head coach John L. Smith to lead one of the sides in the annual Silver & Gold spring game in the Kibbie Dome, opposite 1960s head coach Dee Andros.

Troxel retired after the 1990 season at the age of 65, ending a coaching career that spanned more than forty years.

Troxel was inducted into the high school halls of fame in both Idaho (1998) and Washington (1994), and was a member of the inaugural induction class of the Tri-Cities Sports Hall of Fame in 1999.

After a three-month battle with pancreatic and liver cancer, Troxel died at the age of 75 in Kennewick on January 22, 2001.