Saint James AD and coach Steve Lachut is leaving the school after 13 years

Steve Lachut has contently spent the last third of his life in one place — Saint James School.

“I’m from Buffalo, New York, originally,” he said. “I was substitute teaching and coaching at the high school I went to, and I moved down here for the lacrosse job, and kind of the rest is history.”

Since arriving at Saint James in 2011, Lachut, 38, has coached boys lacrosse and wrestling, and for the last three years also has been the school’s athletic director. He previously spent four years serving as the dean of students after six years working as the assistant athletic director.

Now, he’s ready to move on. July 1 will be his last day as a Saint.

Lachut is set to become the athletic director at The Potomac School — Saint James’ Mid-Atlantic Conference rival — in McLean, Virginia. He also will coach middle school wrestling there.

Saint James’ new AD and wrestling coach will be Kacey Michelsen, who’s coming from West Nottingham Academy in Colora, Maryland.

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Why is Lachut changing schools?

“Family,” he said. “My wife and I have worked here for a while, we have a 3-year-old son now that we adopted last summer, and right now it’s a lifestyle change for us that will be good for him and good for us.

“(Potomac) is a K to 12 school, so eventually my son can go there, which is really big for us,” he said. “It’s a bigger school with very strong girls and boys programs and has sports I haven’t worked with before — swimming, squash, track and field — so it’s a way for me to learn and grow and develop in a day school vs. a boarding-school environment. All of those things are positive. It’s a new challenge that I’m excited for, to see what the next step could be for me.”

Lachut will get to experience the other side of the Saint James-Potomac rivalry.

“It’s going to be interesting,” he said. “I have some good friends there, and obviously I have a lot of good friends here. It’s a place that I’ve learned to respect through that rivalry the last 13 years. Their kids always seem like pretty decent kids, their coaches are all good people, their administration is good. It’s a place that’s going to hopefully feel like home.”

Many fond memories at Saint James

Lachut said that Saint James was the perfect place for him to come into his own. He even met his wife, Molly (Goolman) Lachut, at the school. She works as the director of college counseling and previously taught history and coached field hockey.

“What this place offers in terms of growing up as a kid, but also as a young adult, is unbelievable, getting to know people from all over the world, kids with diverse backgrounds, interests,” Steve Lachut said. “Even our employees are from all over the country, all over the world. It’s such a unique place to be and live. I have so many good memories that it’s hard to pinpoint just one.”

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He’s had several coaching highlights, such as guiding the Saints to back-to-back team titles at the Maryland independent-school state wrestling championships in the ‘B’ division in 2017-18.

“We also had a lot of overtime wins that were fun for us in lacrosse,” he said. “We had one over Goretti at Fairgrounds Park that was awesome, and we came back against Goretti and beat them here one year in lacrosse, which was a lot of fun.

“Wrestling has probably been the sport that I have more individual memory from, just from kids having that individual experience and more kids who haven’t participated in the sport before, which makes it a lot more fun for me. We had a boy from South Korea (Jason Kim), who had never wrestled before, and he ended up placing in the state his senior year (2018).”

Other sports at Saint James have thrived during his tenure.

“In my time, football has been great, basketball has been strong at times, and our lacrosse program has really taken off the last couple of years since I’ve been athletic director,” he said. “Our boys soccer program has gotten better in the last couple of years, which has been nice to watch. And volleyball has really gotten strong in the last year or two.”

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Athletic director Steve Lachut is leaving Saint James for Potomac School