10 to Remember: Winter 2014-15

When Matt Kohn found out that Siena Heights University was closing its doors at the end of the 2025-26 school year, he was on vacation at a southern Indiana campground with his family.

He got out of the water, answered a call from one of the Siena Heights assistant coaches and was given the shocking news. Within minutes, he dried off and was packed and in his car, making the four-hour drive back to Adrian to meet with his coaching staff and players.

“I did it for my coaches,” Kohn said. “It was important for us to be on the same page and get together a game plan.”

Kohn, 44, is putting together a new game plan these days. The Adrian native began his new job this week as the athletic director at Adrian Lenawee Christian schools.

It’s a significant change from being head coach of the NAIA Saints, a position he held for the past decade. At Siena Heights, his football team typically had 120-130 players. Lenawee Christian, a Class D-size school, will have an enrollment of 114 this fall.

“It’s all relative,” Kohn said.

Instead of overseeing a team with 14 assistant coaches, he will lead an athletic program that has had incredible success over the years. Over the past decade, the Cougars have won two Division 4 girls basketball championships and three 8-Player football title. LCS won two Girls Volleyball Finals in the early 2000s, and the boys basketball program has 11 Regional titles and a Finals appearance since 1998.

The school takes tremendous pride in its athletic program and Kohn, who lives just minutes from campus, is excited to be a part of the LCS family.

“This is a great opportunity for myself and my family, and truly is done by God,” Kohn said. “Being able to stay home and continue into the next phase of my professional career is really all I could have asked for.”

Kohn finished out the school year at Siena Heights, helping find new schools for his remaining football players and new homes for his coaching staff.

“They made a commitment to me by coming to Siena Heights,” he said. “I felt it was important that I remained committed to them.”

As the end of the school year became closer and closer, however, he started searching for his next career move. He didn’t want to move out of the Adrian area but also knew he needed to find a job. When previous LCS athletic director Craig Anderson was promoted to principal, Kohn applied for the administrator position.

“I have so many connections to LCS,” he said. “I couldn’t be more excited.”

While growing up in Adrian, his dad, Bill Kohn, was a head football coach at multiple schools in Lenawee County, including Morenci, Adrian – and Lenawee Christian.

On its campus on the west side of Adrian off US-223, LCS has what it calls The Centre, which offers fitness and training facilities, youth and adult sports leagues, an indoor pool and outdoor water recreation area. The Centre opened in 1988. Kohn said his parents would drop him off at The Centre when he was a kid to play sports. It’s where he developed his love for athletes.

Eventually he became a record-setting quarterback at Adrian High School and played in the Michigan High School Coaches Association East-West All-Star game. He went on to play quarterback at the University of Indianapolis and spent time with the Ohio Valley Greyhounds of the United Indoor Football Association and two seasons in the Arena Football League with the Nashville Kats and Kansas City Brigade.

He returned to the University of Indianapolis to coach for three seasons before returning to Adrian to join the fledgling Siena Heights football program. In 2016 he was named the interim head coach and took over the job full-time in 2017. Over 10 seasons overall, the Saints won 50 games and had just one sub-.500 finish. They were often ranked nationally and nearly made the NAIA playoffs a couple of times.

“I can honestly say I showed up to work every single day for 15 years, and I gave it everything I had,” Kohn said of being a college head football coach. “There's not a drop of me left that I did not spend in investing in my coaches and investing in my players and getting our guys ready for games and training them and recruiting. That program got every last drop of Matt Kohn. So, I don't have any regrets in that regard.”

Kohn is part of a bit of a transition at Lenawee Christian. The Cougars named a new varsity football coach this week, and with Anderson becoming principal, the school has also hired Noah Beaudrie, an Erie Mason graduate and former quarterback at Adrian College, as the assistant athletic director. Beaudrie comes from a family of athletes. His father is the football head coach at Monroe Jefferson, which had its best season in years last fall, and his sister won a Finals championship in track & field last weekend.

“I’m blessed to have someone like Noah by my side,” Kohn said.

Kohn said in his new role, he will bring his passion for developing student-athletes to the high school level.

“I'm coming into an incredible situation with incredibly strong team members,” he said. “That definitely motivates me every morning, to come to work and just get a little better every day because of the team I have around me.”

Doug Donnelly has served as a news and sports reporter at the Adrian Daily Telegram and the Monroe News for 30 years, including 10 years as city editor in Monroe. He's written a book on high school basketball in Monroe County and compiles record books for various schools in southeast Michigan. He is now publisher and editor of The Blissfield Advance, a weekly newspaper. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Jackson, Washtenaw, Hillsdale, Lenawee and Monroe counties.

PHOTOS (Top) New Adrian Lenawee Christian athletic director Matt Kohn, left, and assistant Noah Beaudrie post for a photo in front of the school’s stadium gate. (Middle) Kohn huddles with his Siena Heights football team. (Top photo courtesy of Lenawee Christian Schools. Middle photo courtesy of the Siena Heights athletic program.)