Former Siena Heights Coach Kohn Excited for Next Phase as Lenawee Christian AD
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
June 3, 2026
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.)
Hutcheson Eager to Serve Statewide
April 20, 2016
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
On Tuesday, Dan Hutcheson was the public address announcer at a track and field meet. On Wednesday, he spent part of the morning painting a door.
As a teacher, coach, then assistant principal and athletic director, he’s performed in a wide variety of roles for Howell High School over the last two decades.
This fall, he’ll take on another set of similar but new and wide-ranging responsibilities as an assistant director for the MHSAA.
Hutcheson, who will join the staff in August, will take over administration of wrestling, girls and boys tennis and another sport to be determined. He’ll also contribute to the Coaches Advancement Program and Athletic Directors In-Service program among other duties.
“When I look at each step I’ve taken, it’s been an opportunity to serve more people,” Hutcheson said. “As a classroom teacher and a coach, and then moving up to assistant principal where I was serving more students. And then athletic director, where I was serving more students, and now serving the entire state. It’s pretty remarkable.”
The addition of Hutcheson is one of a few changes coming to the MHSAA staff for the start of the 2016-17 school year. Longtime official Sam Davis will join part-time in September to coordinate an expansion of services and support for officials, including in the key areas of recruitment and retention, while also assisting Hutcheson with wrestling.
Andrea Osters will be promoted in August to assistant director in charge of volleyball and another sport to be determined. Osters, the current social media & brand coordinator for the MHSAA and also the lead administrator for softball the last three years, will with Hutcheson take over most of the duties of current assistant director Gina Mazzolini, who will retire at the end of July.
At Howell, Hutcheson directs 90 athletic teams for grades 7-12. His high school, with more than 2,500 students, is one of the largest in our state. He has served as athletic director for the last decade after two years as an assistant principal, and he also coached the school’s wrestling program for eight seasons while teaching applied technology at the high school and later working for the Howell Recreation Department.
A plea from a professor during his first year as a student at Ferris State University set Hutcheson’s path toward education – although along the way he’s picked up a variety of skills that have benefitted his athletic program and the surrounding sports community as well.
He went to Ferris with thoughts of becoming a graphic designer and going into advertising. But by the end of his first term, as he watched classmates stay up into the morning hours working on projects while he was getting up at 6 a.m. for wrestling practice, he figured that career might not be the best fit.
Hutcheson still remembers the day in class when that instructor remarked that there was a huge need for technical education teachers. Hutcheson, who had always wanted to coach, saw that as his eventual niche.
He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in technical education with an associate’s in graphic arts and printing technology, and later earned a master’s degree in public and educational administration at University of Michigan-Dearborn.
Hutcheson recently was named his region’s Athletic Director of the Year by the Michigan Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association, and with Davis will bring extensive wrestling experience to the MHSAA. After competing at Howell and then Holt High School as a senior – making the MHSAA Individual Finals and finishing third at his weight as a senior in 1988 – Hutcheson was three-time NCAA Division II wrestling All-American and two-time Academic All-American while at Ferris State, and a three-time Greco-Roman Open All-American at the collegiate and post-graduate senior levels.
Hutcheson served as an assistant wrestling coach at Ferris State during the 1994-95 season and then coached the Michigan Wrestling Club from 1997-2000 guiding athletes in World Team and Olympic Trials competition. He led the Highlanders to the Division 1 Quarterfinals his first season as a high school coach, and currently serves as wrestling commissioner and overall president of the 24-school Kensington Lakes Activities Association and on MHSAA committees for wrestling and lacrosse.
He took over as athletic director at Howell from longtime administrator Doug Paige and has relied in part on work ethic learned from parents Don and Lynne Hutcheson and mentoring from college coach Dr. Jim Miller, who also is a professor of Optometry and with whom Hutcheson remains in regular contact.
Hutcheson has relished opportunities to put on big events, and one of his last as Howell athletic director will be as host of both MHSAA Boys Lacrosse Finals on June 11.
And tapping into those technical and design skills, Hutcheson also serves as webmaster and historian for the KLAA and created one of the most detailed league websites in the state.
“When we were doing (Paige’s) going-away party, I said his were big shoes to fill but my goal wasn't to fill the shoes, but to keep walking in the same direction,” Hutcheson said. “I feel the next person up will have a great foundation that’s here and will take it to the next level.
“I’m very excited about (joining the MHSAA staff). But I’ll probably take the same approach as what I did as athletic director here. Things have been done a certain way for a reason, and then we can look for ways to tweak things, fine-tune things.”
Champions who champion our games
An MHSAA Wrestling Finals individual champion for Lansing Eastern in 1969, Davis went on to wrestle briefly at Michigan State University before an eye injury ended his competitive career in that sport. However, he instead took up judo, winning state championships in 1980 and 1981 and competing at the U.S. Olympic trials. After graduating from MSU with bachelor and master’s degrees in 1974, Davis began his teaching career at Lansing Everett High School. He also coached wrestling and football and later served as an assistant principal at the school before serving as principal at Dwight Rich Middle School and then district athletic director over a 32-year career with Lansing Public Schools that concluded in 2007.
Davis received the MHSAA’s Vern L. Norris Award in 2015 for his work in officiating, including the mentoring and educating of other officials. He has been an MHSAA registered official for 36 years, working wrestling during the entirety of his career and baseball most of the last decade. Davis has officiated in all but a few of the MHSAA’s annual Wrestling Finals since receiving his first championship-level assignment in 1983. He currently serves as a major with the Ingham County Sheriff’s Office, serving as jail administrator, and will remain employed by the county while joining the MHSAA staff.
Osters has worked as part of the MHSAA staff since 2005 and has presented multiple times at National Federation annual meetings on her work as a nationally-recognized leader in high school sports association social media. She is a member of the Leadership Council of the NFHS Network, the national digital broadcasting initiative of the National Federation of State High School Associations, and has worked in coordination and planning of the MHSAA’s Captain’s Clinic series and other student leadership programs.
She also launched the “Officials for Kids” statewide fundraising initiative and handles all venue-specific ticketing for MHSAA statewide tournaments.
She was a high school champion as a starter on the Okemos softball team that won the MHSAA Division 1 championship in 1999 and then graduated from Michigan State in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree in communications and concentration in public relations. She served as Okemos’ freshman softball coach for four seasons, from 2002-05, and also wrote a weekly sports column for a local magazine from 2009-11. Osters is a current member of the board of directors for the Michigan Society of Association Executives and was a founding member of the MSAE’s Emerging Professionals Committee.
“Dan Hutcheson, Sam Davis and Andrea Osters are passionate advocates for the values of high school athletics,” MHSAA Executive Director John E. Jack Roberts said. “Dan is one of the most respected athletic administrators in Michigan and brings a collection of experiences and skills that will benefit all of our schools in a variety of areas. Sam has long championed officiating, and we’re excited for the possibilities his experience and abilities bring as we intensify our recruitment of new officials statewide to join the more than 10,000 who annually work our games.
“Andrea has provided the MHSAA with a variety of skills and leadership over more than a decade of service and played a prominent role in the move of the MHSAA Baseball and Softball Finals to Michigan State two years ago. We anticipate she’ll make a smooth transition in taking over new and added responsibilities.”
PHOTO: Howell’s Dan Hutcheson coaches one of his wrestlers during his tenure running that program from 1997-2004. (Photo courtesy of Dan Hutcheson.)