Brett Elliott led Linfield to title. Now he leads Lewis & Clark

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — As college football teams around our region gear up for spring ball, changes are being made at Lewis & Clark College.

Brett Elliott, who grew up in the area and attended Lake Oswego High School, was just named Lewis and Clark’s 12th head football coach in program history.

Elliott certainly knows a thing or two about Division III college football and the Northwest conference. As Linfield’s starting quarterback, he led the Wildcats to a D-III national championship in 2004, then had two different coaching stints on the Wildcats staff.

“Obviously being a good program like Linfield, too, and seeing how a good program is established, developed and kept strong over a number of years is the goal for us here,” Elliott said in a recent sit-down interview with KOIN. 

His coaching resume also includes stops at Mississippi State and Texas State. But it is his high school coach, Steve Coury, that has played a big role in Elliott’s coaching career. Coury, who is still coaching at LO, has become a legend in the local high school coaching ranks.

It’s no surprise that Elliott has taken a lot from his mentor.

“I think you’ve got to put your team through adversity, that’s how they grow,” Elliott said. “But at the same time they’ve got to feel the love and so that’s something I learned a lot from Coach Coury.”

“The importance of love, you’ve got to get on them, you’ve got to push them, you’ve got to get them to strain, you’ve got to fight through adversity,” he added. “But at the same time, you’re hugging them in the locker room after.”

The Pioneers have had back-to-back winning seasons (4-3 in conference play in each of the last two years) and now Elliott is ready to lead Lewis & Clark to a Northwest Conference title – their first NWC title since 1969.

But the Pioneers most recent conference championship came in the the early ’90s because the NWC didn’t sponsor football between 1984 to 1996. The Pioneers won the Mt. Hood Southern League outright in 1989 and then shared the title with Linfield in a conference tie back in 1991. 

Coach Elliott is looking forward to seeing his guys in action and knows that fans of college football will not be disappointed when they come out and catch a game.

“We’ve got a bunch of good guys that are hard workers and talented,” he said.

Not to mention the beauty that is the Lewis & Clark campus and Griswold Stadium.

“What a setting, especially on a fall day,” he noted. “I played in this conference, coached in this conference, this was always my favorite road game to play in, just because of the setting.”

And you better believe a Pioneer-Wildcat rivalry is about to be strengthened.

“I hope so. I think so,” Elliott said. “I anticipate that.”