Keanon Lowe matures as football coach, builds ‘brotherhood’ in Year 2 at Mountainside

The former Jesuit Crusaders and Oregon Ducks star aims to make the Mavericks a powerhouse team in Oregon high school football

Keanon Lowe led Parkrose to the 5A state quarterfinals in 2019. Now, he's trying to make Mountainside the champion of the Metro League — and perhaps even the state. / Photo by Ken Waz

Eighteen months ago, Keanon Lowe embarked on the latest step of his coaching journey, taking over a Mountainside program that had known only one head coach — John Mannion — during its brief history.

He hit the ground running and led the Mavericks to a 7-4 record and a Columbia Cup quarterfinal appearance. 

But he savored the opportunity to get a full offseason to implement his system fully — especially a lifting and conditioning program he hopes will allow the team to take the next step in its evolution.

The fruits of that program showed in Friday’s season-opening 24-21 loss to Silverton. 

A young offensive line that graduated four starters held its own against a veteran Foxes line that features 5A all-state first-teamer Eli Willis and already had a game under its belt.

The Mavericks gave up just one sack and three negative plays in 48 minutes.

“I’m super proud of their effort,” Lowe said. “We’ve got a really good football team.”

In Lowe’s first head coaching job, he turned around a moribund Parkrose program that went winless in 2017, the year before he arrived, and led the Broncos to a playoff victory in 2019.

That kicked off a coaching odyssey that led him to West Linn, where he was set to take over for Chris Miller in 2020 but instead chose to join Chip Kelly’s staff at UCLA.

A year later, he was off to Nebraska as an offensive analyst before returning to the Oregon high school ranks in March 2023, taking over for Mannion, who started the Mavericks program when the school opened in 2017. Mannion transitioned the program to varsity the next year and led Mountainside to the Class 6A quarterfinals in Year 2.

Senior Kellen Hicks, a two-way standout at receiver (three catches for 131 yards and a touchdown Friday) and cornerback (seven tackles), played for Mannion, who was more of an old-school coach, and Lowe, who got his coaching start in 2015 as an NFL assistant after his playing days at Jesuit and the University of Oregon. 

“Coach Mannion, honestly, he kept us really disciplined,” Hicks said. “And Coach Lowe, he’s working on that. But I love the energy. We’ve got a great group of guys here. We’ve just got to execute. Penalties are costing us a lot, and you can’t let them happen.”

The penalties came fast and furious in Friday’s first half, with the Mavericks being flagged 14 times for 138 yards — “Really? Fourteen penalties?” Lowe said in disbelief before repeating the number to an assistant passing by — but still battling the Foxes to a near-stalemate, trailing 17-14 at halftime.

They cleaned things up in the second half (two penalties for 10 yards), and they outgained the Foxes 325-291 for the game despite having the ball just 46 seconds in the third quarter.

Junior Sam Vyhlidal called it “definitely first-game type stuff that we can’t have,” but like Hicks, he talked about a “different type of energy” that Lowe infused in the program during the offseason.

“Obviously, we want to get the Metro championship, but this year is something different,” Vyhlidal said. “We want to make this a brotherhood.”

Junior quarterback Cade Mitchell, who threw for 245 yards and two touchdowns, has his sights set even higher.

“I think Coach Lowe helps us have that no-quit mentality to where no matter how hard it is, we can still come back,” Mitchell said. “He’s letting the players do a lot more this year. I think he’s trusting a lot of our guys, trusting our staff. 

“He has the right people in the right positions this year, and he’s doing a phenomenal job of keeping our program together, calling the plays, giving us a chance to go and really win state this year.”

Lowe knows that to have a chance to threaten Jesuit’s 10-year streak of Metro League titles — or even the top dogs (Tualatin, Central Catholic and West Linn) for a state championship — they’ll need to carry how they played in the second half to the rest of the season.

And that, he said, begins with him. He acknowledged that at times last season, he let his frustrations with penalties or a missed assignment get the better of him.

He feels he’s matured in that regard. For example, after a sequence that saw back-to-back personal foul penalties flagged against his team in the first quarter, he called timeout and brought the referee to the sideline, calmly getting his point across about calls he felt went against his team.

“Coach Lowe will continue to pay his dues for as long as I have to,” he said. “It’s very demoralizing when you feel like you’re playing clean football but the penalty box doesn’t show it. But, you know, the way I saw my team respond was super encouraging.

“We built a brotherhood this offseason. I think that’s the best part of high school football. You build a brotherhood, and if you’re doing it right on Friday nights, those boys play for each other and love each other. And I think we saw that tonight.

“So, there’s a lot of positives, and we’ll battle back and lick our wounds. Our kids are tough. It’s just the beginning of the year, and we’ll pay our dues, but we’ll continue to get better.”

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