Six months after leading the Lynnville-Sully Hawks boys track and field team to an SICL Meet Championship and sixth-place finish at the Class 1A State Track and Field Championships, veteran coach Darin Arkema accepted his award as one of five At-Large Class 1A Coaches of the Year at the Iowa Association of Track Coaches (IATC) Awards and Hall of Fame Banquet in Ames on Saturday, Dec. 2.
IATC Coaches of the Year are presented to one overall coach and five at-large selections for boys and girls coaches in each class every year. Arkema was nominated for the honor and selected as one of the at-large selections. He joins an elite group of coaches receiving the 2023 honor. The State Coach of the Year went to Lonnie Spiedel of Lisbon. The other At-Large Coach of the Year awards went to Scott Dennler and Steve Riley of Columbus Junction, Jessie Pedeson of Lawton-Bronson, Brad Elliott of Mount Ayr, and ACGCs Cody Mattewson.
The honor is well deserved for the man who is passionate for both track and cross-country, and even more passionate for the student-athletes in his care. Arkema has been a coach at Lynnville-Sully for all 23 years that he has taught at the school. For the first seven years, he coached junior high boys track and field. From 2008-2019, he served as head girls track and field coach. For the last four seasons, he has led the high school boys around the oval.
“I very humbly accept this recognition because this award to me is really about the guys on our team and the work they invested into themselves and each other to have a tremendously successful season. It is most certainly a reflection on them and what was accomplished in our 2023 season. I’m grateful to my family for their support of me and to assistant coach Jeff Corbett for the work he invests helping the young men in our program be successful,” said Arkema.
During his long tenure, Arkema’s teams have celebrated great success. In 2015, Lynnville-Sully’s girls captured their first SICL Conference Championship under his leadership, and they were also state-qualifying meet champions that year and again in 2018. Arkema took over a successful high school boys program that had celebrated four SICL Conference Champion-ships prior to his position as head coach. In 2020, Arkema’s first year at the helm of the boys program, COVID shut down the season. In 2021, the Hawks picked up right where they left off, this time under Arkema’s expert guidance. The boys track and field team has continued their reign as SICL Track and Field Champions in 2021, 2022, and 2023 – marking four consecutive years Lynnville-Sully has held the top spot in the SICL.
Arkema led his team to a banner year in 2022. Not only were they SICL Conference Champions, but Lynnville-Sully also claimed the state-qualifying meet championship title. The Hawks finished in ninth place overall at state in 2022.
In 2022, one of coach Arkema’s teams, the 4x200 relay of Corder Noun Harder, Ryan Annee, Conner Maston, and Josh Hardenbrook, won the Class 1A state title – the first state championship title and team Arkema has ever coached. His athletes built on that success. In 2023, Arkema guided the team to six regular season meet titles, an SICL Meet Championship title, and six Hawks to the state meet loaded with talent. His presence and constant source of encouragement and wisdom, along with the months of training he led prior, proved to be instrumental as those athletes ran well at state with five events finishing in the top seven for medals, a sixth-place team finish in the Class 1A – the highest the Hawks have finished under Arkema’s lead, and four school records rewritten over the course of the season.
Arkema, who started this school year as the L-S’s industrial tech teacher after decades spent teaching P.E., stays in coach mode year round. He also serves as the Hawks’ junior high and high school cross-country coach. Arkema and his wife Anna, who serves alongside him coaching cross-country, live north of Sully with their three children.
