First-year Siuslaw assistant coach Jamin Pool can't wait to be a first-year head coach, but he's enjoying what he's doing and seeing now.

First, and foremost, there are the players.

"These kids are some of the nicest, classiest kids I've ever been around," Pool said. "It's almost like you don't have to worry. They're the kind of kids you'd like your daughter to introduce you to.

"They are going to be great men who contribute to society, who are going to be great parents, fathers, husbands."

He's almost as ebullient when discussing his fellow coaches.

"We've been together only a few months, but it feels longer than that," Pool said. "The coaching staff are just great guys."

And he loves what head coach Tim Dodson brings to the table.

"He's got that old-school mentality you don't see very often anymore," Pool said. "You see a lot of coaches who don't have that fire and that competitive spirit, who are out there and kinda go with the flow.

"Coach Dodson has the experience, and you can see he has the coaching ability. He's a fiery coach, who's competitive and driven."

Then there's the community at large, which has contributed to the long, proud tradition of Siuslaw football.

"It's a special tradition you don't come by," Pool said. "It was nice to come in and see a culture that's already built, to kind of take in a community that just supports (the team) like crazy."

Pool, 29, who teaches physical education and health to freshmen at Siuslaw, came to Florence after five years as an assistant at his alma mater (South Albany) and a year as an assistant at Lebanon.

"My brother married into a family from here, so I learned a lot about Florence before I actually got here," Pool said. "I fell in love with the community right away."

He has been winning over the players since the first day, and Friday got a special shoutout from Vikings senior Kenneth Thrall at the team's afterglow in Brookings.

Siuslaw had just labored to put away the Brookings-Harbor Bruins, 21-20, rallying on a late touchdown by Thrall and Thrall's point-after kick.

Thrall, a senior co-captain, was the first player standing at the afterglow, and he gave his attaboys to teammate Marcos Reyna, who had two big blocked kicks in the game, and to Pool.

It was Pool who got Thrall's head back in the game after Brookings-Harbor took a late lead on a 52-yard return of a Thrall fumble.

"He was pretty down on himself when he fumbled and they scored," Pool said. "You could tell he was trying to beat himself up. So he needed a little bit of a pick-me up."

The task at hand was not an easy one. Brookings-Harbor led, 20-14, with little more than five minutes left on the clock. It didn't help that the Vikings started the final drive on their own 18. But 12 plays later, with 59 seconds to play, Thrall plowed in from the Bruins' 2 to tie the game, then kicked the decisive extra point.

"I told him it was meant to be, that he was going to be the one to kick the ball and win it," Pool said of his pep talk with Thrall. "We all have faith in what he can do, what he can accomplish."

It was a chance for Thrall and company to atone for some unexpectedly sloppy play. The Vikings, who had one lost fumble in their first seven games, fumbled four times and lost it three times against the Bruins.

"We made some mental errors that we hadn't seen in a long time," Pool said. "We fixed some stuff, and we just drove down there like it was easy. It showed a lot of character and class."

And that was expected.

"It's something else, it really is, it's something I've never experienced," Pool said. "How much character and class they actually have, and the respect for each other, and the respect for others."