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Salonen Steps Down as Glacier Girls Basketball Coach

Salonen is concluded a coaching career that spans 25 years in Montana

By Dillon Tabish

Kris Salonen has resigned as the head coach of the girls basketball team at Glacier High School, concluding a successful 25-year career devoted to leading high school athletes in Western Montana.

Salonen is stepping down after 6 1/2 years as head coach of the girls program at Glacier. Under Salonen, the Wolfpack were 93-58 with four state tournament appearances. The Wolfpack brought home the program’s first trophy in the 2014-15 season by finishing third. Glacier finished last season 12-9 overall and missed out on the state tournament.

“Kris’s approach with her student-athletes will be missed,” Glacier Activities Director Mark Dennehy said. “She has spent countless hours coaching basketball and has been one of our leaders within our strength and conditioning summer program since Glacier has opened. The time she has committed to the Pack while being mom is hard to imagine. We wish Kris happiness as she takes this next step in her life.”

Dennehy said the search to replace Salonen will begin immediately.

Salonen said the decision was hard to make but she wanted to spend more time with her family, while also preparing to regularly travel to Helena starting next winter to watch her daughter, Taylor, who will play basketball at Carroll College.

“For me to have the opportunity to coach Talyor and her friends and just be a part of these girls’ lives every day, it’s pretty special,” Salonen said. “It’s something I will never forget.”

A Great Falls native, Kris Schmitt Salonen was a two-time all-state basketball player and a legendary track athlete. As a sprint hurdler, she set nine school records at Great Falls High and won multiple individual state championships. She graduated high school in 1985 and went on to have a successful track career at the University of Montana, where she became the first UM female to break 60 seconds in the 400-meter hurdles. A member of the so-called Golden Girls at UM in the late 1980s, she shares the school records in the two relay events and twice won the Big Sky Conference indoor championship in the 55-meter hurdles and 200-meter dash. She also captured two outdoor titles in the 100-meter hurdles and the title in the 400-meter hurdles.

She is a member of the Montana Hall of Fame and Grizzly Hall of Fame.

Sports Illustrated named Salonen one of the 50 greatest sports figures from Montana in 1999.

Before coaching at Glacier, Salonen coached volleyball, basketball and track and taught in Ronan for nine years. She was an assistant coach on the 1992 Ronan High School girls basketball team that won the Class A state championship. Her and her husband Brad moved to the Flathead Valley, when she eventually led the girls basketball program at Columbia Falls High School for six years. She accepted a teaching and coaching job at Glacier High School in 2007 and became head coach midway through the 2010 season after Doug Hashley stepped down.