Kirkwood names Irvin head football coach
Suburban Journals file photo | Former MICDS head coach Matt Irvin takes over at Kirkwood.
Matt Irvin is returning to where his football coaching career began. The 39-year-old former MICDS coach, who has spent the past two seasons at New Trier in upstate Illinois, has been named the head football coach at Kirkwood High.
Irvin said he had two primary reasons for accepting the Pioneers job.
“One is, and it’s the most important, is for our family,” Irvin said. “My wife is a Clayton High School and Wash U. grad school graduate and her parents still live in Clayton. My father recently moved to Kirkwood. Being here has given us a greater appreciation for our family. The second reason is it’s Kirkwood.”
Irvin, the 2007 Post-Dispatch football coach of the year, was an offensive lineman at St. Charles West and Missouri State. He was then an assistant coach at Kirkwood for four years, including one as Mike Wade’s offensive coordinator, before moving on to MICDS for 11 seasons.
“It was a great place then,” Irvin said of his first stint at Kirkwood. “It was a great place to have my first job out of college. It’s gonna be a great place to be a head coach.”
He spent eight years as an assistant under Ron Holtman and three years as the Rams’ head coach, which included three ABC League championships and two trips to the state championship game. The Rams went 33-3 in his three years: 12-1 in 2007, 8-1 in 2006 and 13-1 in 2005.
Irvin left MICDS for the job at New Trier, which is located in Winnetka, Ill., in Cook County and has an enrollment of more than 4,000 students. Irvin’s squad went 6-5 in his first season there and 5-5 in his second.
He will succeed Larry Frost at Kirkwood, who announced his retirement on in December after six years at the school. Frost posted a 52-16 record with the Pioneers, including a Class 5 runner-up finish in 2006, trips to the semifinals in 2004 and 2005 and a quarterfinal appearance in 2007.
