By ERIC RUEB

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NORTH KINGSTOWN – Dad might be leaving, but the children are in good hands.

After 23 years in the area John Holmes, lacrosse’s founding father in North Kingstown, is leaving the town and state for a job in Salt Lake City, leaving behind a high school program and youth leagues he built from the ground up.

Holmes is one of the few coaches at North Kingstown High School who doesn’t work for the school system and recently left his job at Raytheon for one at International Telephone and Telegraph and is moving out to Salt Lake City on Sept. 1 after living in NK for the last 23 years.

“It’s a big change for me in a lot of different ways,” Holmes said. “…It made it real hard because we’ve been here for 23 years, the three boys have grown up here and it was a hard decision. We have a lot of great friends.”

“I have the utmost respect for him,” La Salle Academy boys lacrosse Steve O’Donnell said. “… He will be missed.”

Holmes was there from the start for North Kingstown lacrosse.

In 2000, as the sport gained in popularity, he coached the Skipper club team as it prepared to start Rhode Island Interscholastic League play the following year.

“It was an opportunity of a lifetime, to start a program and try to shape it how the game should be played, how the kids should go and play with strong fundamentals, play as a team and let the individual accolades come as they may,” Holmes said. “If they play together, those things will happen, but at the same time we wanted to be competitive.

“I had three goals when I started the program nine years ago. I wanted to make it stick and I wanted to make it competitive and the ultimate goal was for the kids to start going to college and playing in college.”

After coaching the club team, North Kingstown made its RIIL debut in 2001 and finished 2-6. The following season, the Skippers finished 6-6, but Holmes had ideas on how the program could grow.

He started a youth program, which has grown to be one of the best in the state, feeding the high school year after year with quality players.

“We saw right away after the second year we were having to teach kids to catch and throw. We’d spend the first month of practice with just catch and throw and didn’t get to coach, just teaching,” Holmes said. “Once we started the youth leagues, it gained in popularity, we started seeing stories in newspapers and having dads who played in college have their kids come out of the wood work and we had more than enough help in those leagues.

“We were never searching for people to help us out on the field.”

“He developed a youth program at North Kingstown which he made a model for youth programs in the state and led to winning three state championships, which is a huge accomplishment,” O’Donnell said. “He took youth programs and developed them right into the high school program to make champions.”

In 2003, Holmes and the Skippers won their first Division I state title; two years later, they were the state runner-up and in 2006, won their third title.

Last season, North Kingstown headed to the playoffs as the third seed and a big underdog against the two top teams in the state, Bishop Hendricken and La Salle.

Playing on the road, Holmes and the Skippers upset Hendricken, then beat La Salle 13-10 to win the state title.

It was a tough one for Holmes, who had just started the process of talking with ITT; he never let on that it was going to be his last game.

“I certainly enjoyed this last one a lot for a lot of different reasons,” Holmes said. “I had to get through all three private schools, then we beat Hendricken on their home field in the semis and beat La Salle, the No. 1 team going in.”

“I’m going to miss him because his team beat my team in the finals,” O’Donnell said. “I would have liked to see him in that division again next year.”

“In the back of my mind, I knew things were going on with me professionally, so I certainly enjoyed it standing on the field back in June,” Holmes said. “Because I didn’t know if I’d get back there.”

The decision to take the job at ITT wasn’t easy because of his ties to the community, but was made easier by the fact that Holmes’ three sons – Chris, Ryan and Josh – are all well through high school.

“From that standpoint, I didn’t have to worry about my kids,” Holmes said. “It would have been really difficult for me to leave, especially if I was coaching them. With them being out of high school, it certainly made it easier.”

But it was not easy telling his other kids – the returning members of the North Kingstown lacrosse team.

“I talked to a group of the high school kids that are coming back two weeks ago,” Holmes said. “That was a pretty tough night for me, to stand in front of them tell them I’m leaving. They were sad, as am I to be leaving.”

He leaves the program in good hands. While it hasn’t been made official by the school department, NK assistant coach Chris Callahan will step in and take over for Holmes.

“There’s a model we put in place and they know it as well as I do,” Holmes said. “They’ll push it that way and there is no reason the kids can’t be competitive.

“There are worries (from the kids) … but they know what they need to do.”

Holmes isn’t leaving just a lacrosse program behind. While it’s easy to see him as just a coach, the 23 years spent in North Kingstown raising a family, then growing that family as a coach and youth league coordinator will be tough to leave behind.

“Families and relationships are going to be missed. It is a great state and I’m glad we were able to raise the kids here,” Holmes said. “We have the ocean, the mountains aren’t far, if you want big cities, they’re there if you want.

“It’s going to be the friends which have become our secondary family and all the relationships getting to know people in the high school – even though I’m not there – because they’re all helping the kids day-to-day that I’m going to miss the most.”