TACOMA, Wash. — Jake Dacus has embraced the Division III philosophy. Dacus came to Pacific Lutheran University as a student-athlete and hasn't left D3, serving as head coach and winning Midwest Conference Women's Coach of the Year honors this winter at Monmouth College. 
 
Dacus has coached in three different states across three times zones but the common thread has been Division III. And what truly keeps him coaching at this level is the student-athletes. 
 
"It's the athletes. The D3 athlete is a little bit different. We aren't getting paid to be here, so you got to love it. A lot of the time, it's a bit of a love-hate relationship with your sport. It takes a lot of time and you don't necessarily enjoy every minute of it but that final outcome, the end goal is the part that you love. The D3 athlete is something special and I don't really want to work with anybody else."
 
Dacus originally thought he wanted to coach at the high school level before some conversations with then Head Coach Matt Sellman while working the desk at the pool opened his eyes to the possibility of coaching at the collegiate level. 

"I knew for a long time that I wanted to coach, but I never really thought about the college level. My plan was I'll become a high school teacher, I'll coach the high school team, maybe do some summer league stuff and that was what I wanted to do."
 
I don't know if it was lucky or unlucky that I always had the 8 a.m. shift at the pool for lifeguarding and that's when it was just Matt and I. 
 
There was one day my junior year I remember we were chatting and he was like 'ok what's the plan?' You're getting close, what do you want to do when you graduate? So I told him I really just want to coach and this is how I think I can do that, and I got the full chair spin, just like, 'you know I get paid to do this, right?' 
 
And it was really just talking with him that opened my eyes to college coaching was a possibility so that really shifted the types of conversations we started having instead of just pretty theoretical, it was we started putting a plan together and really this is how you could get there."
 
After four years as a swimmer with the Lutes, Dacus moved across the country to coach at D3 Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania for two seasons. While there he helped the Bearcats get the program's first All-American and national meet qualifier.
 
Dacus would return home to Washington, spending three seasons back at PLU coaching side-by-side with his collegiate coach Matt Sellman. It was a three-year stretch that saw Kaycee Simpson win multiple Northwest Conference titles and qualify for the NCAA Division III Championships. 
 
After three seasons, Dacus was off to Illinois and Monmouth where he's been with the Scots ever since. 

While Dacus is incredibly passionate about the sport, he got a relatively late start to competitive swimming.

"I got involved in swimming my freshman year of high school, so I was pretty late to the game in our sport. But it was actually, we had some family friends that I've known my entire life. They were both college swimmers, high school swim coaches, all that. 
 
We would go out to the lake during the summers and just kind of hang out. Then going into my freshman year of high school they were kind of like 'hey you should try this. We watched you grow up just swimming here in the lake and whatnot and give it a shot it could be something that you're good at' and turns out they were right."

Dacus was a state qualifier in high school at Kentridge High School, grabbing the attention of then Lute Head Coach Matt Sellman.

"I chose PLU primarily because it was the best connection I felt with the coach. Sellman did a great job throughout the recruiting process. You could just tell he was honest the whole way through. Every question that I had, I asked each coach I talked to and he just had the best answers. The ones that I felt were the most honest, the most real, whether it was the answer I necessarily wanted to hear or not. But I connected with him and when I did my tour, I loved the campus and when I did my overnight I fell in love with the team and it was a done deal."
 
After his time as a graduate assistant in Pennsylvania, Dacus jumped at the opportunity to be an assistant with the Lutes.
 
"That was such a fun experience getting to see the program from the other side, not just as an athlete but now as a coach. Really the biggest thing I would say that I took away from working with Matt in that capacity was that there's always something you can do. Whether it is in a training standpoint, in a recruiting standpoint, or simply having a conversation with the athletes. The athletes are the number one priority, making sure that we are doing what we think is best for them."
 
And while PLU and Monmouth are separated by two time zones and are very different environments— a large city versus a rural community— Dacus sees a lot of similarities between how the two institutions operate.

"The two colleges put a priority on the athletes. Even though of course at the D3 level we can't give them special treatment, we make sure they know they are special to us. Because they're doing something different, they're doing something more than your regular student. At the core of it PLU and Monmouth are very similar because both of their goals are the same. We're trying to help our student athletes develop not just as students, not just as athletes, but as people."

Wrapping up his fourth season with the Scots, Dacus has already made a big impact on the program. 

"So far, I would say I'm most proud of just the steps that we've taken since I've gotten here at Monmouth. I came into a program that was hurting. They lost their previous coach, Tom Burek, to COVID complications. We've really had to kind of grow from that point. I think that our culture is in a really good spot, of course it can always be better we're continuing to improve, but the thing I'm most proud of is that they like each other, they get along, and they look forward to spending time together. 
 
That's the thing that I get told more on deck by other coaches is your team looks like they're having fun. Of course we're swimming well and that showed this last conference meet where we don't have the biggest team, but we were able to get 6th with only 10 guys and 11 girls. But they performed well and they're having that much fun that everyone's taking notice. That's definitely the thing I'm most proud of, is when the other coaches come over and say you're team's having fun."