A former Coquitlam Adanac is returning to the Western Lacrosse Association team as its new head coach.
Bob Bell scored 10 goals and added five assists for the Adanacs in his final season as a player in the WLA in 1995 after spending most of his senior career with the New Westminster Salmonbellies, where he helped the team win a Mann Cup in 1992.
Bell started his coaching career in 1997 with the Burnaby Intermediate A program where he was named the Intermediate League’s coach of the year. He then coached in the Port Coquitlam minor association and in 2014 Bell helmed the PoCo Saints intermediate team to a provincial championship and he earned another coach of the year award.
Fresh off those accolades, Bell took the reigns of the Saints’ Junior A team in 2015 where he was charged with breathing new vitality into a program that had won only three games in three of the previous five seasons. He had the team into the BC Junior A Lacrosse League playoffs a year later.
Bell spent last season as an assistant coach for the BCJALL’s Langley Thunder.
Joining Bell behind the Adanacs’ bench will be assistant coach Shaun Springett.
After a WLA playing career that included stints in New Westminster and the North Shore, as well as with the Calgary Roughnecks of the National Lacrosse League, Springett cut his coaching teeth with junior programs for the Adanacs and Salmonbellies before joining the senior Langley Thunder.
In 2012 Springett was named the head coach of the Delta Islanders of the BCJALL where he led the team to its best-ever regular season record and first appearance in the league championship series. That earned him the league’s coach of the year as well as the BC Lacrosse Association’s senior coach of the year awards.
In 2014 Springett became the head coach of the Langley Thunder junior team.
Bell and Springett take over an Adanacs program that hasn’t had a winning season since 2013, the last time the team went to the WLA playoffs. Their hiring is also the most visible of a series of off-season moves to rebuild and rebrand the organization back to competitiveness.
Yvan Lomas has been elevated from the team’s vice-president to president, replacing Ed Posnart, who’s also stepped away from his role on the team’s board of directors. He’ll continue to represent the Adanacs as a governor with the WLA.
General manager Mike Petrie will also be the team’s new vice-president. His new assistant general manager will be Steve Klarner, while Ryan Keller joins the front office as the Adanacs’ new director of marketing.
The new management team’s first test will occur Feb. 7, at the annual WLA draft, where the Adanacs will have a second and sixth pick in the first round.
• Former Adanacs' general manager Kevin Hill will fill that role for the Burnaby Lakers.
