He took a circuitous route, but Travis Myers has landed one of the state's top boys basketball coaching jobs.
Myers, who resigned as coach at West Salem in March after a successful eight-year tenure, has accepted the job at Class 6A power West Linn. It comes a little more than one month after he had initially taken the head coaching position at perennial 4A contender Cascade.
Myers initially pursued the West Linn job in 2022 before the Lions hired Robert Key away from Grant. When West Linn opted not to renew Key's contract last spring, Myers again expressed interest, but was told the school was unable to offer a teaching position.
He accepted the Cascade position in late June, but two weeks later, West Linn athletic director Brigham Baker told Myers that the school had an open teaching position in special education.
For Myers, the opportunity to coach at West Linn was too good to pass up.
“It's one of those blue-blood jobs that only comes open so often,” Myers said. “When you coach basketball in Oregon, there are so many jobs that you look at as a huge thing. I made a run at it two years ago and it didn't work out. When it opened up again, I was lucky enough to get another shot.”
Myers officially accepted the job Aug. 2. The difficult part for Myers was having to notify Cascade that he was leaving.
“It was a hard phone call,” he said. “The timing kind of screwed things up. I feel bad about it. When I took it, I was 100 percent committed.”
Myers said that if he does not succeed at West Linn, he at least will be comfortable knowing that he accepted the challenge.
“At least I'll know I gave it a shot,” he said. “I'm 42 now, and I don't want to look back when I'm 50 and be like, 'Gosh, I had a chance to take on a pretty important job, a tough job.' At West Salem, our mantra has always been that shooters shoot, and I kind of have to live that mantra - Go for the big one, give it a shot.’”
Myers, a Douglas graduate, assisted at Dallas (2009-11), Sprague (2011-15) and West Salem (2015-16) before taking over as the Titans' head coach.
He went 134-64 in eight seasons, leading the team to the Central Valley Conference title in 2023. The Titans made the state quarterfinals in his first two seasons, lost in the first round of the state playoffs the next two seasons, then fell in the round of 16 the last three seasons.
“I had an awesome eight years there,” Myers said. “After eight ySears, I'd done everything I could at West Salem. At a school that really wasn't known for basketball, I thought we did a good job of taking hold and being a team that people knew about.
“In a place like West Salem, you kind of know where that ceiling is, and I think we were butting up against it every single year. Now, to get the opportunity to go somewhere where the ceiling is a bit higher, it changes your mindset a little bit.”
Myers will teach special education, a role he held early in his career before serving in discipline the last nine years. He will commute from Salem, where his wife works as a counselor at West Salem, and his two children are entering grades 8 and 4.
West Linn, a state semifinalist in 2022 and runner-up in 2023, went 15-12 and lost in the round of 16 last season.
“I know there's depth there,” Myers said. “That's kind of what excites me, too, just the amount of depth program wide.”
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