Former South Salem quarterback Josh Vanlue has been the team's offensive coordinator since 2016. (Photo by Sam Mendez)

Air Saxon football will continue for South Salem in the post-Scott Dufault era.

The school has promoted offensive coordinator Josh Vanlue, architect of the Saxons' explosive passing game, to head coach to succeed Dufault, who resigned after 24 seasons with the team.

Vanlue was an all-league quarterback at South Salem, where he graduated in 2002. He was the quarterback coach at South Salem (2007-12) before serving as the offensive coordinator at McNary (2013-15) and South Salem (2016-23). The school announced his hiring Monday, nearly one month after Dufault resigned.

“I knew I wanted to be a head coach, but I also knew I wanted to be a head coach at South Salem,” said Vanlue, who teaches special education at the school. “Working for such an awesome coach as Coach Dufault, I was never in a hurry. But this is the place I've always wanted to be and always saw myself being.”

Vanlue learned the concepts of the Air Raid offense during his one season on the team at Kentucky before finishing his college career at Western Oregon. He began implementing those ideas at South Salem in 2021, dubbing it Air Saxon, and the team led 6A in passing yards in the last two regular seasons.

“He came to me and he said, 'We're struggling running the football against good teams, and for us to be able to compete against good teams, I think we need to balance the field and chuck it around,'” Dufault said. “We've been pretty productive the last three years. We're moving the ball, we're scoring points. I think that stability will be good in the transition.”

Vanlue has big shoes to fill in Default, who went 141-100 in 24 seasons at South Salem, including 9-1 last year, when the Saxons won the Special District 1 title and lost to Tigard 17-0 in the first round of the state playoffs. Dufault also went 18-12 as the coach at McKay (1997-99).

“When you've got to follow someone who has done it for so long at such a high level, you've got to feel the pressure,” Vanlue said of Dufault. “But I'm also so thankful to him. He's let me in on everything. I got the opportunity to learn from him and pick his brain. There's nobody that does it better than him.”

Dufault also serves as South Salem's head wrestling coach. He said he initially planned to decide about football after the wrestling season, but made up his mind sooner. His future as the wrestling coach is uncertain.

“I've been doing this a long time,” Dufault said. “Football and wrestling back-to-back is hard. I just thought it was time. I'm going to finish up wrestling and decide what I'm going to do.”

Vanlue has had full autonomy over the offense in recent seasons. He said a district boundary change that altered South Salem's demographic was a factor in changing gears with the offense.

“Being an ex-quarterback, I thought what better way than to just throw the ball every play,” he said. “We spent the COVID year kind of rebranding and figuring out what we needed to do to be successful. I knew through our youth program that we had a bunch of good skill kids, and we can develop quarterbacks, so we just decided we're going to be something different, something teams don't see very often.”

South Salem began averaging about 50 pass attempts per game. Daschel Smith ranked second in 6A in passing yards in 2021 and was first as a senior in 2022. Senior Athan Palmateer took over last season and led 6A with 2,862 passing yards and 29 touchdown passes during the regular season.

Senior receiver Esteban Mendez finished the 2023 regular season with a 6A-high 1,234 receiving yards. He holds South Salem career marks for receptions, receiving yards and touchdown catches.

“Air Saxon has turned into something that our kids believe in,” Vanlue said. “They believe in playing the game with tempo. We try to snap the ball every 15 seconds. We're going to attack and throw it all over the yard.”

The Saxons need to replace Palmateer. Considering junior Ben Hennan threw more than 1,000 passes on JV the last two seasons and freshman Kellen Bowman had 610 pass attempts last year, Vanlue is confident he can identify the next in line.

“Whoever the next guy is will continue the tradition of Air Saxon quarterbacks,” Vanlue said. “The next step is we've got to get bigger and stronger, and just continue the evolution of Air Saxon.”

Dufault said he believes Vanlue will “do a great job.”

“He's a football guy, he's a South Salem guy. I feel pretty good about that part of it,” Dufault said. “It's weird that I'm not going to be doing something I've done for 35 years. That's the hard part for me. But 35 years is plenty of time to be doing this.”

Szueber steps down

David Douglas is searching for a coach after the resignation of Cal Szueber.

Szueber went 11-29 in five seasons with the Scots, including 1-8 last year. Szueber has a 106-87 career record, posting 13 winning seasons and 11 state playoff appearances in 19 seasons at Oakland, North Douglas, Tillamook, Roosevelt, Portland Christian and David Douglas.

“I'm not sure what the future holds for now,” Szueber said. “I may coach again in the right situation or not coach at all.”

Szueber said that during his tenure at David Douglas, the school built up its youth program to more than 200 players. The high school program had a solid turnout of about 90.

“The only drawback was while numbers were up, we had several first-year players on varsity the last couple of years, and that was hard to compete with at the 6A level,” he said. “But I feel we left the program in good shape going forward. … Our JVs last year had the best season they have had in over a decade with a great ninth-grade class.”

Next season, the Scots have seven starters eligible to return on offense and six on defense.