Flathead keeps it in the family, hires Tricia (Samson) Dean as girls basketball coach

If Tricia Dean has questions about resurrecting a program, she won’t have to look far for answers.

The latest head coach from a family of Montana mentors, Dean was announced as Flathead’s new girls basketball coach on Tuesday, pending the approval of the school board.

Dean is the younger sister of Braves football coach Kyle Samson, the daughter of Great Falls High football coach Mark Samson, the granddaughter of NAIA Hall of Fame coach Bob Petrino and the wife of former MSU-Northern quarterback Travis Dean, who will join Kyle’s football coaching staff at Flathead.

Getting the chance to coach and live near family was one of the biggest selling points of the new job for Dean, who was an assistant varsity coach at her alma mater, Havre, before being hired to lead the Bravettes.

“It was definitely a positive,” Dean said of getting the chance to work with her brother. “(Kyle)’s had such a wonderful experience and he’s been so well supported by the administration and in the community. That was a deciding factor in me putting my name in.”

Dean will have her work cut out for her at Flathead, which won just 11 games in three seasons under former head coach Lisa Hendrickson. The Bravettes have not won a Western AA conference game since the 2013-14 season and went 4-17 a season ago.

“Going in it’s going to be tough, it is,” Dean said.

“We have a lot of work ahead of us, but just speaking to the girls (Tuesday) morning, they want to be good, I get that feeling from them. It might be quite a road for us but I think that we’re going to be successful.

“The past is the past and I told the girls we have a clean slate here. No one’s expecting much from us and it’s a really great feeling to prove them wrong.”

“The hard part is going to be that you’re coming from a program (Havre) that’s been at the state tournament three years in a row,” Flathead Activities Director Bryce Wilson said. “But small victories can turn into bigger victories. I haven’t defined (what success next season would be) but her word for next year is ‘compete’. We want to be competing in every game.

“She knows that it’s going to take some time to build to where we want to be.”

Dean plans to bring some of her brother’s infectious enthusiasm to the job, although she says she is not quite her brother’s hyperactive equivalent, if only for practical reasons.

“I don’t think I have the freedom to run up and down the sidelines the way he does when I’m on the court,” she said with a laugh. “I would say that we definitely share some characteristics and we both share that passion for the sport that we’re coaching. That will definitely shine through on the sideline.”

“There’s a competitiveness and the other piece is energy,” Wilson said of the comparison between the siblings. “You can see that she’s going to be a kid magnet. I didn’t know her before the (interview) and it was amazing … there are similarities that definitely came through.”

When asked about the possible conflict inherent in hiring the sister of one of the school’s current coaches, Wilson acknowledged the unusual optics but said Dean’s credentials were the deciding factor in her hiring.

“We try to get the best candidate,” he said. “No matter who we hire, somebody’s probably going to whisper that we did it for this or that reason.

“She interviewed and did an amazing job at the interview, and showed her competitiveness and her vision better than anyone else. When we went through the process, she was the best candidate. We don’t ever try to do the easiest thing, it’s ‘who’s the best candidate?’ You have to be true to your process.”

Dean will also be recommended for a full-time teaching job at the school, and she and her husband are planning on moving to Kalispell in the next several weeks. She accepted the job Monday and had her first chance to address the team on Tuesday morning.

“I felt like it was really positive,” she said of the initial meeting.

“I felt like there was a lot of excitement and jumping on board with what I had to say. I felt like there was a good, positive energy in the room.”

The Bravettes’ 2016-17 season will begin in early December.