Soldiers To Sidelines proudly honors Jason “Jay” Lewey as the July 2025 Soldier Coach of the Month, recognizing his unwavering dedication to youth development, servant leadership, and the power of sport to transform lives. A recently retired Chief Warrant Officer 5 with over 27 years of Army service, Coach Lewey has seamlessly transitioned his battlefield-tested discipline and leadership into the world of football and wrestling. Now coaching tight ends and the offensive line at St. Michael’s Prep in Austin, Texas, his journey from the frontlines to the sidelines reflects a deep commitment to mentoring young athletes with the same passion and purpose that defined his military career. Through coaching, Jay has found not just a new mission, but a powerful way to give back—empowering the next generation with resilience, confidence, and heart. Read Coach Lewey’s reflection on his coaching journey in the following interview.
STS: Tell your story about how and why you got into coaching. Discuss how coaching has impacted you as a person.
Like many coaches, I started coaching wrestling after my fourth deployment in the Global War on Terror as a volunteer with the youth club in Maryland, where my son was wrestling. Over the years, I progressed with him in the sport of wrestling, building a travel team when many kids were ready for an increased level of competition and following him to high school. During his freshman year playing football, I met our school’s defensive coordinator, a former Marine, and he recruited me to help with the football program.
In terms of how coaching has impacted me, the most succinct way I can put it is that I get more from my athletes than they get from me. I take such joy in watching a young athlete learn a new skill, make a play on the field, or win a match. Now that I am approaching retirement, I am incredibly excited to devote more time to being a better coach for my athletes and serve a new community. In Virginia, the men I coached with and many of the families who played football with or wrestled with our son became very dear friends to me and my wife. Leaving for Texas to our retirement home was incredibly bittersweet.
STS: How has your military experience influenced you as a coach?
First, the great leaders I served under in the Army showed me what right looks like, teaching me valuable leadership lessons on team building, discipline, and placing the mission and needs of the team ahead of my own. Most importantly, they taught me the servant leader model where a good leader serves his subordinates, empowering them with the knowledge, skills and tools to achieve the mission. Thus, the leader only succeeds if the subordinates and the team accomplish their mission or goals. Everything I do should be
Second, serving in two very detail-oriented military professions, aviation and later intelligence operations, I learned highly detailed mission planning in two ‘no fail’ fields that naturally flow with the detailed synchronization and execution we see in football. Additionally, both of those fields gave me significant experience making split-second decisions like an athlete does in a game or match.
STS: How has Soldiers To Sidelines impacted your life?
Bottom line – I could not be where I am today without Soldiers To Sidelines. In a recent course I took through USA Wrestling, I learned that only 5-10% of youth sports coaches receive any type of training. This is where STS fills a critical gap by providing expert-level training to veterans so our kids have a better sports experience.
It seems to me that coaching is often a master – apprentice profession, where people learn from an experienced coach and learn the ways of their mentor, or they coach the way they were coached when they were athletes. This type of development program can leave significant gaps in knowledge, where maybe a coach knows how to run a practice, execute drills, but may not always have the strategy or the why behind it all. Over the last three years, I have soaked in every bit of knowledge I could, attending a nationally recognized football coaching program every year, paying for subscriptions to coaching resources, but I still had so many questions and sometimes I didn’t even know what question to ask. What I discovered in the STS Vault, answered the ‘why’ to so many aspects of the game and gave me the foundation I needed to really start learning the game on my own. Coach Kruse’s one-hour football overview is the single best offering I have found.
As I transition to coaching offense after three years on the defensive side of the ball, there is no way I would be ready without STS.
Aside from the professional growth, STS has introduced me to many great veteran coaches that I look forward to seeing at our events, whether it is putting on clinics for athletes, meeting at the summit, or simply chatting on our coffee zooms.
STS: Describe a coaching interaction with a player, or group of players, that has a special place in your heart.
My first year coaching football, I convinced a junior to play at the junior varsity level and be a key player for us on Thursday night. As I am sure many coaches will understand, it can be challenging getting players to play on Thursdays because too often they thing it means they are no good. This player trusted me, trained with the JV, played every snap he could on Thursdays, and had a strong offseason. In his senior year, he was a key contributor to our defense, going from worst to first in the district, earned first team all-district honors, and helped us make the playoffs for the first time in over 25 years. He was also a district champ for us in wrestling.
My second year of coaching football, this athlete was often referenced by the staff as the example of what we wanted from a player in our program. While the above-mentioned player was having a great senior year, another D-Lineman from the class below took the same route (getting tons of reps at JV and training hard in the offseason) to being an important varsity starter in his senior year.
STS: What are your aspirations in coaching?
In the short run, my aspiration is to learn our offense at St Michael’s and help our team make a run in the playoffs. Long term, my dream job would be serving as a position coach at my alma mater, the University of Missouri, or in my newly adopted home of Austin at the University of Texas.
STS: What was the most difficult challenge you have experienced in coaching and what have you learned from that experience?
The biggest challenge I faced was learning the game of football at a much deeper level than even the biggest fan. My biggest lesson is that our professional growth as coaches will often mirror our athletes’ development. Every time you jump a competition level, there is an acclimation period where it can be difficult to take your lumps. I feel like my years of coaching have gone that way. Year one coaching D-Line was tough as I learned tons of drills and had to experiment with what I liked and what was most effective at developing my players. In year two, I finally started to understand our opponent’s run schemes at the level I needed to really talk about how we would stop their offense. In year three, I finally had my key set of everyday drills (EDD’s) and was proficient with all the tasks I needed at D-Line. Now that I am jumping to the other side of the ball, I expect to repeat the process, except that my development will be much faster due to the foundation I have in the game. Ultimately, coaching is a craft of continuous growth and development. I love it for that. It is the reason I get up every day.
STS: Is there anything else you can share with us about your coaching story?
Sports has been profoundly impactful on my life. I had a lot to be angry about in my youth and wrestling gave me a place to succeed athletically and a healthy way to channel my angst. The lessons I learned in that room have sustained me through the toughest moments in my life: almost 4 years in Iraq and Afghanistan and a bout with chemotherapy. These lessons have so shaped my life that I feel obliged to share them with the next generation.
After a career largely devoted to strategic-level intelligence, when I assess the health of our nation using the metrics of our youth, the data is quite clear that we have a problem. On the nation’s last report card, only 1 in 3 8th graders could read at grade level and only 1 in 4 could do math at grade level. Many of us are aware of the data on childhood obesity, but how many of us are aware that 77% of today’s youth do not qualify to serve in the armed forces? While the mental health challenges of our boys and girls are quite different, they are each facing serious challenges in the mental health space. I believe deeply that investing in today’s youth, getting them excited about something that doesn’t involve technology, is vital to counteracting these trends and helping these kids live healthier, happier, more productive lives. And I want to be clear, it doesn’t have to be sports. Our oldest daughter loved the theater and it was an important outlet for her in high school and college. I hope that more adults will invest in the youth in their communities, however they can, and the most important donation they can make is with their time. We can build a stronger, healthier nation one small community at a time. As I retire from the Army this month, it is the next generation that may be called to defend America the way that our generation was. We need to prepare them for the challenges we can that may come their way.
We joke in the house that my perfect final resting spot will be a small gentleman’s ranch in Texas where I can raise a longhorn to hang out with, drinking a whisky, and watching the sunset. Selfishly, I need this generation to keep America strong so I can live out that dream. In all seriousness, generations of Americans have fought and died to preserve this amazing country we have been blessed to inherit. We are all stewards of it for only a short time. I am truly blessed to play a small part in preparing this next generation to care for our nation.
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