Carlton Chan is stepping down as Piedmont High School’s girls lacrosse coach. The 57-year old had been head coach for eight years with a record of 76-52-1 and led the Highlanders to the North Coast Section Division 2 championship in 2019.
“The kids are fun to be around,” Chan said. “Even deciding to hang it up, I had a couple of moments of weakness (during the past season), ‘Maybe I can stick around.’ Then I would think about it.”
Chan said he will assist new coach Kate Able with the team for at least a year, and will continue to be involved with the NorCal Rize youth program. He will also probably continue his long-term association with the Skyline Lacrosse Club in Piedmont.
“Every year I would help with fall ball,” Chan said. “I probably will still do that because it’s a lot of fun.”
When asked if that kind of commitment was really retirement, Chan said, “I think I’ll have my wife who will certainly temper that. You work all day and you work all night. You do take a lot of time away from your family.”
Chan said his wife Regina just retired as a second grade teacher. Their kids Joseph and Maria Del Rosario Chan are grown. Maria was a standout player on that NCS championship team.
Carlton Chan said travel will probably occupy his springs going forward.
“I think I’m going to do something that my wife has wanted to do for the past eight years: travel during the spring,” he said. “You can’t travel (while coaching). You’re kind of locked in.”
Chan said he’d let his wife take the lead on travel plans but “the only thing I want to do is to go to each of the tennis grand slams. That will be a bucket list check-off.”
Chan graduated from Piedmont High in 1987. He played tennis and basketball. The school didn’t add lacrosse until a few years later. He is an engineer and will continue working at that.
He got into coaching when then-second grade son Joseph was playing lacrosse. Chan felt the coaching needed to be better — his son hadn’t gotten playing time and Chan felt everybody should get playing time. It’s a philosophy he carried through his career at Piedmont High.
“I got so mad,” he said. “At that point, I said I’m going to do it. I started at Skyline and coached him on the under 11s. Every kid got to play. It was rec lacrosse. It ended up being really successful.”
Chan later joined Piedmont High as an assistant in 2007. He became the head coach 12 years later. He said he didn’t really know lacrosse when he jumped into coaching, but he used his background as an engineer.
“Being an engineer, I had certain methods of doing things and being very organized,” Chan said. “Running drills, you need to be organized. You also have to run an assembly line. You have to keep every kid engaged.”
“(I) studied, studied, studied, did it myself. Experimented. Tried to see what worked. You should see my chalkboard. Play it out to a logical end. I take a picture of it and then it goes in my lacrosse file.”
He said he also studied Warriors coach Steve Kerr. “I think a lot of my strategies came from him,” Chan said. “Steve Kerr was a protege of coach (Greg) Popovich. His philosophy was ball movement and a lot of action off of picks. We basically took the Warriors offense and turned it into ours. We didn’t want to be an iso team and turned everyone into threats.”
Two things bothered Chan when he saw other coaches do them. “(You need to) talk to [the players] not like they’re little kids, but talk to them like athletes,” Chan said. “The other thing I saw a lot was people coach girls in a way they don’t coach boys. They coach girls with kid gloves and a lot softer. I didn’t like that.”
The Highlanders finished 6-11 this past spring. Chan was named 2026 U.S. Lacrosse Northern California coach of the year.
