Zac Claus was meant to coach, though the undertaking came much earlier than he expected.
A torn ACL kept Claus from playing basketball during his junior year at Lincoln Southeast, so then-Knights varsity coach JR Connell had Claus hone his skills in another way.
"He had me coach his boys in a YMCA league, and I gravitated toward it," the 1993 Southeast graduate said. "I had an inkling about it before then, but being around the game was something that I absolutely wanted to do."
Claus' coaching credentials only grew in February when he was officially named the head coach at Idaho. He had served as the Vandals' interim head coach the previous nine months before Idaho administrators removed the interim tag.
Now the Lincoln native is running his own Division I program.
"I joke with our current players, I have it too good because I get to put on shorts and go to practice most days," Claus said. "It doesn't feel like a job.
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"All the relationships because of what you do has made it incredibly rewarding, that's for sure."
Idaho, a member of the Big Sky Conference, is trying to rebound after a couple of unstable seasons. The previous coach, Don Verlin, was dismissed last June in the wake of some self-reported possible NCAA infractions. Several players left in the offseason before Claus' first team went 8-24 for 2019-20.
So, yes, Claus finds himself in the beginning stages of a rebuilding project.
But you wouldn't know that listening to the former Nebraska basketball walk-on talk about it. He speaks highly of his team, is embracing the challenge and noted some positive signs.
"We wanted to obviously have more wins than we did, but I give our guys a whole lot of credit," said Claus, who had one senior last season. "The returners that came back and our incoming guys that signed with us, this isn't what they signed up for in terms of the situation, the circumstances they were under.
"The guys were terrific all year long. They continued to battle and I know that there were many days of practice and games where it could have gone south in a big way, and guys were mentally tough enough, they had a collective spirit about them to keep working and staying positive."
After starting his collegiate playing career at Creighton and later Nebraska, Claus transferred to Eastern Washington to finish school. He returned to Nebraska for his first coaching job — well, second if you count the YMCA gig — working under Todd Raridon at Nebraska Wesleyan, at the time, one of the top teams in Division III.
"I loved every moment of that," Claus said.
After one season as an assistant coach at Austin College, Claus returned to the West Coast, working as a director of operations at Portland State and later as an assistant coach at Sacramento State before Mark Fox hired him as director of operations at Nevada.
The director of operations positions played a big part in Claus' development as a Division I basketball coach.
"It opens your eyes, because trust me, everybody in this profession wants to be hands on, they all want to coach, they all want to be on the floor, they all want to be calling plays and recruiting," he said. "But when you're in that operations position, that's where you really get the nuts and bolts of what it takes to run a program. I credit Coach Fox so much in his ability to have a grasp of everything within the program, because that's how he had come up through the profession."
Claus was at Nevada for 10 seasons, first working for Fox and later David Carter — who was an assistant at Eastern Washington when Claus played there — before landing at Idaho as an assistant coach in 2016.
Claus credits many coaches for his rise in the profession, though there is one he leans on the most, and that's Jeff Smith, who coached the Southeast boys for 20 years. Smith was an assistant at Nebraska and later Eastern Washington, taking Claus with him.
"(He) continues to be my lifelong mentor in coaching," Claus said.
So much so, that Claus had Smith come up to Moscow, Idaho, this past season to sit in on some staff meetings and watch a few practices.
Claus will be the first to tell you he's a "proud Lincolnite."
"It doesn't take me long with our players to share with them where I grew up and I'm incredibly proud of where I grew up," he says.
Claus' mother, LaDona, still lives in his childhood home in Lincoln, and his sister is a professor at UNL.
But Claus is happy with the roots being put in place in Idaho. He and his wife Toni, who played volleyball at Eastern Washington, have three daughters. Peyton is set to graduate from high school, Morgan is a freshman and Addison is in the fourth grade.
Claus said he is grateful to have found a nice balance between coaching at the Division I level while also being able to spend time with his family. Peyton will be playing volleyball at North Idaho Junior College next year, which will allow Claus to catch some of her matches.
While he works to build up the Vandals' program, Claus also has a front-row seat to another project in the works — a new $46 million basketball arena/facility, which is projected to be complete before the 2021-22 season.
"It's a tremendous community," Claus said. "It's one that they rally around, the university. It's a little bit, in terms of how I grew up in Lincoln, there's no pro sports team really that close.
"The schools here have been awesome for our family, we've loved that part of it."