Sad news to pass along out of West End: Vanderbilt has announced the passing of football assistant Osia Lewis after a lengthy battle with cancer.

Lewis originally joined Derek Mason’s staff in 2016 as a senior defensive assistant and outside linebackers coach. He stepped away from full-time coaching in 2017 but remained on Mason’s staff as a senior defensive analyst.

Per his Vanderbilt bio, Lewis graduated from Oregon State, where he earned All-Pac 10 recognition as a player, in 1986 and received a master’s in education in 1989, the year he got into coaching as an assistant at Western Oregon. He would coach football for multiple decades with stops at Oregon State, Illinois, New Mexico, UTEP, Hartford and San Diego State before coming to Vanderbilt.

He was 57.