Longtime Folsom Lake College golf coach goes out a winner
Barry Zarecky was the first coach hired at sparkling new Folsom Lake College in 2006. It was a move rooted in dogged determination and a desire to start a program from scratch and to teach the game of golf.
Zarecky that year caught wind that the new, picturesque campus was looking for a coach, so he reached out to Stu Van Horn, a dean of instruction at the school. Then Zarecky reached out again, and again and again.
“I started flooding him with calls and ideas,” Zarecky recalled. “The college is beautiful, in a great community, and it was new. I thought it would be a lot of fun. Then I got the job.”
And then Zarecky went to work. His aim was to get the program on the statewide community college map, generally dominated by the powerhouse programs of Southern California in all sports. He wanted to leave an impact and then bow out. He has bowed out after more than 40 years of coaching golf and basketball in two states, punctuated by his last chapter, his back nine.
Over Zarecky’s 11 full seasons as men’s golf coach (two wiped out due to COVID-19), Folsom Lake qualified for the CCCAA State Championship six times, placing fourth in 2019 amid the stiff competition of the powerhouse programs in Southern California. Last month, Folsom Lake placed fifth in the state tournament at Soboba Country Club in San Jacinto, shooting 736 for the 36-hole tournament.
“A great day,” Zarecky said. “I looked it up. Our 776 would have won 35 previous state championships. That’s amazing. It validated really how good we were. Really proud of the team.”
Zarecky’s Folsom Lake teams went a remarkable 743-114 in regular-season matches and tournaments. Then the coach was awarded a bonus to cap it all off: Giacomo Sorrentino in the state tournament won the individual low medalist state championship with rounds of 69 and 70 for 139 overall. He became the first athlete in school history to win a state championship for any sport.
Sorrentino was a gift. He came via a phone call from American River College coach Mike Thomas, who reached out to Zarecky to inform him that he had two promising golfers who needed a new home. Due to low participation numbers, ARC did not field a team this spring. Those golfers were Sorrentino and Patrick Dumag, both of Davis.
“They filled in the top six positions,” Zarecky said. “Sorrentino started out the year shakey. He told me he was a little worried if he’d make the team. Then he just came on. It lit it up at the right time. You love to see a kid reach his potential. He put in the time and the hours. It didn’t happen, winning state, because of luck. He had that killer instinct. I tried to instill that.”
Folsom Lake’s team also consisted of Drew Greco, Arturo Zavala, Noah Woehler and Hayden Herrick, listed in order of how they finished in the final match. Zarecky was a tireless fundraiser, the aim to dress his golfers so “we dress them right,” he said, adding, “If you look good, there’s a really good chance you feel good and you play good. We always went first class.”
On Saturday, Zarecky was the man of the hour for a retirement bash. Old coaching pals, golfing buddies and players past and current attended. At 74, Zarecky has aged well, though he will argue that his knees and back do not always agree with father time.
“It gets harder and harder to golf as you get older, and it’s a different hurt every day,” Zarecky said with a laugh. “One day it’s the lower back. Now I’m the old guy in the group, and that fires me up, too.”
Time hasn’t dimmed the man’s zest to compete, to talk about what sports can do for young people. Zarecky said golf is a lifetime sport. He said it is ideal for anyone of any age. The key is wanting to get better. His last team personified that.
“This is a great group to go out with,” Zarecky said. “I’m going to miss it. It’s a part of me. I’ll never be able to replace coaching. It’s always been about the kids.”
So what does a retiring golf coach do? More golf, of course. Zarecky and his bride of 34 years, Barbara, treated themselves this week to a coaching retirement getaway to Carmel, where right knee replacement surgery wasn’t about to scare the old coach away from another challenging course.
The killer instinct Zarecky referred to is embedded in him. In his final high school basketball outing at Highlands in 1967, Zarecky went off for 47 points. This was decades before a 3-point line was in place. His still-standing school-record effort was against Rio Linda, a rival, and the same team thought he had beaten weeks earlier when his game-winning shot against Rio Linda in a 16-15 stall game was waved off because someone was whistled for 3 seconds in the key.
Zarecky was a four-year basketball starter at Chico State. He wound up at Elk Grove High after a successful basketball and golf coaching stint in Arizona. Zarecky wasn’t much of a fan golfing in Phoenix when it was 116 degrees but was glad he ventured out of state to explore options.
At Elk Grove, Zarecky’s golf teams won a ton, and his boys’ basketball teams were annually among the section’s top defensive outfits. The image of Zarecky fired up was common. He chewed on referees. He chewed on players. He chewed gum. It was also hard to argue the results.
Zarecky can chuckle at the irony of a firebrand basketball coach doubling as a poised and cool-cat golf coach.
“I brought a little bit of my intensity to golf,” Zarecky said. “The sports are 1,000-percent different, but it’s still about teaching the game.”