Terry Stark is Foothill High’s new football coach. Why ‘it all worked out perfectly’
The first thing you might notice about Terry Stark in his new football setting is the color of his coaching shirt.
Blatant, bright orange. Glow-in-the dark sort of orange. This look goes in stark contrast to the old coach’s Dodger blue loyalty and love. Orange is the color of the Giants, the other guys.
But coaches learn to adapt in quick order and Stark is embracing the colors and vision of his stunning new coaching landing spot.
Weeks after painfully stepping aside from Inderkum High School awash with mixed emotions, Stark on Thursday was formally named the new man in charge of the football fortunes at Foothill, an off-and-on power since opening in 1965.
It’s a boom hire that Foothill principal Heather King described this way: “It’s like drafting LeBron James. That’s what it feels like. We’re just so excited. I know Terry’s struggling to wear the orange as a Dodgers fan, but we’ll work with that.”
Said Stark with a laugh, “I already told my my new bosses that I’ll be wearing black with maybe a little orange this fall.”
That’s all window dressing. How it got to this point is a story in itself.
Making sure ‘this was the right thing for me to do’
A 230-game winner with a reputation as one of the region’s great teachers and coaches, Stark has stops at Mira Loma, Natomas and most recently at Inderkum, where he posted a 159-29 record. The Inderkum run included seven consecutive league championships and a 37-game regular-season winning streak.
He left Inderkum after months of consideration, feeling the need to tend to his 29-year-old son, who took a hard fall and has required a number of surgeries. More surgeries are in order.
Stark expected to be done with football, perhaps for just a season, but then two significant things happened. The Natomas Unified School District under superintendent Chris Evans offered Stark a hard-to-reject retirement package at about the same time it filled Stark’s resignation with a boom hire of its own in Casey Taylor, the one-time Del Oro and Capital Christian championship coach.
Stark was content with the retirement package and was flattered by the interest out of Foothill. The school offered Stark a chance to continue coaching and to head the Twin Rivers District athletic department with a reduced teaching load from his Inderkum tenure.
The added bonus: Stark at Foothill will be closer to his son.
“It’s a blessing,” Stark said of the whirlwind. “To have Chris Evans and the total support of that district for me on one side, and then to be courted by Foothill in this direction was amazing. Foothill came after me a few times. I had to make sure this was the right thing for me to do, and it is. The financial situation, the work hours, the closeness to my son, getting a chance to run another football program and work with kids, it all worked out perfectly.”
Stark added, “At Foothill, I’m right around the corner from my son, a mile, and also really close to the doctor’s clinic for my son. My mom is less than a mile from Foothill. I’m back in a community I remember well. I grew up right across the freeway from here. I’m a North Sac guy. Played football for a North Highlands team in eighth grade. Rode my bike all over the place.”
Familiarity at Foothill
King was a vice principal at Inderkum for five years, where she saw Stark do his football thing up close. She is in her fourth year at Foothill.
King and Mike Baker, the vice president of the Board of Trustees for Twin Rivers, worked fast to secure Stark. Initially, King and Baker asked Stark to help them find a football coach. Stark visited Foothill and was moved by the sparkling football stadium, the other facilities upgrades and the passion of King and Baker. It led him to say, “What if I coach here?”
Stark provides instant name recognition and stability to a program in need of all of it. He will be the fifth coach in four years at Foothill, a program that endured four one-win seasons since 2012, but won a combined 16 games in the past two playoff seasons. Still, coaches were coming and going of late, including four in just over two seasons.
By contrast, Frank Negri coached Foothill football from 1965 through 2006, winning 238 games. Foothill’s stadium bears the name of Negri, now an assistant coach in his mid 80s at Woodcreek and still one of the area’s great personalities.
“Terry is at a whole different level as a coach and leader, a different sort of beast,” King said. “The thing I admire most about Terry is that he’s not a look-at-me guy. He doesn’t have that sort of ego. He does things the right way. He doesn’t cheat and he doesn’t cheat kids. He’s got a lot of character and integrity. He’s a genuinely good man. There’s a lot of tradition already here and we are bringing it back.”
Baker is a 1997 graduate of Foothill. He was an assistant basketball coach at the school for 13 years under Drew Hibbs, now coaching at Woodcreek. Baker and King said Foothill is on the upswing again. Enrollment is up, as are test scores. The band has been revitalized. Same with the cheerleading program. The school is also building a new athletic training center and new weight room.
“I love coach Stark and what he’s about,” Baker said. “He’s exactly what Foothill needs. He can relate to the community and the kids. He can bring back a new sense of pride to Foothill.”
Stark said he will be joined by longtime Inderkum assistant Tod Hamasaki.
“That’s huge,” Stark said. “That was such an important part of all of this. He does so much. It wasn’t just my program at Inderkum. It was our program. He’s a grinder, just like me.”