Stepping back
- Updated: February 5, 2023
After 30 years at the helm, Jacksonville’s Clark won’t coach volleyball this season as he moves towards retirement; ‘feels like a good time to do it, if there ever was a good time’
By Al Muskewitz
East Alabama Sports Today
JACKSONVILLE – When David Clark first walked into Jacksonville High School as a new coach and teacher at a time when the world was a much different place he was excited for all the things he was going to do for the Golden Eagles and all the change that could take place during his tenure. It never occurred to him he would be one of them.
For 30 years, Clark has been the face of Jacksonville volleyball. He has coached other sports at the during his time at the school – almost all of them at some point, actually – but he’s most closely associated with the Golden Eagles netters.
Come next fall, though, there will be someone else calling the shots on the court as he retires from coaching and possibly teaching in the only place he’s ever hung a shingle.
“It is a hard call,” Clark said during an easy 30-minute conversation filled with the insight and perspective reporters have come to expect from his post-game interviews. “(Leaving) baseball wasn’t as hard – not that I didn’t love baseball, but I was assistant coach for several years and I didn’t get involved just because of my son but that was part of the driving force behind it.
“Volleyball was harder because it’s what you do, it’s kind of your thing. And here, fortunately, we had an opportunity to build something with all the great kids we’ve had here, and it’s hard to walk away from that at any point, But, you know, sometimes programs go through changes and I don’t think we’re a way away from where we’ve been, but I don’t know that my style will continue to fit the athlete possibly that’s coming through now.
“It’s been different and I’ve had to adjust, which is fine. I have over the years adjusted, but I’m not sure I’m in a position to make the adjustments that need to be made now. It seems right. It feels like a good time to do it, if there ever was a good time.”
He’ll be 55 this year and with his children — both of whom played for him — either out of finishing high school he wants to enjoy the family life. He stepped away from baseball to watch his son Colton play college ball and he’ll watch daughter Caitlin play volleyball at Snead State.
“That’s the biggest part of it; it’s kind of been my plan since she showed interest and started playing,” Clark said. “It matches up with my years of service, her graduating; that was kind of always the idea of what would happen.
“When Colton graduated and went on to play, I couldn’t picture myself being at a ball field with him at another ball field somewhere else when I could be watching him. And I can’t picture missing my daughter’s opportunities in another gym when I feel like I should be there watching her. Because it only lasts so long.”
He wasn’t prepared to talk about what the future holds, but he doesn’t plan to be idle.
“I think it’s a time for me to maybe do something different,” he said. “I’m not ready to be at home. If COVID taught me one thing, two weeks at the house when the projects you’ve put off forever are caught up and the money runs out to do projects and you’re staring at the wall, I couldn’t do it. I was coming unglued, so the thought of being retired and not having a goal or somewhere to go is not something I think I could function at. The idea of slamming on the breaks and now you’ve got zero is not very appealing.”
Clark has been at Jacksonville a long time. He’s the longest sitting coach in his sport in Calhoun County and only four members of the staff and faculty at his school have been there longer. He’s coached virtually every sport they play there – baseball, basketball, softball, soccer, even a brief turn at track and field. He’d never formally been a football coach, but he did film for Rusty Burroughs’ teams. He also is the school’s athletics director.
But when March rolls around he’ll put a wrap on it all at 31 years and change, hoping he has left it better than he found it.
If he ever got around to totaling up all of it, he’d find his teams have won more than 1,500 games, well over 2,000 if you credited his record with the developmental teams.
Of course, he made his biggest mark in volleyball, the sport he was hired on to coach (along with girls basketball and both soccer teams). The volleyball varsities won 1,228 matches, three state championships, four red maps, 23 area championships (19 in a row before this past season), 11 regionals and 12 county tournament titles. His teams lost fewer than 500 times.
He coached girls basketball concurrently for 16 years, going to the Final Four in 1997.
He will quickly tell you he didn’t win any of those games. It was all the players.
“This job is really about kids; that’s what it’s about,” he said. “They need all the praise and glory because it doesn’t happen without them.
“I came into this job 30 years ago thinking of all the things I was going to do for Jacksonville, how many games I can win, how many championships, we’re going to turn this around, we’re going to make these things better, we’re going to do this and that. There were a lot of I’s. I didn’t think about all the things Jacksonville did for me, the blessing Jacksonville has given me and that’s really what it turned out to be.
“None of this happens without people here allowing me to stay here and have an opportunity to continue to grow and build and learn. I didn’t know anything when I started. I didn’t know how many time outs you had. I’d never seen a high school game, the first one I saw the first one I coached in, so people sticking with me and letting this guy stick with it has been a blessing. The kids have been awesome.”
Of course, it will be up to others to decide the optics of not seeing David Clark on a Jacksonville sideline going forward, but if he has learned one thing during his career as a coach and educator it’s things move on.
It would be his desire to see longtime assistant Amber Russell succeed him with the volleyball program, ensuring a smooth transition for a team that has high expectations going forward, but nothing had been determined in that regard.
“Initially when we come into gyms I think it’ll be (strange), but it won’t take long,” he said. “Time moves forward. Nobody’s that important. It’s going to be what it’s going to be even after I’m not here anymore. Kids are very resilient. They move on and people do, too. It’s the world we live in; that’s going to continue to move.
“I think it’ll be more strange for me to watch and watch a Jacksonville team compete in varsity and not being right there with it. That’ll be more strange than anything else. I had a little bit of that in baseball when I went back to cover games (as AD), and actually I think it was harder I didn’t see David Deerman and myself because we had done it so long.”
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