LAKEPORT >> First-year Clear Lake High School varsity football head coach Mark Cory is only concerned about what happens from this point forward.
“I don’t know what happened here and I don’t care,” Cory said of the downhill ride of the Cardinals’ football program the last two seasons. “We’re trying to get to a new spot now.”
Clear Lake last posted a winning overall record in 2009 (6-5). The Cardinals were certainly respectable between 2010-13, going only 17-23 overall but also 13-12 in league play, before bottoming out the last two seasons. Clear Lake opened 2014 with three straight non-league victories before going winless in seven league games. Last season was worse as the team fell to 2-8 overall and 1-6 in league (tied for last), including embarrassing forfeit losses to St. Helena and Middletown because Clear Lake didn’t have enough players to suit up.
The 53-year-old Cory said there will be no forfeits this year. As a longtime assistant — 27 years under three head coaches — at a rock-solid Eureka High School program that won league titles in bunches as well as a handful of section crowns, Cory is well versed in the tradition of winning football. While the Cardinals might need some time to reach that level, he promises they will if they’re willing to do what it takes — work hard in practice and in the offseason, including visiting the weight room on a regular basis.
It also requires a roster that isn’t skeletal in composition. No worries there, according to Cory, at least not through the first two weeks of practice.
“We had 23 players at practice today,” said the 53-year-old Cory, who grew up in the Garberville/Redway area and attended South Fork High, the same school the Cardinals open their season against Sept. 2 in Lakeport. He worked 27 years in the Humboldt County Probation Department and is now retired. While he has been around the sport and coaching the sport most of his life, Clear Lake is his first head coaching position and he is excited about the opportunity.
“My goal is to have 25 kids on each team (junior varsity and varsity),” Cory said. “If 12 kids from each class (freshman, sophomore, junior and senior) play, you’re just about there. We have 20 kids playing JV ball, so we’re not that far off.”
Cory accepted the position at Clear Lake last spring and moved to Lakeport in May. He learned about the job opening from former Clear Lake High School principal Marty Wilkes, the one-time football coach at Hoopa High School, a member of the Humboldt-Del Norte Little Four (Eureka plays in the HDNL Big Five).
Cory applied for another coaching vacancy in Lake County in 2013 but Kelseyville High School hired another former HDNL coach, Mike McGuire, who coached the Knights in 2013 and 2014 before stepping down.
Prior knowledge of the declining football fortunes at Clear Lake didn’t deter Cory from pursing the job. In fact, he said he’s been quite pleased with the way he has been received by the school, the players and the community. One positive sign was the 30-35 kids lifting weights in the offseason. The Cardinals also participated in the summer passing league, jumping in at the last moment and making the most of the opportunity.
“I didn’t even know there was a passing league until the kids asked me about it and we just kind of threw it together,” Cory said.
Enough players – about a dozen – expressed an interest in participating and the Cardinals attended all four weeks of the league even though their top quarterback, Alex Adams, couldn’t always be there.
Asked to describe himself as a coach, Cory said he isn’t a screamer.
“It’s about communication with kids. I’ve been positive, I don’t yell. It’s not my personality,” Cory said.
Rather than yell, Cory said if a player is giving less than he should in practice, he’s more apt to tell the player to go home and come back the next day when he is willing to give 100 percent.
“Of course there would be consequences,” Cory said. “If you don’t want to work hard, someone else is probably going to take your spot and more of your playing time.”
The bottom line, according to Cory, is you can’t function at half speed and you can’t succeed with half effort.
You also can’t play scared.
“I know they’ve lost a lot of games the last couple of seasons, but you can’t play like that (being afraid to lose),” Cory said. “You can’t be successful playing like that.”
Even in the passing league, Cory said he noticed that when things weren’t going well, his players backed off.
“These guys have to get back to having fun playing football,” Cory said. “When you are going up against another good team, you should be excited about it. You have the opportunity to do something special.”
Cory runs a lively, up-tempo practice where there is little standing around and no dogging it. And you better listen up.
“The kids are getting there,” Cory said. “They want to be better.”
And they are getting better through the first two weeks of practice.
“Huge progress,” Cory said. “We’re getting better in a hurry.”
Goals
Cory is still learning about the teams that make up the North Central League I, so he’s not predicting a given number of wins for his Cardinals.
“My goal is to get competitive this year,” Cory said. “But I’d like to play a playoff game (in Division V).
“I look at teams on our schedule and there are teams we can beat. We’re playing against some solid teams and I’d like to get to that level,” he added.
Before they can get to the level of the Middletowns, Fort Braggs and St. Helenas of the NCL I, they’ll need to do a few things.
“Our ability to focus … we need to get better at that,” Cory said.
You need talent of course and there is plenty of that in the Clear Lake pipeline, according to Cory.
“We have a great group of young kids down there, and some big kids,” Cory said. “A lot of them just don’t have a lot of football experience yet.”
Winning teams also need a good attitude and a short memory.
Cory is on his way to changing the first and is working with his players on the second.
“When I got here I heard that some players were not going to come out for football,” Cory said. “Some of them have.”
In terms of short memory, Cory said that overcoming adversity is something the Cardinals haven’t been very good at the last couple of seasons.
“That happens when you lose a lot of games,” Cory said. “You’re waiting for something to go wrong and when it does, you fall apart.
“Like anything in life there is going to be adversity. You’re going to face adversity in every game whether you’re a good team or a bad team. It’s how you deal with it. It’s not fun. You’ve just got to get to the next play. Football season is a struggle.”
Patience is something else the Cardinals need to learn because while Cory wouldn’t mind it if this year’s team went 8-2 after last year’s 2-8, the odds of that happening aren’t very good.
“We all would like to be good in a hurry but it doesn’t happen like that,” Cory said. “It is the process of the season, of getting better.”
Offense/defense
Cory is a Wing-T offense guy and he’ll call the offense for the Cardinals in 2016. Bob Gunion, formerly a coach at Mount Diablo High School in Concord and California High School in San Ramon, will call the defense.
“We’ll start out in a 4-4 defense, very basic in the beginning until we get very good at what we’re doing, then we’ll change some things up,” Cory said.
Cory will rely on a handful of players, at least early on, to set the tone for the team. Among those players are junior quarterback Adams, senior fullback/linebacker Cody Dillsaver, junior lineman Juan Carlos Flores and senior lineman Gerardo Martinez.
“These guys are our leaders as far as work ethic goes,” Cory said.
Brandon Orozco, the team’s backup quarterback and also a wide receiver, is another player who could make a difference this season, according to Cory.
“We have some kids who can run and catch,” Cory said. “I would like to be in a position where we could run over another team, but I think we’re going to have to be pretty balanced as far as passing and running the football.”
How balanced will largely be dictated by line play.
“The line is looking good, but it’s a work in progress,” Cory said.
Despite the storm clouds that have formed over Clear Lake’s program the last couple of seasons, Cory is optimistic about the Cardinals’ future.
“I see great potential in Clear Lake,” he said.
