ST. HELENA >> An admitted “track lifer,” Clear Lake High School veteran coach Dick Bode added another award to his long and distinguished career on Saturday as he was honored as the North Coast Section Track & Field Honor Coach for 2017. Bode was honored during the Coastal Mountain Conference Championships at St. Helena High School.
Bode, 68, is in his second tour of duty with Clear Lake as a track and field coach, a position he originally held from 1997-2007 (both as an assistant and later head coach) and again from 2011 to the present. He was an institution long before he arrived in Lake County, having served 21 seasons (1973-93) as the head coach of the Pierce High School track and field team in Arbuckle. He later served as head coach at Analy High School in Sebastopol (1994-95) before moving to Lake County. Between his coaching stints at Clear Lake, he was an assistant track coach at Kelseyville (2010).
“It caught me by surprise. Milo brought me some paperwork to fill out (back in March). It was for the award,” Bode said of the day when Clear Lake athletic director Milo Meyer first told him that he’d won.
It’s the second time Bode has received an Honor Coach award. In 1992 he was the Northern Section’s Honor Coach at Pierce.
“Stick around another 25 years and I might win it in another section,” Bode joked.
Bode said he doesn’t know if he has another season left in him as Clear Lake’s track coach, at least as a head coach.
“I would like to go back to being an assistant but I’ll probably be back, I just don’t know in what capacity,” Bode said. “Steve and I are both track lifers.”
Steve Shaw, Clear Lake’s longtime coach before Bode entered the scene the late 1990s, now assists Bode.
“We can’t seem to walk away from it,” Bode said.
The section’s Honor Coach selection committee takes several factors into account before bestowing the honor, including professional standards of conduct, service to the sport, coaching accomplishments and contributions to the school and community. Bode, a mathematics instructor during his teaching days at Clear Lake, is now retired from teaching. He also led the cross country program for several seasons in the early 2000s.
