MIDDLETOWN — It’s not out of the realm of possibility, but Bill Foltmer’s 300th career victory as a high school football coach may have to wait until next season.
Foltmer begins his 37th year as Middletown’s highly decorated head coach when the 2021 season officially opens on Aug. 9. He is 11 victories shy of the coveted 300 mark, with most of those wins (270) coming as the Mustangs’ coach beginning with his inaugural season of 1985. He also won 19 times as the head coach at Princeton High School in nearby Colusa County.
Foltmer retired from his teaching job at Middletown Middle School following the 2019-20 school year, just as the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning to cause major upheaval across the country, and not just in the sporting world. Locally the Mustangs, just like all of Lake County’s football teams, kept hoping that the 2020 season would begin in late December or perhaps early this year, but the Coastal Mountain Conference, which includes all of Lake County’s schools and most smaller schools in the North Coast, decided to finally pull the plug on all fall and winter sports (except cross country) back in late January.
While the unprecedented nature of losing an entire football season hurt all of the county’s teams, Foltmer’s quest for 300 wins was certainly dealt a setback. Even had there been a 2020 season, it’s unlikely Middletown could have won the 11 games Foltmer needed to reach 300 given that the Mustangs were rebuilding from three straight seasons of great success (10-2 in 2017, section runner-up; 11-3 in 2018, section champ; and 8-3 in 2019, section semifinalist), but they would left his victory total somewhere in the 290s.
Can they win 11 games this season? Probably not although Foltmer-coached teams have won 11 or more games on five different occasions during his career, most recently in 2018.
On the other hand, Foltmer doesn’t appear to be in a big rush to claim No. 300 because once that milestone win occurs, it could greatly accelerate his coaching retirement plans.
“It won’t be too long after 300, maybe a year,” Foltmer said. “I will talk to my assistant coaches and see what they’re thinking.”
The handful of returning underclassmen from Middletown’s 2019 squad never took the field again and graduated a little more than a week ago. The Mustangs have already had a week of spring football this year and they’ll participate in the annual summer passing league along with the county’s other schools beginning early next month. All of Middletown’s players in the upcoming season are new to the varsity ranks, a situation Foltmer has never experienced before.
Asked if he felt like he was starting over, Foltmer said, “Yes, its very different because normally I would have a year where my senior group would have a year under their belt and would lead the way. This year it was like starting from scratch even though they had a couple years playing JV ball, but a year off put us back a little bit
“No complaints … everybody else is in the same boat,” Foltmer said of his competition in the North Central League I.
And so that long-awaited 300th win is on its way, it just might not be this year, which begins Aug. 27 at home against St. Mary’s of Albany in one of three non-league games on the Mustangs’ 2021 schedule. Middletown fans can get their first real look at their team Aug. 20 during the annual Lake County Scrimmage in Lower Lake beginning at 5 p.m.
