Stubrud won’t return as Archbishop Murphy football coach
Published 9:59 am Tuesday, February 19, 2008
The Archbishop Murphy High School football team will have a new head coach next season.
Rick Stubrud, who this past season became Archbishop Murphy’s interim head coach after longtime coach Terry Ennis died of cancer, said he will not return for the 2008 season. Stubrud, Ennis’ brother-in-law, was hired in December to become the school’s athletic director, a role previously filled by Ennis.
The head football coach job opening is posted on Murphy’s Web site. The school plans to end its search by March 7 and hire someone no later than mid-March, said Stubrud.
“Now is the time to go,” Stubrud, 57, said of his decision to stop coaching.
One reason is to avoid causing more turmoil in the program.
Stubrud, former head coach at Sunnyside and Hazen, retired from the Renton School District two years ago following 34 years in education. He said he couldn’t commit to coaching football at least five years at Murphy, so out of respect for the student-athletes he wants to find a new long-term head coach.
“I feel really good about my role with the kids and finishing up for Terry last season,” said Stubrud, who added that as athletic director he looks forward to strengthening all of Murphy’s athletic programs.
Stubrud became Murphy’s interim football coach in September, a day before the Wildcats’ third game of the season and a day after Ennis passed away. Stepping into an emotion-packed situation, Stubrud guided Murphy to eight consecutive victories.
By early November the team was 10-0 and gearing up for a Class 2A state playoff game when a stunning development ended its season.
Murphy was forced to forfeit eight games, including its district playoff triumph, after it discovered and self-reported that it had used an ineligible player in every game after Ennis’ death.
The intense journey of taking over for Ennis and having the season end so abruptly was both inspiring and devastating for Stubrud.
“By far it was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done because of the emotions and adjusting to a new school,” he said, “but also in the end the most rewarding. It was a wonderful, wonderful experience.”
Ideally, Murphy’s next head coach will have head coaching experience and local ties, Stubrud said.
“We’ll go out and hopefully find some really strong candidates. In a way (finding someone in the area) would be helpful because anybody that’s in Snohomish County would have a good understanding of the football program and where it’s been,” he said.
Under Ennis, who founded the Murphy program in 2000, the Wildcats were 75-12 and won 1A state championships in 2002 and 2003.
A detailed job description can be found here: http://www.archbishopmurphyhs.org/employment1.htm.
Father and son savor state wrestling title
Mark Perry said Snohomish had 10 runner-up individual finishes at the state wrestling championships during the 17 seasons he was the Panthers’ head coach, a tenure that ended in 2002. This past weekend Perry attended Mat Classic XX at the Tacoma Dome, where he finally saw the runner-up streak end.
Perry’s son, Snohomish senior Brad Perry, won the 140-pound title Saturday by beating previously undefeated Cody Hoiness of Moses Lake. Mark Perry was mat-side with sixth-year Snohomish head coach Kevin Judkins and assistant Rob Zabel.
Brad Perry, who requested that his dad be allowed to sit by the mat, is Snohomish’s first individual state wrestling champ since 1970. After winning, he hugged his younger brother, Snohomish sophomore Luke Perry, who qualified for Mat Classic in the 130-pound division.
Brad had an encouraging message for Luke, who lost two of his three matches in the tourney. Said Brad, referring to next season, “I told him it’s his turn.”
Top 4A boys and girls hoops seeds set to clash
Basketball tournaments often don’t turn out how some fans might expect, based on the teams’ seeds and records. Think of all the upsets that have happened during NCAA March Madness. But this season the 4A District 1 boys and girls hoops tourneys held perfectly to form. All four No. 1 division seeds — Lake Stevens and Jackson for the girls, and Snohomish and Edmonds-Woodway for the boys — advanced to Saturday’s championship games.
The girls title game features two highly ranked, one-loss teams. Can Jackson (21-1) find a way to counter the post power of Lake Stevens (21-1) and increase its win streak to 21? Tip time is 8 p.m. Saturday at Jackson High’s gym in Mill Creek.
The boys title contest, set for 6 p.m. Saturday at Jackson, is Snohomish (19-3) versus Edmonds-Woodway (19-3), which has won nine consecutive games. The teams played twice last season. E-W beat Snohomish 57-53 in the district tourney and Snohomish won 47-40 in a loser-out game at the state tourney.
Whatever it takes
Even after building a huge lead, the Lake Stevens girls basketball team didn’t let up in its quest to return to the state tourney. With about 5 minutes to go in the third quarter Feb. 12 against Mountlake Terrace, Mary Ochiltree of Lake Stevens dove head-first for a loose ball, even though her team led by 22 points.
“We never quit. We always go hard,” said Ochiltree. The Vikings’ defense “needed to be more alive. So we came out and tried to get things going on defense to help out the offense.”
It worked. Lake Stevens held Terrace without a second-half field goal until 3:37 remained in the fourth quarter. The Vikings won 69-36 and beat Marysville-Pilchuck 58-38 Friday to earn a state-tourney berth.
Clamping down
In its first-round district-tourney victory over Kamiak Feb. 13, the Snohomish boys basketball team allowed just 24 points. The Panthers’ defense dominated for long stretches of the game. They held Kamiak scoreless for the first five minutes of the game and later held the Knights without a point for a seven-minute stretch in the second half. Snohomish outscored Kamiak 26-0 during the two spurts and eventually won 48-24.
Herald Writers Scott Whitmore and Alex Bosworth contributed to this report
