‘It was just time’: Mountlake Terrace basketball coach Sood steps down

After over four decades of involvement with Mountlake Terrace High School boys basketball, longtime program leader Nalin Sood has called it a career.

Sood announced last week that he’s stepping down as head coach after 24 seasons leading his alma mater.

Terrace hoops has always been in Sood’s blood, and the Hawks have been a model of consistency since the highly decorated head coach took over the helm ahead of the 2000-01 season.

Sood, 55, grappled with his decision to give up his seat at the front of the bench over the past few seasons, ultimately making the call this offseason after the Hawks’ run to a fourth-place finish at the Class 3A state tournament earlier this month.

“I had a lot of conversations about this over the past several months with two people: my wife and myself,” Sood said. “As I was thinking about what to do next and how long I’d keep coaching, I kept reading about other coaches who were willing to step away from successful careers with things going well. … When I was reading about some of these guys, certain things resonated with me and I was meeting certain check boxes.”

Sood, who teaches business technology at Mountlake Terrace, said he plans on continuing that role while also remaining a member of the Washington Interscholastic Basketball Coaches Association and the Washington State Coaches Association.

“A big piece of the pie has gone into coaching by choice,” Sood said of his time commitments over the years. “With that being removed so to speak, I can go be better in a lot of other things. … I can go be better with my family, I can go be better as a teacher, and I can go be better in representing various associations.”

Sood’s coaching presence will surely be missed at Terrace, as it typically came with his teams competing for a state trophy during the last days of each campaign.

Sood guided the Hawks to state tournament berths 15 times over his 24 seasons as head coach, compiling a 381-192 record after spending 13 years as an assistant to mentor Roger Ottmar, who Sood played under at Terrace before graduating in 1987. In 2018, Sood was inducted into the WIBCA Hall of Fame.

Sood-led teams developed a reputation for stingy defenses, fundamentals and rock-solid gameplans over the years, but crafting a full student-athlete experience for his players was something Sood said he always hung his hat on.

“We have an alumni game every year, and there’s guys who are in their 50s now who are coming to it who I coached,” Sood said. “And seeing who they are now as parents, husbands, employees and leaders in the community … that’s the true measure of what co-curricular activities can do for young people.”

Thirty-five of Sood’s former players went on to play either collegiate or professional basketball, including seven at the NCAA Division-I level, and as many of his former players can attest, earning trust and minutes on the floor wasn’t always the easiest of tasks.

Soon-to-be graduated senior Jaxon Dubiel — who became the program’s all-time and single-season scoring leader this past season — knows the deal. Dubiel spent his freshman year on the C-team before slowly becoming one of the squads go-to defenders, and eventually one of the lead focal points.

“You have to earn his respect,” Dubiel said. “Once you do that, he’s a pretty cool dude. But he’s going to be hard on you from the start. My sophomore year, I really had to battle for minutes. That was just a part of it.”

Dubiel helped push Terrace to state tournament appearances in each of the past three seasons, concluding with the Hawks’ fourth-place finish this winter, which was the school’s highest placement since taking third in 2005.

When it comes to competitive fire, Dubiel said Sood wasn’t one to hold back on that front.

“He wants to win just as much as us,” Dubiel said, “and that’s good. It’s the same with some of our assistant coaches, it’s just our culture. When you see the guy who’s leading you wanting to win just as badly as we do, that’s a good way to go about it. I wouldn’t want any other coach at the end of the day.”

For opposing Snohomish County schools, running into a matchup with Mountlake Terrace was always a tall task.

First-year head coach Anxhelos Pere, who spent six seasons as an assistant at Shorewood before landing the head coaching gig at Lynnwood, knows both sides of what it looks like when facing Sood. Pere also played for the Shorewood varsity team for four years, graduating in 2014.

“As a young player, you’re not really thinking about the coach as much,” Pere said. “You’re just thinking: ‘Okay. … He has the players.’”

Once Pere starting diving into coaching, he quickly realized that there was a clear brand of basketball that Mountlake Terrace exhibited.

“It really didn’t matter which kid was in,” Pere said. “You could just see that they knew what they were doing. They were always disciplined and they just played tough basketball. I think that speaks to what Nalin has built, they played hard no matter what the skill level.”

As Sood reflects over his time within the program, he said he’ll be reminiscing about the memorable moments instead of focusing on turning the page on the final chapter of his coaching tenure.

“I just concluded 37 years of getting to live my childhood dream, how many other people can ever say that?” Sood said. “… I could’ve kept doing this forever, it was just time.

“I’m just so fortunate that I get to leave on a good note and feeling the way I do. A lot of people leave things on crumby notes and not-so-great notes, I get to leave on a great note with great memories and great experiences as a coach at Mountlake Terrace High School.”