INSIDE

Coach honored by his peers

By Jack Kintner

“This is the best team I’ve had,” said a beaming head coach Craig Foster after taking 10 wrestlers to the state tournament in Tacoma last weekend. The team finished in the middle of the pack, 27th out of 43 teams, but a dramatic turn around in team spirit and personal dedication was obvious to Foster’s fellow coaches and was primarily responsible for his being named AA Coach of the Year for Washington.

“I didn’t think it would mean as much as it did, but it really did,” Foster said after getting home from the weekend meet, “but it feels good to be acknowledged by your peers for this.”

Three years ago Blaine had exactly six boys turn out for the varsity wrestling team, which is when Foster and his staff of assistants began to introduce a more disciplined approach. Jim Rasar instituted a weight training program, and worked along with Blaine Middle School coach and varsity assistant Scott Dodd and recent Blaine grad and assistant coach Richie Tewes to focus on motivating the athletes.

“It takes some kids to buy into it and believe that we could get better,” Foster said, “and it became really important to them. It’s been exciting to see them develop, to become a better team by bringing good personal discipline, not missing practices, wrestling and staying in shape in the off season. It’s nice that way because we don’t have to worry about who didn’t show up. We just don’t have those issues any more.”

Foster, 48, knows something about discipline himself, growing up as the caboose child (by 10 years, he admits) of parents who were both WW II veterans. His father Art was a career officer and served in an artillery regiment during the Italian campaign, and his mother Fay was an Army nurse serving in a mobile army surgical hospital (MASH) unit. Both are retired.

“I lived all over the place, in Europe and Texas,” said Foster, but by the time high school came the family was living in southern California. At Mira Monte high school he was standing in line for basketball equipment when Roger Durant, the wrestling coach, pulled him aside and said “You’re going to be a wrestler, son.”

Foster grew to love the sport, and was a 177-pound collegiate All-American in 1976 out of Cypress College outside Los Angeles and again in 1980 as a student at Eastern Washington University.

Following college Foster coached for two years in Shawnee, Oklahoma, under Mike Henry, a man he considers his mentor. He returned to Eastern as an assistant coach and two years later was named head wrestling coach, his tenure covering the period that the university “was making the push to grow into a division 1 program,” he said.

His wanderlust still not dimmed, a two-year stint at a community college in New York state followed, “but our families are out here,” he said, so 14 years ago they came to his job in Blaine.

Two years ago Foster, his wife Jeri and their children Chloe, Tanner and Tyson moved out to a five acre patch on Kickerville Road “and I guess this means we’re here to stay,” Foster smiled, “I like working the land.”

Foster’s never very far away from a wrestling mat even when the varsity season is over. His Blaine Barracudas program for boys from first grade to senior year goes from October through May, and he sponsors a “wrestling boot camp” in the summer.

The honor of being coach of the year, typically, is one he prefers to share with his dedicated team members, their families and friends. “The coach’s award only happens because the kids do what they’re supposed to do,” Foster said, “so this award is for them, really.”