FORKS — It’s time to put down roots and stay awhile for new Forks football coach Craig Shetterly.
Shetterly and his young family have had their fill of packing up boxes and moving vans, and are happy to have found a new community to call home, hopefully for the long term.
“We were looking for a place that’s away from the rat race,
the hectic pace of big cities,”
Shetterly said.
“There’s a big appreciation for us to being in a community with one school and being accountable and available as members of that community.”
Currently a special education teacher and defensive line coach at University High School in the Spokane Valley, Shetterly, 32, also has held coaching positions in Mount Vernon, Bothell and Prosser.
He grew up in Tampa, Fla., before attending and playing high school football in Amarillo, Texas.
Shetterly also served nine years in the Air Force, moving to Washington after his time in the military.
In his one previous stint as a head coach at Cedar Park Christian from 2008 to 2010, his teams went 11-19 overall, but improved each year going from 1-8 to 4-6, and finally 6-5, including a state playoff loss to Lynden Christian.
Shetterly was proud of the work he did building a program at Cedar Park Christian.
“Our last year there we had about 65 kids on the roster,” Shetterly said.
“And for a 1A school with about 375 kids, that’s pretty good.”
Living and working in the expensive Seattle suburbs is what led him to leave his head coaching job.
“The cost of living was too high in Bothell,” Shetterly said.
“It was very difficult to make things work there financially.”
He moved next to Class 2A powerhouse Prosser, where he held the title of assistant head coach/offensive coordinator for three seasons.
The Mustangs finished a combined 31-8 in those three years, advancing to the state semifinals every season under head coach Benji Sonnichsen.
Shetterly spent last fall as the defensive line coach for Class 4A University. The Titans went 6-4 last year.
Shetterly, who teaches special education at University, will be taking a teaching position in Forks, but won’t serve as athletic director as previous football coach Mark Feasel did.
His reasoning for uprooting his family and starting all over across the state is simple.
“I wanted to be a head coach again to help influence a good group of young men,” Shetterly said.
“I have a real vested belief and interest in the lifelong game and how these kids will act as men when they move beyond the game.”
He wants potential Spartan football players to be multisport athletes, active in athletics year-round.
“I know we are a 1A school and I know there’s a limited student population so all the sports have to work together,” Shetterly said.
“I want to undertake the challenge to make sure the kids come out and play all sorts of sports and foster that in the community, and always work to get players to be involved in year-round conditioning.”
Forks will lose many of its most heralded players from last year’s injury-plagued team, but underclassmen turnout was solid last season and lots of younger players picked up varsity experience.
“I want to able to keep the same consistent offensive philosophy, which boils down to a pro-style offense, featuring multiple sets,” Shetterly said.
“It’s a real simple offense to learn, and we will adapt to heavy formations and we will try and spread it around.”
All of that however, will depend on his athletes.
“By and large, you find your athletes will change each year,” Shetterly said.
“Some years you’ll have big guys up front, or a good class of running backs for a couple of years, so you build your identity around them.
“Or you’ll have an accurate QB to fire some passes around. And you adjust your offense to fit them.”
Philosophically, Shetterly prefers to give his coaching staff autonomy, so he won’t dictate his team run a specific defensive formation.
“I like to let people be head coaches of their own position, and I really want the defensive coordinator to be comfortable,” Shetterly said.
“I do like an odd front, and doing things that create difficulties for linemen to figure out, like where the pressure will come from.”
He toured the school, walked on the humpbacked football field and saw the condition of Spartan Stadium when he and his wife visited during his interview.
Nothing about the challenges of the job spooked him.
“We will make the best of it,” Shetterly said of the rusty stadium.
“At Cedar Park we didn’t even have a football field. We had an old cow pasture that sloped down to a pond for practices and had to go play at other schools’ fields, from Juanita High School to Monroe, for games.”
Shetterly is hoping to get settled in Forks as quickly as possible.
“We are working towards getting over there in time for spring football,” Shetterly said.
“In time to get everything in place in order to have as normal an offseason as possible.”
He’s looking around at various summer camps for the Spartans, with an eye on the University of Oregon and other possible locations such as Eastern Washington or Central Washington.
“At Prosser, we went to the Boise State camp, and at the bigger school camps you really get an opportunity to bond as a team and evaluate the talent you have against upper-echelon athletes,” Shetterly said.
While coaching for such an established program at Prosser, Shetterly learned what it takes to build a consistent winner. Namely, attitude and preparation.
“I’ve learned that a lot of what you do to build a great program is about attitude and the way they prepare organizationally,” Shetterly said.
“They way they show up for practice, the time and commitment they spend in the weight room and the expectations they set.
“It’s not about hoping to win, or trying to win, but expecting to win.
Shetterly knows this will take ample work.
“What we do in February dictates what we do in September,” Shetterly said.
“If the feeling is we can show up in August, install our stuff and expect to be successful, you are dreaming.
“We are going to be efficient, we are going to be planned out and prepared, and we will do what works for us.”
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Sports reporter Michael Carman can be contacted at 360-452-2345, ext. 5250 or at mcarman@peninsualdailynews.com.
