Hanover
Back in the mid-1990s, Clark was the confident midfield heart of the Hanover High boys soccer program, the son of a well-regarded college coach and someone with collegiate — and, eventually, professional — soccer in his future. Grabill worked with that coach, Bobby Clark, as a Dartmouth College assistant when he wasn’t refereeing high school matches.
“Ask him about the time I gave (Jamie) a yellow card,” Grabill suggested on Tuesday. “We’ve always joked about that.”
On Monday night, Clark sounded like a long-lost Upper Valley refugee excited about an upcoming reunion. His life is centered now around Seattle, his family and his job as men’s soccer coach at the University of Washington, but Hanover has been in his thoughts a lot lately.
Clark’s Huskies are in town for a 5 p.m. date with Dartmouth at Burnham Field today. U-Dub will hit another familiar Clark haunt, Harvard, on Saturday night for another match, then fly back to the Pacific Northwest on Sunday.
It’s a whirlwind return home for Clark, the 1994 Hanover grad who won NHIAA Class I state championships in his final two Marauder years, earned all-New England and all-America recognition as a senior and won New Hampshire’s Gatorade Player of the Year award. All three of Bobby and Bette Clark’s three children have included soccer in their adult lives; it’s Jamie who has carried it furthest.
“Life is great,” Clark said in a phone interview. “Whether I knew it or not, this was an end-up place for my family. My wife is from Portland, Ore.; she’s a (University of Portland) graduate from the Pacific Northwest. For those who live here, it’s a pretty special place.
“It reminds me of the Upper Valley in many ways. People always want to get back there.”
Oldest brother Tommy left the Upper Valley, but came back; a high school all-American himself, the eldest Clark played for his father at Dartmouth, pursued a medical degree and founded a soccer-themed charity in Norwich-based Grassroot Soccer. Sister Jen isn’t far away, assisting with the Castleton University women’s soccer program when she isn’t busy raising her family in Middlebury, Vt.. They can reunite easily.
It’s a bigger challenge for youngest son Jamie. Like his siblings, the 39-year-old was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, during his father’s professional goalkeeping years. But he was very young when the family moved to Hanover in 1985 and engaged in all of the youthful athletic pursuits of a typical Upper Valley child.
Today, Jamie’s voice bears no trace of the Scottish brogue that never left his father. That combination of factors leaves Bobby to consider his youngest “the most American of our three children.”
“He played basketball, he played baseball, and he played them well; that would be the thing,” said Bobby Clark, now the men’s soccer coach at nationally ranked Notre Dame and in his fourth decade of college coaching. “Danny Ainge was his big hero; it was the time of the Boston Celtics being really good, with Chief (Robert Parish) and Larry Bird, that era. He would be caught up in that. He would follow all the Boston teams fervently. He really liked basketball, and he loved them all.”
Injuries limited the youngest Clark’s professional playing career, which included short stints with Major League Soccer’s San Jose Clash, Scotland’s Raith Rovers and a lower-tier club in Minnesota. They also opened opportunities for Clark to try coaching, first with assistant stints at New Mexico and with his dad in South Bend, then head coaching jobs at Harvard for two years and Creighton for one before the move to Washington in 2013.
“I think they’re both very passionate and very competitive, and sometimes that comes out in different manners,” said Dartmouth coach Chad Riley, who played for the elder Clark at Notre Dame and assisted the Irish with Jamie Clark for two years. “They’re both driven to get their teams to play as a team. That’s the hallmark for both of them, to get their teams to play as one unit.”
Clark feels the same attachment to the Pacific Northwest that he once did for the Upper Valley. On top of that, Seattle represents the vibrant core of American soccer culture, much of it centered on the city’s MLS franchise, Seattle Sounders FC. The city’s success at grooming young prospects for college and pro players gives Clark fertile recruiting ground; the coach, in turn, carries a responsibility to keep some of that talent home.
“I believe, long-term, that if I can be here long enough, Seattle will produce a lot of great players; it already has,” Clark said. “My job is to keep those players local, which is tricky.
“When guys grow up in one place and see one place, they think the grass is always greener (elsewhere). My job is to let them know what they have in their backyard. If I can keep them here, we can be fantastic.”
“It’s only a matter of time before Washington wins a national title,” Grabill said. “He’s the right man in the right place.”
The grass turned out to be pretty green in Seattle. It’s also still pretty green here.
Jamie Clark has come home, for two days. Washington trained on Burnham Field on Wednesday afternoon; having negotiated a compromise with his compliance staff and the NCAA’s Byzantine contact rules, Clark hoped to watch Grabill’s charges work out afterward.
Just for old time’s sake. A homecoming.
“One thing my dad told me: ‘If you do want to coach, play as long as you can for as many coaches as you can, to make a network and to learn,’ ” Jamie said. “ ‘Learn something from every one.’ Regardless of how I played, it’s a pretty fun lifestyle.
“Coaching is second-best to playing. Playing is the best.”
Corner Kicks: Bobby Clark has never coached a game against his son, and he’d rather it stay that way. They nearly collided in the NCAA semifinals three years ago; Washington would have met Notre Dame — on Jamie Clark’s birthday — had the Huskies not dropped a 1-0 quarterfinal decision at home to New Mexico. “I would have found out who his mom really loved,” the elder Clark joked, “but I think I knew that answer.” The Fighting Irish went on to win the national title. … Today’s game is the back end of a home-and-home set. Dartmouth dropped a 3-2 decision to the Huskies in Seattle last Sept. 18, then fell to Seattle University, 2-1, two days after that. The Redhawks have their return visit to Hanover on Sunday. … The Huskies and Big Green both received votes in this week’s NSCAA Division I poll, although both remain ranked outside the top 25.
Greg Fennell can be reached at gfennell@vnews.com or 603-727-3226.