Mark Looney takes over as athletic director at Sweet Home High School at a significant juncture in Husky history: entry into a new league that presents some unique challenges.
Looney, who has served as vice principal at the high school since September of 2014, replaces Steve Brown, who retired last spring.
Looney, 48, said he wasn’t expecting the opportunity to become athletic director when he hired on.
“I thought I would be an assistant principal for a few more years, then start looking for, probably, a principalship,” he said. “This is something I kind of thought would be a fun thing to do. I’m excited to do this.”
He brings a variety of personal experience in athletics to the job.
Looney grew up in Scio and was a three-sport athlete for the Loggers – football, basketball and then wrestling, and baseball.
“I switched from basketball to wrestling my junior year, so I wrestled my junior and senior years,” he said. “I was never awesome at anything but baseball.”
He was good enough to walk on as a freshman at Pacific University, but things went south on other fronts, he said.
“I needed some growing up. I was a pretty young, immature freshman. I didn’t have the best scholarly year, you could say.”
He dropped out and returned home to become a paramedic and firefighter, attending Linn-Benton and Chemeketa community colleges to get his certification.
But after serving as a resident volunteer firefighter for a few years in Albany, he decided to go back to school full-time at Western Baptist, now renamed Corban University, completing a bachelor’s degree in math.
“I couldn’t find any jobs in that field, so I went back and got a bachelor’s in math education,” he said.
His teaching career started in Scio, where he spent two years before getting “lured away” to Salem-Keizer School District. He ended up spending 13 years at a succession of schools there – South Salem, McKay and then McNary, where he was a behavioral specialist for 7½ years before coming to Sweet Home.
Along the way he coached baseball, softball and JV basketball on a volunteer basis, and served as a staff assistant in football as a student teacher at Silverton.
“I loved coaching football so much, I was planning on having 11 children so I could have my own football team, but we had four and I decided that’s enough,” he said, dryly. His family lives on a 115-acre grass seed farm outside Silverton, where they raise registered Labrador retriever pups.
“I’ve been on the outside of the sports, helping out and stuff, so being in the middle of it is an opportunity for me and, I’m hoping, for the kids,” Looney said.
Looney said he sees strong connection between sports and academic and behavioral success.
“There’s definitely a connection between sports and discipline,” he said.
“There was a time in my life that, if it hadn’t been for sports, I wouldn’t have gone any farther in my education. And so sports are a great release. They have proven that athletes do better with grades than non-athletic (students) or if you have some kind of tie.”
Sweet Home athletes have steadily improved in the classroom in recent years, posting some of the highest GPA scores in the 4A Division last year and finishing third in the 4A Oregonian Cup standings, which is based on their participation and finishes in OSAA state championships, Top-10 finishes in the OSAA Academic All-State Program, and sportsmanship.
During the year, boys soccer, boys basketball, wrestling, girls swimming, baseball, softball and girls track were first academically throughout the state 4A Division teams; football, boys swimming and dance were second; boys track was fourth; volleyball and girls soccer were fifth.
Sweet Home’s wrestlers also had the top grades among all the state’s schools that offer the sport.
Looney said he wants to serve as a tie between sports and responsible behavior for kids on campus.
“I want sports to be a lot of fun, but at the same time we hold them to a higher accountability,” he said, adding that when he does have to discipline athletes, it is usually during an off-season, when they’re not participating in a sport. Otherwise, he said, coaches are a big help in getting the job done.
“For me, being able to call a coach and say, ‘Hey, you need to talk to so-and-so. This is how they’re behaving in class.’ Their coach can then have a conversation: ‘That’s not what we do. If you are going to be part of Sweet Home High School, we behave like this.’
“That’s higher accountability.”
Another challenge will be Sweet Home’s entry into the Oregon West Conference this year.
Last year’s OSAA reclassification process resulted in the Huskies being put in the Oregon West, which initially was supposed to only include Newport, Philomath, Stayton, Woodburn and Sisters, which was also moved from the Sky-Em League.
However, Cascade, which had been moved to the 5A Division, after repeated appeals, was reassigned to the Oregon West, making seven teams.
Looney said he sees the Oregon West, the state’s largest 4A conference, as “a great opportunity,” though he acknowledged that the arbitrator’s decision to reinstate Cascade came after schedules had already been drawn up and other arrangements made.
He noted that there was really no other option for the Cougars.
“All the rest of us have paid our dues to be in there, so it doesn’t make much sense for us to join another league,” he said. Competing in the Cowapa League, which only has five teams, would require a nearly two-hour drive to the nearest rival for Cascade, and it would be about the same for Newport.
“It didn’t make much sense,” he said. “Nobody was willing to make the move and the OSAA didn’t demand it, so we are a league of seven teams with the exception of football.”
That presents some challenges for sports with bye week scheduling requirements, he said.
“The baseball and softball schedules worked out fairly well, but basketball is interesting with a bye in the middle of the year. Because we play each team twice, almost all games are taken up with league. The preseason got hit hard for us.”
One challenge he and his coaches are facing is reduced participation in most sports in recent years. Plus, particularly in boys soccer, Sweet Home is entering a league that will likely be far and away the most powerful in the state.
“We’re not looking good,” Looney said. “Not only in numbers, but when you’re in a league with Philomath and Newport – and Woodburn has been 5A champs seven out of nine years, that’s a hard one.”
He said he’s concerned about morale if losses mount because Sweet Home has difficulty matching up with programs with more numbers and experience. But he said he knows kids are “resilient.”
“What I want from my teams is you go out there and do your best and look me in the eye and you can say, ‘I tried.'”