By Samantha Pak
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
In a transformative moment for Mountlake Terrace High School (MTHS), the departure of Nalin Sood marks not just the end of an era but the dawn of a new chapter.
After 24 years at the helm, Sood, whose legacy is synonymous with men’s basketball excellence, announced on March 18 that he is stepping down as head coach.
This comes after a long and storied career as the Hawk’s most successful head coach, and which just ended with the team finishing in fourth place at the state championship. Sood, 55, had coached the team for 37 years—spending 13 years as an assistant coach before taking the helm in 2000—and before that, he was a player on the team from 1983-87. During his time as head coach, the team made the playoffs 20 times out of 24 seasons and went to the state tournament several times, their top finish being third place during the 2004-05 season.
Sood was only the third head coach in the program’s 64 years, following in the footsteps of Merle Blevins and Roger Ottmar, who were head coach for 17 and 23 years, respectively.
“It was just time,” Sood said about his decision to step down.
His basketball journey began when he was a little boy listening to Sonics games on the radio with his father. Then in 1976, his mother signed him up for basketball through the Mountlake Terrace Youth Athletic Association. Sood remembers the MTHS players who came to his games to act as referees and just being in awe of these older boys.
“That was my first experience of MTHS basketball,” he said.
The following year, Mountlake Terrace won the state championship. Sood’s parents attended the game and his father gave him a picture of the winning team, which Sood hung in his room. From that point on, the writing was literally on the wall: He was hooked and had become a Hawk for life.
And while he loved to play, Sood knew from a young age that what he really wanted to do was coach. He remembers going to a wedding when he was 6 or 7 years old and having to dress up in a suit. Unlike most young boys, he loved it. After all, the NBA coaches he saw on TV also dressed up—and that was what he wanted to do.
“My jersey will never be hanging from the rafters at Mountlake Terrace,” Sood said about schools’ long traditions of honoring star players, adding with a laugh, “They may clean the rafters with it.”
Making his family and community proud
As the son of Asian immigrants—his East Indian parents were born in Kenya and Uganda and had lived in London before they came to the United States—Sood’s career path could have gone down a more expected route of him becoming a doctor, lawyer, or accountant, if it weren’t for one thing—a basketball hoop in the driveway of the Mountlake Terrace home where he grew up. So many of his memories revolve around that hoop—and not all of them are related to the game. Sood remembers going out to the driveway to shoot hoops after his grandfather died.
“That hoop and that driveway shaped my life,” Sood said, adding that his 92-year-old father still lives in that home (his mother died in 2009) and that hoop still stands.
Despite going down the road less taken, Sood does feel he’s made his parents proud. Over the years, his father has come to his games and met Sood’s players. What other career could a father be a part of in such a significant way, Sood asked. He thinks his mother was proud as well, even if she might not have always been happy with how he conducted himself, he said, referring to his temper—which has made an appearance on the court from time to time.
It has also been important to Sood that he represent his community well, and he feels he has done that. He recalled a time at the basketball camp the Hawks hold for kids when an East Indian man came to pick up his grandchild from the camp. The man told Sood that he was making their community proud. Sood said while there may not be a coach that looks like him on TV, if there’s a young Indian kid out there who sees what he has done and is inspired to pursue their own passion, then he’s done his job. You don’t need to follow the norm, he said. This also seems to be the norm in Sood’s family as he also has a cousin who is a successful drummer, and another cousin who is a successful actress.
Faith and loyalty
Although he’s stepping down as coach, Sood isn’t leaving MTHS completely. He’ll be staying on as a business technology teacher. He said part of his decision to step away from basketball is to see what type of teacher he can be. Sood described his life as a pie and for a very long time, basketball had been a very big piece of the pie. Now it’s time to focus on other pieces of the pie, such as teaching and family.
“I’ve got to adjust. It’s going to be a new way of life for me,” he said. “Terrace basketball has been a part of my life for 41 years.”
This being said, Sood is also not running away from the team or basketball.
“It’s been a wonderful experience and I’d do it all over again,” Sood said about his time as head coach. He said the program has meant so much to him and he’s around if the new head coach needs any advice. The search for a new coach has barely even begun, but Sood already has a few tips for them. He said it’s important to be yourself but also to always have an open mind to learn new things and listen to others.
Despite how long he had led the Hawks, Sood has never seen the team as “his” program. It’s always been “our” program, he explained, referring to the Mountlake Terrace community as a whole. And his longevity hasn’t been about his loyalty to the school so much as it’s been about the school’s loyalty to him.
And that faith in him is not something Sood has taken lightly. Being the head coach for the MTHS men’s basketball team is a 24/7-365-days-a-year job because that’s your identity in town. The program is so well known in the community and as coach, he said it’s important to represent and uphold that, and present yourself in the right way.
The rewards outweigh the challenges
A career spanning decades is going to be filled with its challenges. And for Sood, some of those include the stress that comes with the job, the long hours, trying to deliver different things to different people, and when he hasn’t been successful because the kids don’t feel validated for the work they’ve put into the sport. It’s also not always easy keeping kids on track academically or behaviorally, he said.
But the rewards of his career have outweighed the challenges. Sood said some of the highlights include the last day of the season and enjoying the energy from the team, seeing the growth his players experience over the season and years, as well as the one-on-one conversations he’s shared with them. He’s also enjoyed the conversations he’s shared with his co-coaches, saying he has been so fortunate to have worked with coaches who are hard working, talented, and who he could trust.
Sood said the latter is important because not only have they been coaching young men on the court, they’ve also been guiding them through life and helping to shape them into citizens off the court. The lessons Sood has taught his players about soft skills, such as hard work, accountability, and honesty, go beyond the game and can have an impact on who they become in life after high school. In fact, he still remembers some of the lessons his predecessor and mentor Ottmar taught him as a player and has worked to impart those same lessons upon his own players.
“These guys mean so much to me,” Sood said. “I’m one of those guys.”
Samantha can be reached at info@nwasianweekly.com.