Both high school athletic directors in Box Elder County retired at the end of the recently finished school year, ending decades-long tenures.

Kim Peterson retired from Box Elder High School after 35 years teaching and coaching at the school, with 27 years as athletic director. Van Park retired from Bear River High School after teaching and coaching there since 1995 and being the AD for 16 years.

For Peterson overall, he just finished his 45th year in education, “so I decided that’s probably long enough,” he said.

Interestingly, Park and Peterson are both originally from the Kamas area and went to South Summit High.

Park’s father was Peterson’s sixth-grade teacher and Peterson later did student teaching at South Summit where he was Park’s freshman basketball coach. Ironically, they both ended up in the same school district.

After seven years teaching in Idaho, Park taught and coached boys basketball at Bear River from 1995-2009 and later coached the girls basketball team for five years.

As the boys coach, the Bears won state championships in 2000 and 2009. His final year, 2009, was his son’s senior year and it ended with the state title.

Park eventually coached his daughter in girls basketball. He said his kids practically lived in the Bear River gym before they were playing on the high school teams.

“The gym was their babysitter,” Park joked.

Peterson coached boys basketball for 10 years, helped coach softball for 10 years and also helped coach boys and girls golf at Box Elder.

He coached his son, Kevin, in boys basketball and coached softball with Jim Fuller during the time when the Bees won state championships in 1995-97, 1999 and 2001.

“I think one of the funnest years I ever had was my last year coaching my oldest boy, Kevin, who was playing basketball then,” Peterson said. “We had taken those kids probably since they were fourth-graders, traveled all over and played, finally that senior year and even the junior year, we had a really good record. Senior year we really had a shot at a state title, but we lost in the semis, ended up taking third.”

After all that time spent at the same school, both said it was tough to leave. Park cleared out his office recently, packing up years of photographs, trophies and more.

“That was the hard part, is the memories come flooding in,” Park said.

Park called Peterson in December to tell him he was retiring. Peterson semi-objected, saying “you can’t retire before me.”

Then Peterson got to thinking about it. After some conversations with school administrators, he decided to retire after about a month of kicking the idea around.

“I really enjoyed being the athletic director. I’ve had some great coaches, really good relationship with all those coaches. That’s why it was so tough to leave is I still love being around those guys and being with the kids,” Peterson said.

Both noted how the AD job has changed drastically. There are more sports, which necessitates more coaches, buses, officials and such. There’s more coaching turnover, more paperwork (coach certifications, athlete eligibility, etc.) and more angry parents in their offices.

Both Park and Peterson said schools need to have their athletic directors be full-time to do the job justice.

“It’s gotten to the point where, and I’m no different than any other athletic director, you come in at 6 in the morning and leave at, especially in the spring and the winter when there’s lights on in the stadium and people in the gym, you don’t get home until 10 o’clock every night,” Park said. “That’s including Mondays. It used to be Monday was kind of sacred, you had one night at home and that’s not the case so much anymore.”

They’ll both still be around their respective schools, most likely. Peterson plans on taking care of the fields at Box Elder and Park said he may do the scorebook for basketball games.

Both schools have already found their new ADs. Jesse Roberts will take over at Box Elder after coaching the school’s baseball team the past several years and Clay Chournos, an assistant principal at BRHS who previously coached the baseball team there, takes over as Bear River’s AD.

STRINGFELLOW STEPS AWAY FROM BASEBALL

Speaking of baseball, longtime Bountiful High baseball coach Clark Stringfellow hung up the cleats following the end of the 2022 season, his 26th as head coach. Stringfellow said he’s remaining as the school’s athletic director.

Bountiful went 23-11 this year and advanced to the final eight of the 5A state tournament before falling to eventual state-champion Lehi twice at Utah Valley University.

“There’s only been two times in my whole career where we’ve won 20 or more games in a season. That was in 2014 and this year and the rest … even the losing seasons were worthwhile, but I think the most important part of this whole process has been the relationships that we gained, the friendships that were built and still exist today,” Stringfellow said.

In 2014, Bountiful won the 4A state championship, something he called an incredible and thrilling experience, especially since his sons, Ryan and Sam, were on the team.

“You don’t try to win a state championship, you try to put together the best program you can to make kids better people, and then the byproduct is winning and going deep into a tournament and then eventually winning it,” Stringfellow said.

Longtime assistant coach Aaron Everett will be the baseball team’s new head coach, Stringfellow said.

Elsewhere, Farmington baseball head coach Alex Exon stepped down after five years in charge, and assistant coach Brock Payne was promoted to head coach.

At Layton Christian Academy, athletic director and girls basketball coach Jeremy Jones stepped down for a job in Oklahoma. A replacement hasn’t been named yet.

At St. Joseph, Masen White was named the school’s new girls basketball coach last month. White is an assistant volleyball coach and an alumnus of the school.

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