Football: Wilcox to take at least a year off

This fall, Steve Wilcox won't be coaching with the Douglas football team.

It'll be the first time in 35 years that the longtime coach won't be on the sidelines of at least one sport for the Tigers.

"I'm going to take a year off for sure," Wilcox said. "We need to go down to San Diego and take care of a lot of different things at my mom's place. She's 85 and she's living in a big two-story house. There's just some things I need to get fixed up for her and I want to spend some time with her too."

He said he'll leave in July, but that he hasn't ruled out a return to coaching once he gets back to town.

"Coaching has been a huge part of my life," Wilcox said. "It'll be a strange feeling not being on the sidelines getting the team ready to play on Friday nights. Football season has always been what I patterned my life around, so it'll be weird.

"I'm definitely not ruling out coming back. My mom needs some help so obviously everything else goes on the back burner. We'll just go from there."

Wilcox took the job as the head baseball coach at Douglas in 1974, a job he kept for 10 years. He began coaching the linemen for the football the next year. He and Cliff Simpson also coached Douglas to two softball state titles in 1991 and '92 and Wilcox served as the school's athletic director for 14 years.

He was named the state's athletic director of the year during his final stint in the position in 2006.

Despite not coaching with the football team this fall, Wilcox said he'll still keep tabs on the Tigers.

"They should be pretty good," he said. "They'll have some real good guys on the line of scrimmage. I was over there after last season in the weight room and they have some guys that will be able to step up and be pretty good players."