Back for Round 2

DOVER — Time has been a great healer for Ernie Clark.

Fifteen years after his first tour of duty as Dover High School’s girls basketball coach, Clark is back to guide the Green Wave for a second time. He was announced this week to replace his former assistant, Dan Casey, who stepped down in June after 10 years at the helm.

Clark, 66, coached Dover for eight seasons, bridging the 20th and 21st centuries — 1996 to 2004. That stretch included back-to-back appearances in the Class L (Division I) championship game, the second a state title in 2002 — Dover’s last.

But it did not end well for Clark. On a night in January of 2004 he was confronted by a parent after a game in Exeter about playing time. There was an altercation. The police became involved. Clark later resigned from his position.

“It was a very difficult time,” said Clark, a 1970 Dover HS grad. “That’s why I’ve been partly reluctant to come back into the gym. There was a real empty feeling in me, an uneasiness.

“But that’s 15 years ago. It’s different kids now. I learned a lot from that experience. I’ll share that with my assistant coaches.”

While Clark never thought he’d step back inside the Dover gym again, let alone coach, Casey never stopped trying to get him to return.

“Dan has been asking me every year since he’s been head coach to come over to practice or come to a game,” Clark said. “I always felt a little out of place.”

But this past winter he decided to take Casey up on his offer.

“I’m just going to sit on the sidelines and watch,” Clark said. “Ten minutes later I found myself standing out in the middle of the court directing a drill.”

It hit all the right chords, evaporating some of Clark’s uneasiness.

“It felt pretty good when I left that night. I felt like I had conveyed something; that the girls were responsive to me.”

Clark had no idea that Casey was thinking of stepping down. When he did tell him, Clark didn’t even think of applying.

“But after I got to thinking about it, it got to be one of those things where I said, ‘I don’t want to regret not having attempted to.’ So here I am.”

Clark coached boys when he was younger, but when he had daughters he had to make the change. “My oldest was in third grade at Woodman Park (School). That’s what started it.”

His daughter, Jessica, was a star on the 2002 championship team, later playing on scholarship at the University of Hartford.

Dover went 4-14 last year, missing the D-I tournament. It graduated one senior, 1,000-point scorer Katrina Krenzer.

“When we built the program before,” Clark said, “we built it from the bottom up. This time we’re going to be building it from the top down.”

Clark plans to align himself with good assistant coaches like he did before with Casey and Jackie Small. Former Dover player Amanda Studer will once again coach the JV team. He’s hoping to get his daughter, Jessica, involved, along with some other former stars like Curran Leighton. He believes it is important to have dedicated, young women on the staff who know the program, who can come in and give guidance.

“They understand what you’re doing and they understand being proud of your community, proud of your school, proud of being a Green Wave,” he said.

Good friend Mike Casimiro, a Dover star from the mid 1970s, has been recruited to work with the point guards.

Clark is also hoping to resurrect a freshman team, which hasn’t existed for several years.

He is also hoping to develop a good relationship with parents like his first tour.

He recalled having great parents like the Schultens and the Downers, who made his job that much easier because they were all-in with what he was doing. “All of those parents, every year, 100 percent bought into what we were trying to do. It was only in that last year that the bottom fell out of it.”

One thing that Clark has come to grips with is that he has to talk with parents about playing time. Back in the day, he didn’t, wouldn’t.

“I’ve come to realize that’s not acceptable to parents anymore,” he said. “So I said to the kids (on Thursday), I don’t look forward to those conversations with parents, but we’ll have them.”

Clark will have one stipulation. The conversation will include himself, the player and the parent or parents. “We’re all going to hear the same explanation as to why.”

Cycling back to that January evening in 2004, Clark said there’s a time and a place to talk about playing time, but after a game isn’t it. “It allows itself to lead to something that no one intended to have (happen).”

Clark said he continues to hear about confrontations. “That’s something we will talk about as coaches.”

Athletic Director Peter Wotton said the feeling was that Clark was the best candidate, noting that as far as what happened in 2004, it was “discussed at great length. We wanted to make sure we were comfortable with the decision and we are.”

Wotton added that Clark “is passionate about basketball, Dover High School and the Dover community.”

Clark laughs about a moment during Thursday’s meeting with the players when he showed his age. There was a drill he ran when he coached called the Havlicek drill that Casey continued to use when he coached, so the kids knew what it was.

Clark wanted to know if anyone knew who Havlicek was. That is to say John Havlicek, the late great Boston Celtics star who died this past April at age 79.

“You know the drill, but do you know the player? He asked. They shook their heads in the negative.

He asked them if they knew who Larry Bird was and some did. “A little bit of a light came on,” Clark said.

He made his point. “Larry Bird was John Havlicek. They never stopped moving.”

Clark told the players that if Bird thought practice wasn’t strenuous enough, he’d run up the old Boston Garden stairs and do laps around the balcony.

“That’s what we’re going to be,” he said.