By Rick Pedone
Sports Editor

After a 10-year layoff, Mike Clark will be back in the softball dugout next season as the head coach at Harmony High.

Clark accepted the position from Principal Buddy Butler Tuesday and said he looks forward to taking over a program that has reached the playoffs five consecutive seasons.

“The expectations are there, but just because you almost won the state championship this year doesn’t mean that you are going to be there again next year,” Clark, 55, said. “There’s lots and lots of stuff to do in order to prepare the team to reach that level. Some people don’t realize the number of things that have to go your way for that to happen.”

Clark replaces Ralph King, who resigned two weeks ago after leading the team to the Class 4A state tournament, where Harmony lost the championship game to Eau Gallie, 7-2.

Harmony High was fined a total of $2,600 and King was suspended four weeks by the Florida High School Athletic Association when King showed up at the state tournament in violation of FHSAA guidelines after the coach was ejected from the regional championship game.

Butler said that hiring Clark, a Longhorns assistant baseball coach last season, was easy.

“He was far ahead of the other candidates we interviewed,” Butler said. “He has great community support, and he did a great job for us as an assistant baseball coach. I’m very happy to have him with us.”

Clark was the softball coach at St. Cloud High for seven seasons and never had a losing season, compiling a 118-77 record from 1995-2001. He took the team to the playoffs several times and in 1998 the Lady Bulldogs reached the Class 5A state semifinals.

Clark transformed the St. Cloud softball complex, which now bears his name, while he was the coach by raising the funding and then supervising construction of a second field, covered dugouts, a concession stand, lights, locker room facilities and an equipment shed.

He plans to improve an already good complex at Harmony.

“Oh, yeah, there will be upgrades,” he said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have the amount of space here that we did at St. Cloud, but things will look a lot different. It may take a few years to get there, but it will happen.”

Clark said that he enjoyed working with Coach Mike Fields and the Harmony baseball players, but it was emotionally draining. Clark and his wife, Chris, lost their son, Chandler, a baseball player, two years ago during an altercation in St. Cloud. Chandler would be a senior this year.

“It was getting harder and harder for me to keep going there,” Clark said.

Harmony returns a veteran roster. Six of the nine starters at the state tournament return. In addition, several promising freshmen will arrive for next season.

Clark watched the team at the state tournament and was impressed by its performance. At the same time, he issued a warning: they all should be prepared to go to work when practice resumes in January.

“Practice will be a little more up-tempo,” he said. “Some of them will like it; some of them won’t.”

Clark, who played fastpitch softball and sponsored the 1991 Class B national champion Osceola Eagles, will again coach against one of his best friends and former teammates, Osceola High’s George Coffey.

“I tried to get him to come over here with me, but I couldn’t get him to do it,” Coffey said. “It’s going to be great to have him back in the coaching ranks again, but it won’t make my job any easier, that’s for sure.”

Clark is not a member of the Harmony faculty. The former banking executive said he may pursue a teaching certificate, but he hasn’t made a decision.

Clark is in the process of hiring his assistant coaches.