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Tearing Up
the Floorboards
Tom Wood retiring after 29 years
TOM WOOD HAS BEEN head coach
of the men’s basketball team for 29
years. Now, the man who led the team
to 10 NCAA postseason appearances is
coaching his last squad for Humboldt
State. Wood, 62, will retire following
the 2009-10 season.
“I’m proud of the progress we’ve
made in building the program into a regional
and national power,” says Wood.
“It’s going well here, and I’m grateful for
the opportunity to go out on a positive
note. The timing just seems right, for
me personally, and in the best interest
of the program.”
Whether he’s giving the referee an
earful or using body language to coax
his team’s offense into gear, Wood has
always been intense.
“Bob Hammonds was my coach at UC Davis and he was
all about intensity, he was nuts. I loved it,” says Wood. “He
required that his team really play hard and more than anything
that’s what I got from him.”
Wood, a Humboldt County native who grew up on a ranch
near Redway, played basketball and baseball at South Fork
High School in Miranda before attending UC Davis. He played
basketball at Davis and studied math, but switched to physical
education as he set his sights on a coaching career. After
earning a master’s degree in physical education from Cal
Poly San Luis Obispo, Wood served as an assistant basketball
coach for seven years with the Cal Poly Broncos. He returned
home in 1981 to take the reins of the HSU program.
When he began coaching at HSU, the Jacks were a nonscholarship,
NCAA Division III school. While it was tough in
the early days to lure students to Arcata, Wood had immediate
success on the court and began building the program. The
Jacks continued to win under Wood as they bounced around
different conferences during the ’80s and ’90s, regularly play-
ing teams in Hawaii, Alaska and various
other outposts around the West.
“One trip when we were in the Pac-
West Conference – talk about basketball
taking you places – we were in
Billings, Mont., on a Thursday night
and in Silver City, N.M., on a Saturday
night playing basketball. If you look on
the map, you can barely get from one
to the other in that time. It was quite
a challenge.”
HSU eventually stepped up to the Division
II level and started recruiting more
extensively during the 1999/2000 season.
Since that time, the Jacks have played in
the NCAA Division II Tournament eight
of the last nine seasons and were West
Region champions in 2003/2004. Over
the years he had success building community
support and raising funds for student-athlete scholarships.
Wood looks forward to his impending retirement days,
when he can direct more energy toward his golf game and
spend more time traveling with his wife.
“Interacting with the players, coaching them and preparing
them, has been the most rewarding part of this job,” says
Wood. “That continues with seeing them go on to their own
successes in life, and thinking their experience here might
have had something to do with that. I’ll miss that the most.”
Longtime assistant coach Steve Kinder has been named
head coach for the 2010-2011 season, and Wood couldn’t
be more pleased. “(Steve’s) been an equal partner in all our
successes,” says Wood. “He’s an accomplished recruiter, and
he’s also an accomplished coach. I don’t think the program
could be in better hands.”
Whether he’s giving the referee an earful or firing up his team’s offense,
Wood is known for his trademark intensity.
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HUMBOLDT MAGAZINE | Spring 2010