Hopkins To Coach Football At Interlake

Hoover Hopkins, who coached the Cleveland High School football program back to respectability in eight seasons before resigning in December, will coach at Interlake High School in Bellevue next fall.

"There's a real ethnic mix at our school and Hoover is coming out of Cleveland and I think that's important from the teaching and coaching standpoint to have someone from that kind of background," said Dick Baird, Interlake's incoming athletic director.

Hopkins said he accepted the Interlake offer because he felt a rapport with Baird and Principal David Engle.

"There's a ton of potential here," he said.

Baird recommended Hopkins, who played for him at Olympic Community College. Hopkins went on to letter for the Washington Huskies in 1983 and was a graduate assistant when Baird was on the UW staff.

Hopkins, who played his high-school football at Lake Washington, took over a program at Cleveland that finished a winless 1990 season with 14 players. He had two winning seasons at Cleveland and won 24 games at a school that went 7-69 during the 1980s.

Hopkins will be Interlake's third head coach in five seasons. The Saints haven't had a winning season since the 1994 team went 7-2 under Bill Heglar. Interlake was 10-26 over the past four seasons.