‘His leadership will be missed.’ Golden Valley principal retiring after 39 years in district

The principal’s office at Golden Valley High School is almost cleared out. There are still a few pictures hanging on the wall, including the first staff picture from when the school opened in 1994 that Kevin Swartwood has left for his successor, Mike Richter.

Swartwood, 63, was part of that original staff, hired as the school’s first athletic director. He remembers walking around the campus when it was just cement slabs and when the first steel frames went up.

Swartwood handpicked the first coaches at the school, including people like Mark Speckman and others that spent the next two or three decades coaching at Golden Valley like Keith Hunter, Matt Thissen, Scott Hague, Bill Hurst and, a couple years later, Chopper Mello.

Swartwood has spent the last 9 years as the principal. Thursday night will be his last graduation ceremony with Swartwood retiring after spending close to 40 years working in the Merced Union High School District.

“I hope I’ve left something behind, that is useful for people,” Swartwood said. “Knowledge, a format, leadership, I hope I left something behind that someone can say, ‘Yeah, I learned that from Swartwood and that helped me.’ Otherwise, I’ve wasted 39 years.”

It’s safe to say Swartwood’s time wasn’t wasted.

Many roles

During his career Swartwood has filled many roles and had many jobs. Swartwood is honest when he says his journey in education started because he wanted to coach football.

He started as a 19-year-old walk-on coach at Livingston High School in 1980 for his former high school coach Mike Burrows.

When Burrows took the head coach at Atwater High the following year, Swartwood went with him and coached freshmen football for four years.

Swartwood received his teaching credential in 1985 and was hired as science teacher at Merced High. He continued to coach football. Speckman was hired as the head football coach at Merced shortly after and he asked Swartwood to be his offensive coordinator. They helped lead the Bears to back-to-back Sac-Joaquin Section championships in 1989 and 1990.

When a second high school opened up in Merced, Swartwood was ready for another challenge and was picked by new Golden Valley principal Ralf Swenson to become the Cougars’ first athletic director.

Swartwood says opening a new school was tough.

“The amount of work it took to put together an athletic program from scratch was the hardest thing I ever did,” Swartwood said. “Apprehensive is a good word; scared to death is more like it.”

Building a culture

Whether it was luck or Swartwood’s ability to find good, young coaches, he was able to put together a group that set the tone for the Golden Valley athletic program across the board. Hunter went on to win 400 games in boys basketball,

Thissen established successful girls volleyball and girls basketball programs, the football program was successful right away under Speckman and then Swartwood brought on Dennis Stubbs as head coach the following year after Speckman became a college head coach at Willamette University.

The track program won section titles under Hurst, and Mello has racked up over 400 wins and multiple section championships in wrestling.

“I had this incredible experience of being able to hire incredible people like Hunter, Thissen, Hurst, Stubbs and the list goes on and on,” Swartwood said. “We had this great thing going on. We had this group that all had the same mindset who loved Golden Valley and they were like, ‘Let’s make it great.’”

Mello said the reason he came to Golden Valley in 1995 was because of Swartwood and Swenson.

“Kevin Swartwood and Ralf Swenson snuck onto the Atwater High campus during school hours and came to my classroom to recruit me,” Mello said. “I had no idea who they were at the time and GV was brand new. They were able to convince me to come over and be the wrestling coach at GV and the rest is history.”

The mentor

Meanwhile, Swartwood was making an impact on the lives on all the people around him from young coaches, teachers and students.

“The hallmark of Kevin’s entire career has been his continuous growth and dedication to excellence in every position he has served, while simultaneously inspiring everyone around him to follow his example for their own careers,” said Jerry Stillahn, a longtime basketball coach and retiring teacher at Golden Valley.

Derrick Jacobs is the current Golden Valley boys basketball coach. He played football for Swartwood in high school.

Jacobs was the type of kid who easily could have headed down the wrong path if it wasn’t for the teachers and coaches at school that kept on him and checked up on him.

“My freshmen year, Mr. Swartwood told me I was going to be a good football player but he was also going to make me a good person,” Jacobs said. “Mr. Swartwood was all about character and doing things right.”

“Mr. Swartwood’s old-school mentality helped shape me into the person who I am today,” Jacobs added. “His leadership will be missed on our campus. He is more than a principal. He’s a father, mentor, role model who cares about all students. I’m very thankful for all he has done for me.”

There are plenty of kids like Jacobs who have been impacted by Swartwood.

“There’s a lot of those examples,” Swartwood said. “Derrick as a high school student was not on the right track and he’ll be the first one to tell you. Coaches like Hunter helped get him on the right track. To see him now as a PE teacher, relating with kids as well as he does. Leon Miles is a former player who is now a coach at Buhach Colony.

“Paul Scoggins has been a campus liaison for years and he’ll be the first one to tell you he wasn’t on the right track in high school. To see these kids progress and doing great things, it’s really heartfelt.”

Swartwood says, unfortunately, there are examples of kids who go the other way and head down the wrong path.

He says those situations can be heartbreaking.

“You remember what you had in him as a player and how hard you worked together for a common goal,” Swartwood said “When you leave them after high school you think they’re good, they’re going to be on their path and then they go the wrong path. Part of that hurt is because you wonder if there’s something else you could have done.”

Return to coaching

As special as Golden Valley was to Swartwood, he got the itch to coach football again and left GV to become the head football coach at Buhach Colony in 2006 and coached for 8 years.

He helped the program find success, leading the Thunder to three consecutive Central California Conference championships and three section semifinal appearances from 2010 to 2012. Buhach Colony compiled a 34-5 record in those three seasons and Swartwood’s teams had a 51-38 record during his eight years as head coach.

“Kevin Swartwood will always be remembered for the impact he had in Thunder football, developing a mindset and culture of competing that continued even as he choose to return to administration,” said Kevin Navarra, who was the BC defensive coordinator under Swartwood and followed Swartwood as Thunder head coach.

“Swarty’s had a direct impact on me individually, as he saw the potential I had to lead young men and coaches. I owe him for putting me in a position to be a head coach. The lessons in how to build and develop young men and coaches was demonstrated daily by Swarty. The level of respect former players and coaches have for him over the decades shows the type of man that people will follow. Swarty is a true leader.”

Ready for a new challenge, Swartwood became an administrator and returned to Merced High as an associate principal and spent just under two years there before being hired as principal at Golden Valley in 2015.

The return

“I got here as a principal, and it was like, I’m back home,” Swartwood said. “Once I left I never thought I’d get that chance to come back.”

After 9 years, Swartwood said it was tough clearing the walls and desk in his office.

“It was terrible,” he said. “It was horrible, I’m glad I’m done with it. Every picture I start reliving a memory in my mind and it’s like I’ll take that picture out of frame and then it’s the next picture.”

There was a football signed by two former Buhach Colony football players who played against each other in college with Cal and Air Force that Swartwood gave to Navarra.

There were photos of him with different players during his coaching career. There were newspaper articles of Golden Valley’s first appearance in a section title football game that he gave to Cougars football coach Rick Martinez.

Clearing his office was a trip down memory lane for Swartwood.

“It reminds me of how everyone told me it’s going to go by fast, it’s going to go by fast, but it doesn’t hit you until it’s the end,” Swartwood said. “It’s just a blur, from the time I started in 85, when my son was born — he’s going to turn 40 in June — it’s an absolute blur.”

Swartwood says he’s not sure what retirement will look like for him. He doesn’t have many hobbies to occupy his time like golfing or fishing. He says coaching was his hobby but he doesn’t want to do that.

He says he is committed in getting the Merced County All-Star Football Game on its feet and he wants to help raise money for scholarships associated with the game.

After close to 40 years, Swartwood has definitely left his mark.

“Looking back at it all, I say I have zero regrets,” Swartwood said. “Every job I had was the best job I had, including now.”