Gary Moore Stadium
September 6th, 2010 | By: Fred Nystrom
Issaquah High School stadium to be named for longtime coach Gary Moore.
Gary Moore
At long last, the Issaquah High School (IHS) stadium will have an official name. Gary Moore Stadium will become a reality with the start of the 2010 football season. The newly remodeled school will be having its first home game on September 17, the same day the stadium will be dedicated to coach and teacher Gary Moore.
For current students and newer residents, it is important to know who Gary Moore was and to understand the tremendous impact he had on more than three decades of students. It is impossible not to have a sense of admiration for Gary Moore and what he stood for, and pride in having the IHS stadium carry his name.
Moore started his career in Issaquah in 1963 at what was then Issaquah Junior High School and retired from IHS in 2002. During his tenure, he was a teacher in special education, physical education, and traffic safety. He also spent almost 28 years as the IHS head football coach. His overall record was 137-76-4, and he led the Issaquah Indians to three KingCo conference championships, placing him in the Washington State Football Coaches Hall of Fame. He coached in four different decades; he was head coach from 1967 to 1984, and then returned to coach from 1988 to 1990.
As a teacher Moore was revered by his students. He was known as strict but caring, and was one of the few coaches who paid the same amount of attention to nonathletes as he did to his players.
Brett Wiese, who played for Issaquah, the Washington Huskies, and in the NFL, remembered his coach, saying, “Gary Moore was a caring teacher and an excellent coach who used football as a means of teaching young men how to succeed in life. Many of the life lessons I learned from Gary Moore in the classroom and on the field are still with me today. “
Charlie Kinnune, who played for Moore and is now head coach at Mount Si High School, was on the 1980 team that played for the state championship. He recalls, “Coach was a commanding figure on the sideline. He coached with emotion and he expected his players to play with emotion. Anyone who took on one of Gary’s teams knew one thing for sure: When that game was over, they were going to know they had been in a war because we all played like he coached —with fire, intensity, desire, and an unquenchable desire to win. Gary was a fixture in the community and at Issaquah High. He was larger than life. He was the point around which Issaquah football revolved.”
Kinnune continues, “He was able to adjust and stay current with new strategies, but he never strayed from what he knew was fundamentally true: the core principles of hard work, enthusiasm for the game, and the idea that family always came first. There was never any doubt what his priorities were. It was always very evident that he was proud of his wife and children. And as dedicated as he was to us as players, to his students, and to Issaquah as a community, he was first and foremost a family man who cherished his wife and children and who lived a life of integrity in all areas. He was not just a coach to be admired; more importantly, he was man to be admired.”
With the naming of the stadium, it is expected that additional decades of students will learn lessons from Gary Moore’s life, to live their own lives with integrity through hard work, enthusiasm, and balance.
Please come to the stadium dedication on September 17 and join Gary Moore’s family and the IHS community for this heartwarming dedication.
If you would like to donate to the Family and Friends of Gary Moore to help defray the costs of changing the signage on the stadium, please contact Mardi Nystrom at mardinystrom@gmail.com.
