His coaching résumé is long.

His days as a player were star-crossed.

And his commitment to the well-being of local kids shines through every day, whether coaching basketball or supervising students at Harper Junior High.

To most Davis people with kids, Dino Clark is a familiar name.

As Clark’s summer AAU hoops program Hot Shots winds down, the busy mentor — he’s supervising summer school at Holmes Junior High — took some time to reflect on his experiences.

“My philosophy, basically, is teaching fundamentals,” explains Clark, 53. “When you get the fundamentals, then you start bringing in the little stuff because now they have a basketball IQ.”

Clark, who last year was named freshman boys coach at Davis High, gravitated to town in the early 1990s. His mother Sonja worked for years in the school district and Clark — who is now a supervisor at Harper Junior High — has followed in her footsteps.

Since 1994, when he broke in as a supervisor, basketball and baseball coach at Emerson Junior High, Clark has been involved with the youths of the city.

His Hot Shots teams compete in tournaments from spring to fall. He says he has more than 50 players enrolled and points out that those numbers balloon in the spring when the program expands to as many as six teams with talent from seventh through 12th grades.

Clark also coaches eighth-grade basketball at Harper.

“It helps me out at the high school when I have the Hot Shots going and eighth-grade boys at Harper,” says Clark, a father of two. “This past freshman team had a core of players I had before.”

Those young Blue Devils went 15-9, including a rousing win over arch-rival Jesuit. Of the nine losses, seven were by five points or less, according to Clark.

For two seasons, beginning in 2000, Clark was the Blue Devil varsity girls coach, taking the locals from last place to third place in the rugged Capital Athletic League.

In high school, as a junior at Johnson (Sacramento), Clark played point guard and ran into high-profile players like former NBA All-Star and Elk Grove graduate Bill Cartwright.

“I remember a game we were trying to draw him out so we could get rebounds,” Clark recalls. “We’d swing the ball … and finally I got a shot. He came out — and smacked it to the other end of the court.”

But Clark wasn’t discouraged. After transferring to Burbank for his senior year, the Sacramento resident went on to play at Cosumnes River College and Hayward State (now Cal State East Bay).

Clark says his basketball experience includes tryouts for both the Sacramento Kings and Los Angeles Lakers.

But his focus has always been on the kids … and he’s received a Davis schools recognition award for his service and was once nominated by the Sacramento News & Review for youth coach of the year.

Clark believes his freshman-team nucleus will go on to have a big impact in the higher Blue Devil levels.

“We had guys like Brett Bloomfield, C.K. Hicks, Austin Lampley, Logan Davis, Alexander Nelson, Hudson Forrester and Benjamin Crook,” Clark says, smiling. “A lot of good athletes.”

Clark is proud of his school district teams’ overall record of 276-92 and hopes to continue that excellence when the new school year dawns.

From Lyndsay Carpenter to Jalil Anibaba to Desmond Thompson and through players like Bloomfield and Lampley, Clark has left his mark on the courts of Davis.

Notes: Clark hopes his Hot Shots and the Wildcats (another AAU feeder program in town) can work closer to coordinate. “I think it’s being worked out … what we have is two different styles of teaching.” … In working with DHS varsity coach Dan Gonzalez, Clark believes it’s a good relationship: “It’s working well. Each year we’re growing more, understanding each other more. I’m trying to bring what he wants to the table because he is the varsity coach. My job, basically, is to prepare the kids.”

— Reach Bruce Gallaudet at [email protected] or (530) 747-8047.

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Dino Clark, head of the Hot Shots AAU basketball program and the Davis High boys freshman coaches, talks to a few of his eighth-grade players on Thursday. Clark has been involved with youth sports in Davis for nearly two decades. Sue Cockrell/Enterprise photo

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Dino Clark, far right, who is also the freshman boys coach at Davis High, works with three players from his Hot Shots eighth-grade AAU team. The players learning from Clark at the Thursday workout are, from left, Daniel Reyes, Joshua Evans and Anthony Singh. Sue Cockrell/Enterprise photo

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