One of the best high school coaches in the state of Washington is retiring at the end of season, according to Jordan Nailon of TDN in Longview. Mark Morris High School has been consistent in the basketball rankings for the past 32 years, a majority of that credit goes to coaching legend Bill Bakamus.

Bakamus, who has already been inducted into the Washington State Coaches Association Hall of Fame, has had an incredible run with the Monarchs. The Monarchs, led by Bill Bakamus, are coming off their biggest win of the season. A 82-54 victory against the cross-town rival R.A. Long Lumberjacks.

Over 30+ years, he has led the Monarchs to 26 league titles, 12 district championships, 26 state appearances and 13 state titles. Quite remarkable stuff and he’s never strayed away from coaching at the high school level. The citizens of Longview-Kelso have seen a lot of talented players. Bakamus had the chance to coach most of them.

The head coach met with his team at 7:30 Monday morning.

“I told them that they better continue to practice hard,” Bakamus told KLOG 100.7. “And play hard to finish the season on the right but, I told them that they should be the first to know that I’ll be retiring as the basketball coach at Mark Morris at the end of the year.”

Over the course of his run with Mark Morris, Bakamus owns a 74% winning percentage.

“There’s a problem here,” the MM Boys basketball coach jokingly stated. “The problem here is that I could do it 10 more years easily. That’s a good thing but its also a problem after 41 years.”

There’s no doubt that Bakamus could reasonably go another 10 years as a coach. Give him credit though, he wants his predecessor to be successful.

“It gives our school administration a good timeline to be able to find a replacement sooner than later. A lot of things typically happen after the season, I want to have everything in place for my predecessor or the person who follows me in honor of the program.”

It’s not the first retirement from a longtime coach that the school has received this year either. Prior to Bakamus, the school’s football coach resigned from being the head coach of the football team.

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