The football field at Middletown High was named “Bill Foltmer Field” in 2010 to honor the Mustangs’ head coach that will retire at the end of the 2024 season after 45 years as a head coach, with 40 at Middletown. Photo: Harold Abend
Bill Foltmer is a pillar of the Middletown community and will retire from coaching football as California’s active wins leader.
We hope you enjoy this free story on Cal-Hi Sports.com. For our state rankings packages in football plus State Stat Stars of the Week, state record updates and special features, please check out our Gold Club membership today. If you’re not a member, CLICK HERE.
Walking through the Middletown campus from the main office to the football field, a campus that had some damage and structures burned but was pretty much spared in the September 2015 Valley Fire, a whole bunch of students, and not just the football players, shouted out greetings to head football coach Bill Foltmer.
At the local deli where we went for a sandwich after the Wednesday afternoon interview, several customers came up to the table to say hello to a coach who has been an integral part of the Middletown community for the past 40 years.
For those that do not know where Middletown is or much about the town, it’s an agricultural community in Lake County with a population of approximately 2,000 at an elevation of around 1,100 feet. The town is in a valley in the shadows of majestic Mount St. Helena to south and derives its name from the fact that’s it’s pretty much halfway between Calistoga (south of Mount St. Helena) and Clear Lake (which is over the hill to the north).
It seems as if every 10 years we make the trek to Middletown High.
The first visit came in 2005 when Middletown started the season 5-0 with five straight shutouts. Game six was against a Lower Lake team that was 0-5 coming in, so obviously the host Mustangs were favored. The only question was would they pitch another shutout, and although the visitors threatened to score, they didn’t tally and Middletown had 24 straight quarters and 288 minutes of whitewashing its opponents.
The shutout streak ended the next week, and Middletown didn’t make the Cal-Hi Sports Record Book where it takes eight straight shutouts to qualify, but Foltmer and his Mustangs won that game and two more before a league loss to Kelseyville and then another to Ferndale in the CIF North Coast Section Class A playoffs ended their season.
In October of 2015, we went over Mt. St. Helena once again to show our support for Foltmer and his team a little less than a month after the Valley Fire that consumed over 500 homes and hundreds of other structures in the nearly 100,000 acres the fire scorched. According to Foltmer, five players and four coaches lost their homes in the blaze.
The team persevered and in its first game back after the fire, Middletown went over the hill to Lower Lake and came away with a 21-0 victory. It went on to finish 5-2 in the North Central I League and 6-5 overall, and even won a first-round playoff game before bowing out to eventual champion St. Bernard’s of Eureka in the CIFNCS Division 5 quarterfinals. We still proudly wear the purple MIDDLETOWN STRONG T-shirt Foltmer gave us.
Shortly after the 2015 Valley Fire that swept through Middletown, Bill Foltmer presented us with a commemorative T-shirt.
Now, almost nine years to the day from our last visit, we visited Foltmer one last time in his purple coaching polo shirt. The reason we say one last time is because after 45 years as a head coach, and completing year No. 40 at the Middletown helm, Foltmer has decided to retire from coaching after having retired during COVID from teaching.
Foltmer contemplated retiring last year after he had reached the career 300-win coaching plateau. His friends, family and fellow coaches, however, convinced him that retiring after 39 years didn’t sound as good as calling it a career after 40 years, so he decided to stay one final season.
Foltmer currently has 311 career wins after Friday’s heartbreaking 9-7 loss on homecoming night to St. Helena in a defensive battle the Mustangs led 7-6 before the visitors kicked a late field goal to win.
That means when the wily veteran takes the field for his final game of the 2024 season, not only will he end his career a Top 10 winningest coach in state history, he could tie for No. 9 on the all-time state list if Middletown can win two more games and tie for No. 8 with five more victories, which would mean at least one playoff win.
Either way, just before the final buzzer of his final game, Foltmer will end his career as the active wins leader in the Golden State.
“I didn’t know that, but it makes me feel pretty good,” said the 68-year-old Foltmer when told he was the current active wins leader. “I’m proud of the program we’ve had here.”
“We’re a little down this year with injuries but that is not why I’m leaving,” Foltmer continued. “All the skill players return, and the future looks bright.”
Foltmer isn’t sure who will take his place, but he knows one of his assistants, Kurtis Woodard, who played for him and was the quarterback and captain on his 1999 team that won the CIFNCS Class A championship, is interested.
Foltmer wanted to be sure all his assistants got a shout out. Jim Garett has been with him 39 years. Tom Knowles is a Middletown graduate from the 1970s and the grandfather of several current and former Mustangs’ players. Moke Simon was on his first league championship in 1989.
The Irvington High (Fremont) graduate started college at Chabot College before transferring to Chico State. Upon graduation, he stayed local.
Bill’s first head coaching job was at Princeton where he had done his student teaching. Princeton is a small town on the banks of the Sacramento River and approximately 30 miles southeast of Chico. The school is a member of the CIF Northern Section. That was in 1980. In five years at Princeton his teams won only 19 games, but they managed to snag two league titles.
At the start of the 1984 season, his Princeton team was at a scrimmage and Middletown was one of the teams there. That scrimmage sprung what was to be Foltmer’s calling for the next 40 years.
“I really didn’t talk to the Middletown coach hardly at all,” Foltmer recalled. “It was our team against them and we moved on and played another team.”
“Later on that year I got a letter from him saying he was stepping away because he was going to be a principal and they wouldn’t let him be a principal and a coach at the same time,” Foltmer continued. “He thought this would be a perfect job for me, and at the time the pay was double, so I decided to come take a look and ended up applying for the job, and I got it.”
And the rest is history.
Now, after 45 years of serving high school youth as a coach, educator and mentor, he’s decided to leave the gridiron behind.
“I’d like to travel a little more and get my golf game a little better because I have a lot of friends that like to golf and I’m not very good,” Foltmer said. “I’d also like to visit my kids a little more and do some things in the fall I couldn’t do because of football season.”
When we asked Foltmer to have one of his players available to be interviewed, he chose junior quarterback and team captain Blake Costlow, who is one of the players out with an injury. The injury has hurt Middletown since his backup is hurt as well, and when you only have 20 players on the roster and some key players out, there isn’t many other options. Costlow may be injured but he loves playing for Foltmer and played last year as a sophomore when his older brother Brandon Costlow Jr. played as a senior.
“Coach has been talking for a while about how he’s almost going to be done, and I was feeling like please let me be on one of his teams,” Costlow remarked. “It was cool that I got pulled up as a sophomore last year, and I got one full season with him at least, and I got to play with my brother and we won co-league championship and that was a blessing.”
“There’s a reason why he’s winning. He’s got it down to a science,” Costlow continued. “What I’m going to miss most about him is his just being there, the phone calls on Saturday about how the game went, how he makes sure you get your stuff done academically. But the best thing about playing for him is his legacy and the fact I can say I got to play for Foltmer.”
Those players like Costlow that have brothers that played for Foltmer, and all the assistants that have served alongside him, have helped create a legacy that besides the 311 wins includes:
– The winningest public high school football coach in both the Redwood Empire and the CIF North Coast Section
– 23 league and four CIFNCS championships
– 1991 Cal-Hi Sports Class B State Team of the Year
– 1996 CIFNCS Honor Coach
– 1997 Northern California Coach of the Year
– 2021-22 National Federation of State High School Associations/California Interscholastic Federation North Coast Section and State Football Coach of the Year
– Honored by the California State Senate with a Resolution of Honor presented by local State Senator and Majority Leader Mike McGuire
– Naming of the football field on October 1, 2010 “Bill Foltmer Field”
Foltmer’s Coaching Highs and Lows
Asked about his highs and lows over five decades?
“That first section championship in 1997 was a big one for me. When they dedicated the field in 2010 was a huge honor for me,” Foltmer responded. “Just last year when I was honored by Senator McGuire at the State Capitol in front of the entire State Senate where he said some nice words about me. I got to take a couple of my players and my assistant coaches with me to Sacramento. That was a great honor.”
Another high point for Foltmer are the relationships he’s made over the years with fellow small school head coaches like Chad Nightengale of Salesian (RIchmond) and Leon Feliciano, formerly of Tomales High.
“We fought hard as competitors on the field and off the field we’re good friends in life.”
“That fire was a tough one for everybody here in our community. That was a low, and for us it came right in the middle of the season, and with coaches and players losing homes, it was pretty tough on all of us. But the positive side of the story was how we finished out the season and how football became kind of a rallying point. That first game back after the fire at Lower Lake there were people at the game that never came to football games that all seemed to be there. It was more than a football game.”
Middletown Family Affair
It has already been mentioned that there have been coaches, brothers, fathers and sons and grandchildren of players that have played for Foltmer over the years. There’s also been cousins and uncles as well. The 2024 team is a perfect example.
According to Foltmer, this year’s Mustangs team has more than its usual share of family lineage.
Blake Costlow and Brandon Costlow Jr. are the sons of Brandon Costlow Sr., a member of the 2000 team. Their uncle Charlie Green was a member of the 1999 team. Brothers Casey Costlow and Colton Costlow are the cousins of Blake and Brandon Jr. and the sons of Casey Costlow, who played for Foltmer. Brothers Hunter and Colton Karp are the sons of Neil Karp, a member of the 1997 team. Jacob Pullman is the son of Jake Pullman who played for Foltmer. Jacob’s cousin Wyatt Pullman is the son of former player Austin Pullman. Jake Lescher played for Foltmer, and his son Sean Lescher is on this year’s team. Eric Norris played for Foltmer just like his son Eli Norris, a current Mustangs lineman. Current Mustangs’ senior Nick Guerrero is the son of Aric Guerrero, who graduated in 1992 and is a former assistant coach that is now the principal at Lower Lake.
Besides visiting family and working on his golf game, Foltmer would like to stay involved and continue in his role as a member of the CIF North Coast Section Football Advisory Committee.
Whatever Foltmer decides to do in his retirement, Cal-Hi Sports sends the veteran coach its best wishes. The name of Bill Foltmer will be etched in the Cal-Hi Sports Online State Record Book alongside names of the greatest high school football coaches in state history, such as all-time wins leader Bob Ladoucuer, and it’s where Foltmer belongs, mentioned alongside the greatest high school football coaches ever in the Golden State.
Editor’s Note: Former Santa Rosa Piner, Cardinal Newman of Santa Rosa and Windsor head coach, and current Ukiah head coach Paul Cronin and his Wildcats were 35-7 winners of Friday night to get to 4-2 to start the season. With the victory, Cronin notched career win No. 233 and that moves him past Jason Franci (Santa Rosa Montgomery, 1979-2012) as the all-time winningest head coach in the North Bay portion of the CIF North Coast Section and No. 2 behind Foltmer in the Redwood Empire.
Harold Abend is the associate editor of CalHiSports.com and the vice president of the California Prep Sportswriters Association. He can be reached at marketingharoldabend@gmail.com. Don’t forget to follow him on Twitter: @HaroldAbend
