Ex-Boise State player hired to revive long-struggling Boise High football program
As a resident of the North End, Mike Altieri watched the Boise High School football program struggle for years. Now the former Boise State football player will try his hand at rebuilding the Brave.
Boise High hired Altieri to take over its football team last week, naming him the replacement to Jerry O’Mahony. O’Mahony resigned in November after three seasons, going 1-26 as part of the decades-long decline at Boise.
Altieri said he knows the challenges Boise faces, but he’s embracing those as he seeks to revive the program.
“I’ve been down here for over a decade, and all I’ve ever heard is, ‘Oh, it’s Boise High. They’re never good. They’ve never been good. And they’re never going to be good,’ ” Altieri said. “But we need to change that mentality.”
Altieri, 34, was a reserve outside linebacker at Boise State from 2003 to 2007, helping the Broncos win the 2007 Fiesta Bowl. The Vista, California, native stayed in Boise after graduating, and he serves as the recreation sports coordinator for Boise Parks and Recreation, running the adult sports leagues in the city.
He has never coached any sport above his son’s youth leagues. But he said Boise doesn’t need a play-calling genius to reverse its fortunes. He can hire assistants for that.
Instead, he said, Boise needs someone who can rebuild community support, increase turnout and retain athletes in its school boundaries.
“It will take me going out, shaking hands, meeting kids and meeting parents, and letting them know the vision that we have for the program and where we want to take it,” Altieri said. “And hopefully they like what we have to offer, want to come out and participate in it, and really make some changes.”
Boise last made the state playoffs in 2002, the longest active drought in Idaho’s 5A classification. It has posted one winning season in the past 27 years, going 5-4 in 2008.
Years of losing eroded turnout, forcing Boise to cancel its junior varsity schedule last fall. Its varsity team finished the season with just 28 players.
For years, promising players transferred away from Boise before ever enrolling in the school. Altieri said he encountered that tradition the day Boise announced his hiring. As parents at Longfellow Elementary congratulated him on the job when he went to pick up his son, one mother told him she was excited to not have to send her three football-playing sons to another high school.
“That resonated with me,” Altieri said. “These kids in first grade and in third grade, the mindset is in the parents and in the kids that if you want to play football, you don’t go to Boise High. You go somewhere else.”
Altieri said he plans to reach out to the Boise High community, and all the junior high and elementary schools that feed into Boise, to sell them on the coming changes and reverse that attitude.
“Get to be sick and tired of hearing that Boise is just not good,” Altieri said. “You guys have got to be sick and tired of it. I just took the job, and I’m sick and tired of people telling me that. … I’m just trying to light a fire under these kids and let them know it’s OK to not be OK with not being good. You guys can turn this around.”
This story was originally published December 31, 2019 at 5:12 PM.
