Enumclaw High graduate leading South Puget Sound

Enumclaw High graduate Marc Callero led the South Puget Sound Community College men’s basketball team to the U.S. Army/Clark College Holiday Invitational title.

The Clippers’ championship was sealed Dec. 29 with a 73-70 win over host Clark College. It was the third win in the tournament for the Clippers, who beat Portland 76-75 and Centralia 69-68.

Callero, a 1990 EHS graduate who played for coach Bill Hawk, is in his third year as head men’s basketball coach at South Puget Sound in Olympia, Wash. He led the Clippers to a third-place finish in the Western Region and their third Northwest Athletic Association of Community Colleges (NWAACC) tournament appearance last season.

While at Enumclaw, Callero was co-MVP of the Pierce County League and led his team to a 28-1 record. After graduating, he played two years at Highline Community College where he was coached by his brother Joe Callero, the current head men’s basketball coach at Seattle University. He then went to Central Washington University where he was the starting point guard led his team to the NAIA national tournament. He earned his degree in school health education while at Central and taught and coached at Mabton High School in eastern Washington. He then coached at Lake Erie College in Ohio for two years, where he also earned his masters of science in education. He returned to Washington and coached at Foster High School where he inherited a program that had won a total of 11 games in the previous two years. In his first year, Foster went to the state tournament and finished with a 16-8 record. Callero was the assistant coach at Pierce College in Lakewood, Wash., prior to taking the helm at South Puget Sound. In his first year at Pierce he helped lead the team to the NWAACC championship game.