If you’ve ever wondered why Ron Clark has such an awesome beard, there’s a story: when he was scuba diving in Mexico the instructor told him he should shave his face because the mask would not work as well. So he did. But without the beard, he was told he looked like Darth Vader without a mask. Now he rocks it every day.

Clark is the head of the videography department, assistant coach for the men’s soccer team, and the head coach for the women’s soccer team at Rocky. He grew up mostly in Denver and Littleton, then moved to Fort Collins in 9th grade and attended RMHS as a freshman in 1980.

Clark had a short and sweet role as a student wrestler while at Rocky before finding a heart murmur, indicating an aortic valve issue. When he went to the doctor he was told he needed to stop wrestling.  

Clark is the youngest of five kids; he has three brothers and a sister. If you ask him, he’d say he still stays very close with them. Growing up, Clark wanted to be independent, “My parents were not very involved, but they had high expectations for me. I can see why they were not very involved, because they had four other children to focus on and I was the youngest.”

He attended CSU after finishing high school, but applied to MIT, Stanford, and School of Mines. He was accepted into all of them, but he could only afford Colorado State University. “I started majoring in computer science, and CSU had a great program for that; then switched to an English major so it did not matter, but I had fun at CSU.”

When wanting a second opinion on his heart murmur, he saw a doctor who told him the best thing he could do is stay fit. He started to find interest in biking. He was working at a bike store in his third year of college and thought it would be fun to bike so he started and fell in love. He still bikes on the roads of Fort Collins. He does not think that going to CSU is the reason why he stayed in Fort Collins; he stayed here because he loves the people and the environment.

“I think I always wanted to be a teacher,” he said. He wanted to be the class that everyone wanted to take and he likes that he teaches independent elective classes, offering students the opportunity to work at their own pace.

It is easy to judge the video teacher with the long beard, but once you get to know him, you may find that there’s a lot more than you see!