Jim Clifton

Jim Clifton was a star athlete and tremendous basketball coach for Puyallup High School. Born in Puyallup, Wash., in 1942, Clifton graduated from Puyallup High School in 1960, but not before lettering eight times in three different sports. Clifton lettered three times each in football and baseball and twice in basketball. He played quarterback and punter on the gridiron, guard on the hardwood and pitcher on the baseball diamond.

At Central Washington University, Jim earned four letters each in basketball and baseball, and was inducted into the CWU Athletic Hall of Fame in 1989. In four years at Central, he scored 1160 points and shot 78.4 percent from the charity stripe. He scored 23 points in a 1965 NAIA National Tournament opening game after helping lead his team to the Evergreen Conference championship. He earned All-Evergreen Conference first-team honors in 1964 for his work on the pitching mound, compiling a 1.88 earned run average and leading the league in strikeouts.

After his playing career ended, Clifton embarked on a 39-year coaching run that left him as the winningest coach in Puyallup High School history. He won 271 games at PHS, leading the team to eight state tournaments and 15 winning seasons in 19 years. He spent four seasons as an assistant coach at the University of Puget Sound and finished his coaching career as an assistant at Life Christian Academy in Tacoma, Wash. In August of 2008, Clifton officially retired as the athletic director at Life Christian.