Denny Lewis was the Napa High School men’s basketball coach from 1974 to 2002, 28 years of directing the Blue and Gold program. His teams won 376 games during his coaching tenure and he has had a positive influence on hundreds of athletes who have represented Napa High during this period. An outstanding athlete in his own right, Lewis is a member of the Abraham Lincoln High School Athletic Hall of Fame and the San Francisco High School Athletic Hall of Fame. Lewis’ 1990-91 and 1991-92 teams won MEL championships and had a combined record of 43-14. 15 times during his tenure, Napa teams have gone to the CIF Sac-Joaquin Section playoffs and the 1991-92 team won the section title. Lewis also coached track and field events off and on during a 20-year period at Napa High. In 1994, Lewis picked a first and second team of All-Star Napa basketball teams during the first 20 years of his tenure at Napa High. With the induction of Mike Warrington in 2004, seven of the nine players on Lewis’s two teams who are eligible for selection in the Napa High School Athletic Hall of Fame have been inducted. The others are Matt (Moon) Bailey, David Burns, Greg Johnson, Craig Lundeen, Rich Harbison and Steve Clerici. Lewis’s impact on his players’ lives both on and off the court illustrate the type of coach was he was. Lewis says, “Really, the most important thing was probably, my first-year player comes back and I go to his wedding and his christening. I get to know what his life is about…what kind of impact I had on these players, what they are doing. That is the most important thing.”
