Longtime Sandia Prep athletic director, coach MacFarlane, dies at 77

Willie Owens was one of the people to know this impressive fact about Pete MacFarlane:

He ran every day.

“For 11,000 straight days,” Owens said.

That’s what MacFarlane, the beloved former athletic director at Sandia Prep, was doing on Tuesday when he apparently collapsed and died, Owens said.

MacFarlane, who retired as the Sundevils AD in 2017 and who was as much a part of Sandia Prep as anyone who’s ever worked there, was 77 years old.

“It’s tough right now,” said Owens, who took over the Sandia Prep AD position from MacFarlane, “because we lost a brother of ours.”

MacFarlane joined Sandia Prep in 1975. He coached a handful of sports at the private school: boys soccer, boys basketball and volleyball.

He became the Sandia Prep AD in 1976, and during one stretch, he was the AD, plus a head coach of three sports.

“Pete was always in a good mood,” said longtime Sandia Prep boys soccer coach Tommy Smith, who was hired by MacFarlane. “He was a very likeable guy. He never got too stressed out about things, he was just a real easy-going guy to be around.”

And he knew practically everyone who came through Sandia Prep.

“There’s probably not many people that don’t have some connection to Pete through athletics,” Smith said. “The thing is, even after he retired, he was still at Prep. He’d pop in during our classes. He couldn’t stay away. He wanted to be around.”

Owens, who was a longtime former boys basketball coach with the Sundevils, was another coach who was hired while MacFarlane ran the athletic department. He joked that MacFarlane still had keys to the school even after he retired.

“He was always positive,” said Owens, who vacated the Sandia Prep AD position himself earlier this year to move to St. Louis for a new job. “He always liked to share stories about his time as an AD or a volleyball coach, stories about kids he’d come across.”

MacFarlane, who originally was from Philadelphia, was a popular man not just on campus but among other coaches and ADs, both in private and public schools around the state.

“There’s a piece of Sandia Prep that passes with him,” Owens said. “A void that’s going to be tough to fill. He was always there, doing something for Prep.”

That MacFarlane died during one of his runs, Owens said, perhaps was poetic.

“Think about that. He passed,” Owens said, “doing something he loved doing.”

And now Sandia Prep is faced with his death, and the loss of an ally and dear friend.

“What he has done for the countless amount of student-athletes and colleagues and coaches is something that is going to be very hard to duplicate anywhere,” Owens said.

This is what MacFarlane told the Journal in 2017 when he announced his retirement:

“I’m not regretting one second,” he said. “I’m pleased with what I’ve done. We’ve never been on probation, we’ve won that sportsmanship award several times and we have a no-cut policy that I instituted that allowed kids to play sports whereas many other places would not allow that.”

MacFarlane is survived by his wife, Donna, and five children.