When scheduling their second cruise to Alaska this summer, Wayne and Judy Schneider made sure the itinerary included Sitka.

Wayne, the retired Tracy High football coaching legend, had a special reason for this choice. He knew that Scott McAdams, a former lineman on his 1987 Sac-Joaquin Section championship team, was mayor of Sitka.

Alerted by Mauricio Martin, another member of the team, of Adams’ location and position, Wayne e-mailed Scott and told him he would be arriving in late June.

“I told him I wanted a first-class tour from the mayor,” Wayne said.

When the ship pulled into the Sitka harbor, McAdams was waiting for the Schneiders and indeed gave them an insider’s view of the small (8,600 residents) city, which is accessible only by ship or plane.

After Wayne mentioned his visit to me, I talked to McAdams briefly this week. The former Bulldogs standout is in a two-year term as directly-elected mayor, dealing with the myriad of issues that mayors always seem to be involved in.

He said he played for Wayne in the 1987 championship football season and then the following year before graduating from Tracy High in 1989.

In his senior year, McAdams, a 6-foot-4, 265-pound tackle, was all-Northern California and played in the North-Side Shrine All-Star Game in Los Angeles with Mike Boyd, a Bulldogs tackle.

He played football for a year at Sacramento State, but then left school to be a commercial fisherman in Alaska, where he grew up before moving to the Tracy area while he was in the eighth grade. His mother was a native of the Byron area.

Scott later returned to college and earned a degree in education. In 2000, he became operations manager for the state museum in historically rich Sitka — once the administrative capital of colonial Russian America. He is now an assistant coordinator for a community school.

Scott entered the world of elective office by serving six years on the local school board, including a stint as president of the Alaska School Boards Association.

He was elected Sitka’s mayor in October 2008 to a two-year term, but doubts he’ll seek a second term this fall.

So how are thing going these days in Sitka? Not bad at all, he replied.

“We have been fortunate not to feel the impact of the recession as many cities in the U.S. have,” he said. “Tourism is down a bit, but commercial fishing, our largest employer, remains in good shape. Unemployment is close to 7 percent, and that’s not bad at all.”

Sounds like Sitka — and its onetime Bulldog mayor — are doing quite well, indeed.

• Sam Matthews, Tracy Press publisher emeritus, can be reached at 830-4234 or by e-mail at shm@tracypress.com.