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Mosher archives
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Downsizing the mind in tough times
I don’t know if it’s a good thing to continually self-analyze. But like an annual physical, I’m checking and rechecking myself to find out what makes me tick and what I can do to make myself tick better.
It’s a good thing, I think. But it sure as heck makes for some long nights when I discover something about myself that I don’t like and then spend hours tossing and turning in bed worrying about it and trying to figure out how to fix it.
Lately, I’ve been checking myself a lot. The end result is that I’m beginning to think I’m suffering burnout, and not just on sports but everything. Maybe I’m downsizing my mind again, and withdrawing from all the issues that swirl about me. Or maybe it’s just because I’m getting old. I'm about 105 right now.
Whatever it is, I get tired of the rehashing that goes on in news. It’s not enough to be hammered by bad news – bad news sells – but to have it echo in your ears over and over again is way too much. I can guarantee what sports talk radio will be about on any given day by reading the news the night before. Talking heads pick up on whatever is topical and run with it, over and over.
I don’t need to hear about it over and over.
I’m also getting tired of news reports that suggest everything but the real reason why the Washington basketball team has struggled at times, especially on the road. I don’t have the reason for the road woes. That one is a mystery to me. But I do know why they seem so good one night and so bad the next.
The biggest reason is there is no true leader on the Huskies. When Jon Brockman left, the Huskies became leaderless. And it’s tough to win when a team doesn’t have one. Quincy Pondexter is supposed to be the leader, but he’s not. He’s too soft and disappears when faced with a tough defense.
Second, is the Huskies don’t have an outside game. There is no true shooter on the team. So teams can pack it in and make it extremely tough to get points inside.
Third, Isaiah Thomas is an extreme example of an “I” person. He’s always looking to dribble into the tall trees and put up shots that defy scientific logic. He makes some of them, it’s true, but just the act of playing one-on-one basketball destroys team chemistry and any ability for the Huskies to develop some sort of game plan.
The Huskies, you may have noticed, play better without him.
Fourth, Venoy Overton is a defensive pest. But he’s more like a gnat then a great defensive player. I’ve seen the 5-11 Overton get brutalized. He takes way too many chances and when he fails on those chances he looks foolishly bad. I will admit he’s fun to watch, because like a gnat he can be frustrating to an opponent. But gnats can be beaten. You just overwhelm them with brutal power.
You can tell by this that I’ve watched too much Husky basketball for someone who is downsizing. Husky basketball is about all I watch, however. I may gear up once the NCAA tournament starts. I especially like the early rounds when the gnats of college basketball get a chance to have a whack at the big powers. Sometimes the gnats, like Overton, win.
Don’t ask me how the Mariners will do this season. I covered them for over 20 years and spent another seven keeping score for their home games and all that does is make me a relic, a thing of the past, but no expert.
I still like Hall of Fame manager Earl Weaver’s approach to major league baseball. Hit those three-run home runs, but that definitely is not what the 2010 M’s are about. This team is built for pitching and defense. Not that it’s bad to depend on pitching and defense. Pitching trumps hitting. And good pitching trumps good hitting. But, let’s get real, these M’s have no real power, and I think you need that to win championships.
Look at this way; Cliff Lee could very well take a shutout into late innings and still get beat. The M’s are not going to score many runs and one mistake could make a 2-0 Seattle lead into a 3-2 defeat. Lee might give up just one or two hits and still lose became one of those hits is a big bomb.
Speaking of baseball, its time to put Jeff Weible on the spot. The North Kitsap coach has a powerful squad this spring and if the Vikings don’t contend for a 3A state title, the buck stops with Weible. So blame him.
I’m joking, of course. There is no telling what will happen when teenagers take the field. But if there were a favorite to score some runs and make a run at the Olympic League title, it wouldn’t be untrue to say the Vikings have a good shot at it.
As I think of all the things that bother me in this old age, I look to our nation’s capital and wonder why our elected legislators can’t work together for the good of the country instead of bickering across party lines and catering to special interests. Doesn’t it make sense that the first priority is the country, and not party or big money?
Apparently not. And I find that not only sad, but also terrible. It’s why I don’t have confidence in anybody anymore in office.
The solution to all of this is to make elected office a volunteer position with no special perks attached. People like Norm Dicks would not make public office a career job, that’s for sure. The turnover this proposal would generate would be a welcome relief from those who get rich holding public office for eternity while the rest of us struggle to survive.
As part of my downsizing, I made a conscious effort not to get wrapped up in the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. I didn’t read but just one or two stories covering the games, and watched none of the activities. I guess this is all un-American, but it’s too much for my overloaded mine.
Part of that reluctance to partake of the Olympics stems from my young days growing up in New York state where it got brrrrrr cold. I can remember weeks at a time when the temperature stayed under zero. The snow would crust and you could walk on it. The Allegheny River would freeze over and we would play ice hockey with tin cans and hockey sticks made out of branches.
My memories include my mother putting winter clothes on me to the point when I walked out the door I was like a mummy; walking stiff legged with big rubber boats. Those boots would fill up with crusted snow and it wouldn’t take but an hour and I would be back in the house, being helped out of my mummy clothes. Then I would sit on the hot-water radiator for another hour in a sometimes-futile attempt to get the blood flowing again.
So, yeah, I have little interest of revisiting those chilly days, even if it is by remote control and a TV. Besides, I’m downsizing, and I don’t need the extra info flowing through my already crowded and cluttered and aging mind.
One thing I discovered about myself in my recent self-analysis is the tendency to be loyal to a fault, and to dislike changes. Sometimes I think that characteristic is good and sometimes I think it’s bad.
I mention it because as of July 1 changes will be coming to the Kitsap Family YMCA as a result of it being merged into the Tacoma Pierce Kitsap YMCA family. It had to happen because the Kitsap Y was going to be hurt by the building of the new Silverdale Y, which also is part of the new group.
Because I don’t like change and am loyal, I was hoping to hit the mega lottery and donate 50 million or so to the Kitsap Y so it could complete with the Silverdale Y. But since that didn’t happen, the Y will soon be different, even if those who signed the papers signaling the merger say it won’t.
If the changes are great, it will probably destroy for me a safe haven, where I could go and refresh my mind and, sometimes, my body, and feel peaceful doing it. I hope the changes won’t affect that, but I think they will.
But that’s life. Nothing stays the same. I don’t like it sometimes, but that’s the way it is. I probably won’t be around for too much longer, anyway, so it really doesn’t matter. I’m 105 nearing 106 and the end of the tunnel is closer than the beginning.
In the meantime, I’ll keep on keeping on.
Have a great month.
You are loved.
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RAMBLINGS
FEBRUARY 26 --- Until Mark McGwire comes clean and admits that he took illegal drugs not only to boost healing time but to enhance his performance in baseball, I will refuse to vote him into the Hall of Fame. I'm not sure that if he hadn't done drugs he would have been good enough to make the Hall. But as long as he continues in denial, than he will never get my vote.
February 26 --- All that is needed to know is that the Taliban gleefully announces that, yes, is was us that killed those innocent bystanders in the public market. while the U.S. announces it was sorry for killing innocent civilians by mistake while fighting those same Taliban with both hands tied behind its back.
February 23 --- FDR once said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. This was said during the Great Depression. There also was this story of that time: A man sold hotdogs on the streets of New York and was so successful at it he was able to send his son to Harvard. The son was there for a couple years studying economics and came home for a spring break to find his dad still selling hot dogs and still making a big profit. He was agast. He had learned in economics that because the country was in a depression it was difficult to get work and stay in business. He told his dad, "You can't sell hot dogs. We're in a depression." The father, assuming his son knew what he was talking about because he was going to Harvard and studying economics, quickly closed up and quit selling hot dogs. Soon, the man didn't have enough money to afford to keep his son at Harvard. So soon enough both father and son were homeless. The lesson, as FDR said, is the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. So get with it.
February 23 ---Why is everybody except Sarah Palin afraid to hit Iran? Now, I don't want to be associated with Palin, but she is right on this one. The later the world waits to do something about Iran's Nuclear ambition, the tougher it will be to do anything. A nuclear Iran will be very dangerous. So why wait? Do something.
February 22 --- I have watched this for years no and I'm still stunned that in girls high school basketball more often than not there is a lack of agressiveness when it comes to scrambling for loose basketballs on the floor. I saw a playoff game the other day in which one team's players would stand around and watch a ball bounce between them without making any effort for several seconds to go for it. It may have cost them a serious chance to win the game. Why don't girls react quickly in those situations? I seen girls on other teams do it, but it's few and far between. It's frustrating to watch. Maybe it's coaching. I don't know.
February 22 --- I just realized that I have enough staples to last another lifetime, and more. How I got to that point is beyond me.
February 22 --- Call me cynical, but Tiger Wood's apology is the first step in getting back in the good graces of those corporations who have helped make him the first athlete to make a billion dollars. You can't change a tiger's stripes with some silly rehab or a phony apology, but you can start smoothing the transition back into playing golf and making another billion by acting like you are sorry. First of all, he doesn't have to apology to anybody. Not me. What did he do to me? It's not my call what he does away from home. It's not my concern what he does on the golf course. I can spot a phony a mile away, though, and this 13 and half-minute thing he did was a public display of phoniness.
February 22 --- We are fighting a war in Afghanistan in which American soldiers are being killed or maimed and we are doing it with two hands tied behind our back. This is crazy. Why do we do such stupid things? Bad things happen in wars. Civilians get killed, homes destroyed. That's why it is called war. We need to untie the hands of our soldiers and let them do what they do best.
January 13 --- It is impossible to know why bad things always happen in Haiti. I feel for the loss this earthquake dealt it. It's tough to go to sleep at night knowing the death and destruction that has occured there. I have a sister-in-law who goes there every year on a mission. Now the mission is more important than usual. I expect she might go there soon.
January 12--- After years of research and study on the topic, I have finally concluded legendary Bremerton basketball coach Ken Wills killed himself in 1962 because he thought his world had ended. According to a person who spoke with Wills the day after he was informed he was no longer the West Bremerton HS coach, but was now the coach at Olympic College, he was extremely depressed over the situation. He came to this person's house and was as low mentally as this person ever saw him. He said he wasn't wanted at West (the administration and some of the educators there wanted him gone because he had gotten too big) and he wasn't wanted at OC (players there wanted another guy who was the assistant there). Wills had created a Hall of Fame career at West and going to OC was a step backwards in his mind. And now they didn't even want him there. That leaves only one question, which will always be left unanswered: Why didn't Wills' wife Ta leave work on the fatal day (a Monday) and share lunch as usual with her husband at their home? She must have known his poor state of mine and if there was one day she needed to be home with him at lunch, this was the day. Instead, she stayed at work and had lunch with her friends. A few years ago, Ta told me that she stayed at work and had lunch with friends because of the bad weather. Indeed, the weather was bad that day, according to weather reports from back then. But the person who Wills spoke to told me that Ta always walked from home to downtown Bremerton no matter how bad the weather. Why didn't she on this day? And, this person said, Ta must have known that Ken was thinking of killing himself. He had the whole weekend to discuss it with her. Maybe, this person said, Ta thought she might be in danger, that he might turn the gun on her, too. No matter. She didn't go home and now she is gone. When she died a year or so ago she took with her the answer.
January 12 --- The Washington Husky basketball team is in bad shape. It doesn't have a consistent outside shooter and can't rebound, can't defend, doesn't have a pure point guard or a good floor leader and doesn't play well together. Other then that .....
January 12 --- If you get a chance, watch a Bremerton High School basketball game for the joy of watching the best player in the area. That would be Jarell Flora, who has taken his game to another level this season. He's definitely a college prospect. Flora can shoot the three, can play above the rim, rebounds well, handles the ball, and is a leader on the court. And he never seems to lose his poise.
January 12 --- I read Larry Stone's piece on Mark McGwire today in the Seattle Times and agree with what he says that the Big Bopper failed to come completely clean. McGwire continues to insist he used steroids for health purposes only. That has to be a lie, because he would be the first to know the additional power he got from their use. So it's nice that McGwire owned up to his use of steriods, but he still has a way to go. I wish there was a half-vote for the Hall Of Fame, because I would give it to McGwire. Unfortunately, there isn't, so I will continue to weigh my options this year as I wait my 2011 vote. At this point, though, I can't see myself voting for McGwire. But we will see ....
January 11 --- Christian friends forward emails that plead with me to send them on to 10 friends so as to help others, and in return me. The problem is that the mailings only get offered to fellow Christians who are already "saved." The better good would be to send them to non-believers, but because I believe that would offend them more than it would help them, I don't. It's the same in church attendance: only the believers go, when the good thing would be for the church to extend out to the non-believers who need the most help.
January 11 --- So President Barack Obama might levy a fee on banks to help recover some costs from the bailout. That's about the most stupid thing available for him. Why? Because the banks will turn around and charge depositors a similar fee to recoup the money they will have to pay the government. So the taxpayers will wind up getting stuck again.
January 11 --- Well, well, Mark McGwire finally admits what everybody knew. Good for him. It took him five years, but better late than never. Maybe Barry Bonds will get the message and come clean, too, than us writers who vote on Hall of Fame inductions can get back to the serious business of deciding who to vote for. I have not voted for McGwire in the four years he's been eligible because of possible steroid use. Now that I know for sure, and now that he has come clean, I will rethink whether to vote for him the next time around. That will be a lengthy process, because I will have to determine what he would have done without the extra help. One thing for sure, McGwire will be able to sleep better now that he's spoken the truth.
January 11--- It must be nice to be a football owner like Paul Allen of the Seattle Seahawks and you can buy anything your heart desires, including Pete Carroll. I'm not sure, though, whether this hire is the right one. It is the right move, but maybe not the right choice. Jim Mora was not good. He didn't have the umph needed to lead and when his players found that out they dropped out. Carroll is a leader that Mora was not, but his place in history may not be as high as some people think it will be. Some of his game-day decisions this year at USC weren't the best ones and if he brings that to Seattle, the Seahawks still will be in trouble. The good thing is that if Carroll doesn't work out, and eventually he won't because that's the nature of the beast, the Seahawks have an owner who can afford to make another mistake.
January 11 --- It would not surprise me if Olympic College men's basketball coach Billy Landram calls it quits after this season. Being a CC coach is a thankless job that costs way more in time and energy than what you get paid. Landram has been the coach for seven years and that's about as long as the "itch" lasts.
The return of the man and his pipe, and the Green Hornet
When Bill Bumerton left town on a secret government mission years ago he left his Hudson Green Hornet parked in my driveway. I hadn’t heard hide nor hair from him since and was about getting ready to sell the old Green Hornet when, what do you know, the mystery man himself showed up.
As usual, he was full of himself.
“Well, I see you have turned into an old man,” said Bumerton, after walking into the house without knocking one day late last month. “Of course, you always have been an old man, so I shouldn’t be surprised.”
Where did you come from, I asked?
“None of your business, old man,” Bumerton shot back, filling our living room with smoke from that ever-present pipe of his.
Can’t you at least say hello, and it would be good if you didn’t smoke in the house, I said.
“You’re all smoke and mirrors anyway,” Bumerton retorted. “So what is the difference?”
Hey, really, where have you been? You haven’t written or phoned or anything. I was about ready to get rid of your Green Hornet.
“If I tell you what I’ve been doing, I will have to shoot you,” Bumerton said. “Which might not be a bad idea, anyway. So don’t ask and I won’t tell. What the Sam Hill do you care for anyway? I need my keys, dumbo. You do have them, don’t you? Or did you lose them along with your mind.
“We need to go for a ride”
It felt weird riding in the Green Hornet again. I kept it in shape by driving it back and forth in the driveway once in a while, but to get back in the passenger seat with Bum driving, and with smoke curling out from his pipe, seemed like a pipe dream because he’s been gone so long I forgotten what riding with him was like.
Bum is a former fighter pilot who I thought had retired a long time ago. But about seven or eight years ago he suddenly left one day, leaving me in charge of the Green Hornet, but not much else. I knew nothing of where he disappeared to, and was eager to learn what he had done and where.
But all I got was smoke.
“Old man,” Bum said, “all you need to know is how to turn on your computer, because that is about all your are good for. Leave the rest to us big boys. You just worry about those Marinaros of yours. I read on the way over here that they picked up this bad boy, or is it bat boy?”
You mean Milton Bradley?
“Whoever, Bum said. “I understand he’s been with a zillion teams in the last few years, that he’s punched out more than a few guys. He’s somebody I might like. How did your punch and Judy Marinaros come to get this wacko? He’d be a better fit with us in Afghanistan. We would win a few battles with him charging in the front lines.”
What do you know about Mr. Bradley and the Mariners? You have been gone to who knows where for a long time. And, hey, watch out for that pothole.
“I don’t care about your Marinaros,” Bum said as he steered the Hornet around the latest hole in the street. “I find it amusing that your friends over there are still clueless and don’t have the slightest idea of how to put a power team together. They must have taken lessons from you.”
You haven’t changed, I said, and then I began quizzing Bumerton, trying to discover what he’s been doing since I last saw him. But getting through to Bum is like sawing a log with a kitchen knife; you don’t get far.
“You think too much,” Bum said as he wheeled the Hornet up to the Red Apple parking lot in the North Perry Mall.
I asked Bum what we were doing here and, of course, he blew a big puff of smoke in my face. Just what I needed, I thought, as I used my hands to wave the smoke away. Nice to have Bum back, but boy, I forgot how difficult he could be. Being a big shot means never having to answer to guys like me, and I certainly wasn’t getting any answers.
“What happened to that basketball team that you used to have,” Bum suddenly said as he opened the door to get out.
The Sonics? Some interloper from big oil in Oklahoma came to town and stole them out from under us West Coast coffee drinkers. They are playing now in Oklahoma City where the whiskey runs almost as deep as oil.
“Wow,” Bum said, knocking the fire out from his pipe. “It wouldn’t have happened if I would have been here. Not that I liked your team, anyway, but nobody takes anything of mine. If you got any money on you, hand it over. I doubt you got much, but what the Sam Hill, it’s your turn to buy and you better have some.”
I guess there is no free lunch, I thought, as I fumbled around for the few dollars I did have. I handed them over and just like old times, Bum didn’t say anything. He just grabbed them and grumbled how much a cheapskate I still was.
“You better get yourself a job,” Bum said in disgust. “You can’t ride in the Hornet without some gas. You probably are still writing, aren’t you? If you call that writing. It’s mostly mumble.”
I thought to myself as we walked into Garguile’s Red Apple that I might not like having Bum around again. At the least, I have to get used to him saying what is on his mind without any filter. But, on the other hand, I find some comfort knowing he’s here
Bum quickly purchased some scented soap and used the money I gave him to pay for it.
Scented soap?
“You bet,” Bum said, “I got to douse you in it because you sure stink.”
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Bainbridge defender could be nice-guy spy
By Terry Mosher
Editor, Sports Paper
Westsound FC coach Mike Meherg has seen plenty of good players and good people in his considerable experience in the game of soccer. He can now add Ben Van Drunen to that list.
Van Drunen, a senior at Bainbridge High School, is a left-footed defender who is an exceptional leader and skilled player on the pitch, both with his school team and with Westsound FC’s U-18 team coached by former Kitsap Pumas coach John Wedge.
“He’s one of the nicest players you could find,” says Meherg, who coached Van Drunen for years with Westsound before Wedge took over the U-18 team. “He’s well mannered, good natured and supremely confident. He plays exceedingly hard on the field and is the team leader on the U-18 team.”
Wedge echoed Meherg.
“He’s just a quality person through and through, but also a very good soccer player,” says Wedge whose U-18 team was in the thick of State Cup battle in late February. “His teammates naturally respect him, and he does all the good things leaders do.”
One of the good things about Van Drunen’s soccer skills is the fact that he can use his left foot. The same thing that makes a basketball player more valuable – the ability to use the left and right hand equally well – also makes a soccer player more valuable if they can also use the left foot as well if not better than the right.
“His ability to use his left foot shores up the left side of the field,” says Meherg.
“I’m tempted to say I score as much with my left foot as my right,” says Van Drunen. “When it comes to power, I can hit it a lot harder with my left. I’m right-handed, so I don’t know why that is.”
Much of his soccer career, Van Drunen has been a defender, although Wedge is moving him to the midfield where he can attack more.
“He’s got (good) speed, excellent ball control and he can defend and can attack,” says Wedge. “He’s played at the back (defender) for most of this season, but because of his skills going forward I want him to get more involved in midfield. “
Van Drunen comes from an interesting family. His father Guido Van Drunen is a forensic accountant for an international firm (KPMG) that investigates business fraud for white-collar criminal offenses.
“They gather evidence to take to court,” says wife Cathy Van Drunen.
Guido Van Drunen was born in the Netherlands and is a passionate soccer player whose love of the game rubbed off on sons Ben and Martin, an eighth-grader at Woodward Middle School.
“Guido has always been passionate about soccer,” says Cathy Van Drunen. “His grandmother would stay up until three in the morning to watch soccer. In Europe they are much more passionate about soccer. It’s not just a sport but a passion.”
“He got me hooked pretty early,” says Ben Van Drunen. “I started playing in small rec leagues while we lived in Michigan. I didn’t tryout for a travel team until I was 11.
Ben and Martin were both born in New Zealand and because of that have New Zealand citizenship, which means they are Kiwis. And because their father is a citizen of the Netherlands (he got his American citizenship five years ago) and their mother is a citizen of the United States they are citizens of those countries as well.
Before coming to West Sound three years ago, the family lived in Midland, Mich., for nine years.
Cathy Van Drunen is from South Holland, Ill, which is near Chicago. What is odd is that South Holland is a Dutch community and used to dress up in Dutch clothes for celebrations in the city. Now she is married to a Dutch man.
The connection with Europe where soccer is king certainly has driven Ben Van Drunen to play the sport as well as he does. The Bainbridge Island Youth Soccer Club recently named him Bainbridge High School’s varsity soccer player of 2009.
When Van Drunen was 14 he went with a friend (Sebastian Karl) to Spain for a three-week Spanish immersion soccer camp in Madrid that attracted kids from all around the world. Campers were not allowed to speak anything but Spanish. Part of the day was given over to classes in Spanish and the rest to soccer.
“It had Spanish language classes in the morning, soccer in the morning and afternoon and at night,” says Van Drunen. “You had to speak Spanish. You had to speak to the referees in Spanish, which got kind of frustrating.”
Van Drunen will do some more traveling soon. He has been accepted to George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He withdrew his application for American University, also in D.C., when the learned he had been accepted at George Washington.
A 3.65 grade-point student, Van Drunen choose George Washington because it offers internships at the FBI and CIA.
“He loves being in the middle of a city and is considering working for the FBI or CIA,” says Cathy Van Drunen. “And he can get internships and try it out and see if it works for him.”
Van Drunen’s influence to that kind of work again was driven by his dad.
“My dad introduced me to some people he works with who have been working with the FBI and Secret Service,” Van Drunen says. “That kind of work is something that really interests me.”
Unlike his father who spends a lot of time in the office, Van Drunen says he would like to be a field agent, maybe for the FBI, or maybe a super spy for the CIA.
“I feel a little cheesy sometimes when I try to explain to people the basis of what it is I want to be,” he says. “But (being a super spy), that is the gist of it.”
Skogstad turns the ball over at North Mason
The year was 1977 and Jimmy Carter had become President, Elvis Presley was found dead in a bathroom at Graceland, the Yankees won the World Series, Oakland took the Super Bowl, the Montreal Canadians skated to the Stanley Cup and Larry Skogstad became a basketball coach.
The Yankees are still winning World Series titles and up until Saturday night Skogstad was still a basketball coach.
Steilacoom ended North Mason’s run at the 2A state basketball tournament by one game Saturday and while Bulldog fans were empting out of the gym at Foss High School, Skogstad was informing his players what he had told school athletic director Mark Swofford a week earlier; he was stepping down as their coach after 11 seasons in Belfair.
“This group is a good group to go out with,” said Skogstad, who is 59 and will continue to teach fitness and health at North Mason, probably until retirement age at 65. “They are extremely coachable and gentlemen. These are the type of kids you would want in your home at any time. I’m going to miss them. I was really hoping for their sake to go to state this year. That would have been really awesome for the seniors. But each of the four seniors did get to go to state last year (when the Bulldogs took fifth).”
Skogstad went to high school at Clarkston, played college ball at Lewis-Clark State College for two years and then spent two years working in a steel mill on Harbor Island. He returned to college and played two more years at Northwest University and got his degree and masters from Seattle Pacific.
He began coaching the junior varsity at Mountlake Christian (Mountlake Terrace) in 1977 and through various coaching stops coached all three of his sons – Ryan, Shawn and Brett, a North Mason senior who was the team’s floor leader and top scorer for all four of his years.
Ryan was co-MVP of the state tournament in 1996 when he helped Ferndale to a fourth-place finish and played college ball at Seattle Pacific. Shawn had a successful high school career at Bellingham (Squalicum) and played at Northwest University.
Brett is now looking for a college with the help of his mother (Linda) and father. One of the reasons Skogstad resigned was to have the time to watch Brett play college ball. Skogstad had juggled his coaching gig with the parental responsibility one year to attend 21 of Ryan’s SPU games and 14 of Shawn’s Northwest University games and now he and Linda are preparing to do the same with Brett.
“It was something,” Skogstad said of that crazy schedule. “Then when our little guy (Brett) was playing pee wee we had our hands full. But looking back I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It was a fun time.”
The first head job he got was at King’s in north Seattle for the 1978-79 season. He stayed nine years, taking King’s to seven state tournaments. They finished second in 1981, losing the title game to Jake Mayberry’s Lynden team 53-51 in overtime. King’s finished third once, fourth twice and eighth once. His overall record at King’s was 201-36.
Next was a two-year stop at East Valley of Spokane (14-29), then two more years at Fife (32-17) and five at Ferndale (62-52) where his last two teams – son Ryan’s last two years ‑ made the state tournament. Jason Terry and Franklin blew out Ferndale 76-43 in the 1995 tournament opener (it was the first state game for Ferndale in 31 years). The next year the Golden Eagles finished fourth, losing only to O’Dea, which took third.
He had been an assistant for three years in Bellingham when good friend and college basketball teammate Mark Flateau, then the principal at North Mason, called him in the middle of his Pacific Northwest History class to ask him if he was interested in the head job. Three weeks later he had the job and 11 years and a 141-111 record later Skogstad is now out of the game.
His 29-year career head-coaching record of 450-245 puts him 19th on the all-time coaching list in the state.
“ It would be really fun to go to that 500 (win) mark, but like I have said before I’m not that hung up on records,” Skogstad said.
He still is open to coaching in the future. Once it’s in the blood, it’s hard to get rid of it and if a college assistant’s job opens up, especially where Brett will be, he could jump at it. He has no desire to be a head college coach, though.
“My wife is really happy to get her husband back, finally,” Skogstad says. “I’m not saying I won’t go back into it, to be honest. Right now it’s time for me to take a break. Hopefully I will enjoy it. But I know I’ll go through withdraw and say, ‘Oh my goodness, what did I step down for? ‘
“I really will have withdrawal on game night. There will be a time when I go, ‘What will I do?’ But our son (Brett) is passionate about playing some college ball and I hope to be able to go most of his games.”
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