TERRY MOSHER
Driving down Highway 3 this morning I felt like I was driving into a fog-tunnel with occasional clearing that allowed blue sky to peak through. As I approached Poulsbo area the fog finally let go and the tunnel disappeared and wonderful blue skies prevailed.
It was an omen to what lie ahead at Kiana Lodge, a beautiful showcase of the Suquamish Tribe and Port Madison Enterprises that on this day (Jan. 25) opened its doors to the 26th Annual Kitsap Sports Hall of Fame Banquet and induction ceremonies.
This may have been one of the classiest of the 26 classes that have been inducted since the first one in 1987. Amid a plate of salmon, barbeque chicken, vegetables and dinner roll with a small raspberry inspired desert and a no-host bar, the host organization – Kitsap Athletic Roundtable – led by the remarkably gifted master of ceremonies, Dan Haas, presented the class of three teams and 17 assorted athletes and coaches.
I discovered you can learn more than you want to know along with small details that might never leak out unless it’s at an event like this. I didn’t know, for example, that you needed a local tribe member to show you the way to the lodge when you are a white man bungling directions such as I did.
So this is a shoutout to the guy in the truck with his young son that graciously said, “Follow me.”
Another shoutout is deserved to the teenage tribe member who warmly showed me where to park amid the bushes. All that was missing was a golf cart to shuttle me to the lodge about 100 yards down toward the shoreline with BainbridgeIsland beckoning in the background.
The first inductee to draw speaking honors was Jim LaMont, longtime basketball referee who received the Dick Todd Officials Award. For those of you who don’t know, Todd, who died in 2009 from cancer, was a beautiful human being who had a hard time saying anything bad about anybody or anything, although that didn’t stop him from standing up when he felt things were not right.
For sure, Todd’s death has made our area a lot less rich in terms of world-class loving personality.
LaMont humorously views his duty as a prime-time high school basketball referee as a “burr under the saddle” of coaches, who are notorious for disagreeing with calls that go against their teams.
He also introduced to the audience of about 400 people a new term for Sheridan Park Gym in east Bremerton (the gym is where a lot of organized recreational basketball has been played over the past thousand years or so).
“Purgatory Central,” he said.
I think he was referring to being assigned to officiate adult men’s basketball games there. It’s a little like walking sometimes into a war zone and I know for a fact that in the middle 1970s that referees from the local association were ready to boycott the place unless the BremertonParks and Recreation Department cleaned up the attitudes and play of the combatants.
The late Lindy Brown, a character if there every was one, was a well-know referee back then and he treated Purgatory Central and its combatants to an often silent whistle along with a smile right up to the night one of those combatants chased him out of the gym with a tire iron.
Former North Kitsap basketball coach Jim Harney was in the audience and LaMont quipped, “Harney is still trying to teach me how to get the traveling call right.”
Rodeo announcer Randy Corley talked about his 26-year career and how great the local rodeo and its support people are. The Kitsap County Stampede Cowpokes have been the backbone for the local rodeo during fair week in August each year (except for the couple years they were sidelined during a dispute with the county) and Corley and the Cowboys that compete in the rodeo have always been extremely appreciative of their efforts.
Corey had a term for that.
“There is the (Seahawks’) Legion of Boom and there is the Legion of Rowdies,” is the way Corey labeled the Cowpokes.
Insiders will have gotten that.
LongtimeSouthKitsapSchool District coach Ernie Hahn put together some words that might fit the millions of coaches who take little pay to spend a lot of time from their families to suffer through the highs and lows of the coaching profession.
“Kids,” Hahn began,” are like dope, they get in your blood and you can’t get them out.”
Ted George was the spokesman for the 1984 Suquamish Softball team that was inducted and after a lengthy speech in which he praised everybody at least once, he began to sound like the late Howard Cosell.
But he wasn’t.
“I am not the Indian Howard Cosell,” he confessed.
But he was, at least temporarily, a thief.
“You took my notes,” a panicked Haas shouted to George as he moved to his seat. “I’m out of business.”
They were returned and the program restarted.
The most poignant moments came when the famous 95-year-old mountain climber and painter and author, Dee Molenaar, spoke of his love for the mountains, not because they posed a competitive threat and he needed to climb them, no matter how high or how dangerous, but because he truly loves being in them.
“It’s the experience of being in them, that’s why I was in the mountains,” he said.
Former West Bremerton High School running back John Ross, who fellow inductee Lance McCoy (coach and player with the Bremerton Chuggers soccer team) called the original “Beast Mode,” talked about his cycle of life, from peewee player through college player through being a coach, acquiring Multiple Sclerosis (he’s in a wheelchair) and then acquiring God as his savoir.
Dave Villwock, one of the all-time greats in unlimited hydroplane racing, remembers growing up on a small farm in the Port Orchard area where homes were separated by a mile or more, forcing him and a brother to play countless one-one-one basketball games against each other until the cows came home, as they did day after day, year after year.
But he never played sports at South Kitsap. Instead he turned to racing, finding something that fit him like, well, like a hydroplane.
“I somehow learned to get paid for something I liked to do,” Villwock said.
Then he said something that was the big elephant in the room. A warn and fuzzy elephant.
“Common people can do uncommon things,” he said. “I think that is the magic of sports.”
That is why the class of 2013 inductees into the Kitsap Sports Hall of Fame were inducted. They all found something they loved to do and that they were good at. It is, as Villwock says, the magic of sports.
And as I drove back on Highway 3, back home, the sky could not be bluer, could not be more beautiful. It was a great day.
A great day for all.