TERRY MOSHER
The Washington State Softball Coaches Association’s All-State teams have been released and three players from Olympic High School were on it. Sadie Chipley was named to the 2A second team and teammates Molly Gates, a shortstop, and Allanah Mitchell, an outfielder, were honorable mention choices.
Faith Schenk of Central Kitsap made the 3A second team as an outfielder and first baseman Jordan Lawrence of South Kitsap made the honorable mention list in 4A.
Port Angeles’ Peyton Rudd was named an honorable mention choice in 2A.
I’m doing a story on the Gene Lobe Rich Heat slowpitch team of the 1960s and early 1970s and along the way I get to listen to the life stories of those involved. Steve Anderson, for example, is a former South Kitsap High School athlete who played baseball two years at Olympic College under the famed Harry “The Hat” Russell and his assistant Henry Muyskens, who was to sports at the college as water is to a duck, indispensible.
Anderson played at OC from 67-68 and then the following two years at Western Washington in Bellingham. He started playing for Lobe in the summer of ’68 and teamed with Butch Miller a year later as middle infielders (Anderson at short and Miller, who had been drafted by the New York Yankees and played briefly in their minor league organization until an injury ended his baseball, played second).
“We got booted out of one tournament in Gig Harbor,” Anderson remembers. His team won the tournament, but other teams complained they were too old and should not have been allowed in the tournament. The players on the team were all supposed to get baseball shoes, but it didn’t happen.
“We didn’t get our shoes,” Anderson laughed.
Anderson was on the first Ed Fisher staff for football at South Kitsap in 1973. He remembers their first big win that got SK under Fisher becoming a major state power.
“We beat (West) Bremerton 28-6 in a foot of mud at SK,” Anderson said.
Bremerton, of course was led by Hall of Fame legend Chuck Semancik, so the victory was sweet to a young staff that also included among others Lyle Ballew, Elton Goodwin and Jack Reischman.
Fisher and his staff turned SK football around because they put in a lot of time and effort.
“We meet with the kids all the time – weekends, Saturday and Sunday,” says Anderson. “We had a C team, which was essentially freshman, and we played five to six junior varsity games, and we got the weights going.”
Anderson just turned 71 and he is in his ninth year of assisting with the North Mason football program. He works with the defensive backs and wide receivers under second-year coach Frank Hepler Jr.
“He’s young,” says Anderson of Hepler. “He just turned 26 but he’s really good. And John Fullington is working with the line. We just got back from the Fife Camp. It was fun for the kids. We stayed overnight.”
Jim Judge (he now wants to be called James) joined Lobe in1968 along with Mike Kendall, probably the best slugging slowpitch player this region has seen. Judge grew up in Navy Yard City a half-block from the Westside Improvement Club on National Avenue and he would spend hours hitting against future Hall of Fame pitcher all of FamPunk Duzenski there.
Judge was kind of the bridge between the original Lobe players and the new and younger players like Anderson, Miller, Kendall, Terry Welling, Charlie Buell, Mike Kluver, Rich Maxwell , Jim Rye and others.
It wasn’t just slowpitch for Judge. He also played on some good recreational basketball teams with people like Rich “Handshake” Hanson, Dave Pemberton, Dave “Coyote” Benedict, Steve Endresen, Brant Gibler and Greg Larson.
Judge was out of work when he got a call in 1977 asking him to interview for an auditor’s job with the state. He had just returned late at night from his team – Pop’s Inn – winning the Washington Recreation Basketball Federation state championship and was jolted awake at 8 in the morning by the phone ringing. He almost didn’t answer the call, but did and was asked if he could be in Olympia at 10 for the interview. He negotiated that back one hour and Judge, a 1961 West Bremerton High Wildcat graduate, got the job he retired from in 2003.
Judge wasn’t done working, however. He was asked by a friend to interview for a position with FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) and wound up working in the aftermath of three hurricanes, including Katrina that practically destroyed New Orleans in August of 2005. He worked 12 hour days six days a week on Katrina in the office of Public Assistance.
H also worked Hurricane Sandy that hit Long Island.
But that’s not all judge has been involved in. He is left handed and has played in left-handed golf tournaments around the world, which gives him and his wife good excuses to travel. The last one they traveled to was in Japan.
Judge now lives in Sun City Grand in Surprise, Az.