{"id":204,"date":"2013-06-08T19:27:24","date_gmt":"2013-06-08T19:27:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=204"},"modified":"2013-06-10T20:25:10","modified_gmt":"2013-06-10T20:25:10","slug":"the-guy-who-says-everyday-is-a-great-day-and-wants-you-to-have-a-great-day-is-retiring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=204","title":{"rendered":"The guy who says everyday is a great day and wants you to have a great day is retiring"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Clary<\/a><\/p>\n

By Terry Mosher<\/p>\n

Editor, Sports Paper<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Four years ago, North Kitsap District School teacher Clary Carlsen ended 35 years of coaching at the middle school, junior high and high school levels to have more time for his growing extended family. Now he is taking the final step \u2013 full retirement.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have 7,914 days in and I have to go to 7,020,\u201d said Carlsen on last Friday (June 7). \u201cThat is 39 years (180 school days a year times 39). My last day is the 17th<\/sup>.\u201d<\/p>\n

His teaching and coaching colleagues couldn\u2019t wait until the last day to honor him. On Thursday (June 6) they presented him with a lawn chair with an umbrella attached to it and on the back of it they had engraved, \u201cWhat a Great Day!\u201d with little fish symbols surrounding it because of his well-known fishing hobby.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought that was pretty cool,\u201d said the man who made teaching and coaching cool to the kids that were privileged to have been in his PE classes or coached by him.<\/p>\n

Carlsen and wife Sandy raised four very athletic boys \u2013 Ben, Jeff, Clary Jr. and Chris, and all of them got a double dose of his influence, first as a dad and second as teacher and coach as they came through the NK school system.<\/p>\n

And they all have heard thousands of times the words that have made Carlsen famous: \u201cWhat a Great Day!\u201d that he lays on everybody all day every day.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey (his fellow teachers) tease me that they don\u2019t know what they will do because nobody is going to walk down the halls every day and say, \u201cWhat a Great day!\u2019 \u201c Carlsen says. \u201cThey have threatened to record me so they can play it with the morning bulletin.\u201d<\/p>\n

That might work, he says, for a couple years, but then the new group of kids who don\u2019t know him and the tradition would wonder what the heck is going on?<\/p>\n

So the habit of Carlsen walking down the hallways at Poulsbo Middle School, where he has been for 35 of his 39 teaching years (he started out at Sterling Junior High in Wenatchee) and brightening up the day for everybody with this: \u201cCan you believe it? It\u2019s Monday and we have five days of school this week. It doesn\u2019t get any better than this\u201d will die out soon. The silence will be deafening.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s difficult to quantify the positive impact Carlsen has had on kids in the NK school system. The guess is that he has had a huge impact on thousands of them. \u00a0And not just in the classroom, but on the field of competition too.<\/p>\n

Carlsen has over the years coached junior high or middle school volleyball, girls soccer, boys and girls track and field, football and baseball.\u00a0 He also helped establish the North Kitsap Athletic & Activities Alliance (NKAAA) and helped out in baseball and football at North Kitsap High School, and now that he is really, really retiring, coaches at the high school ask him all the time if he would come back and help them coach. And he may do that.<\/p>\n

But right now he\u2019s looking forward to spending more time with his extended family, especially the grandkids \u2013 son Ben\u2019s two boys, Sawyer, 6, and Owen, 4, Jeff\u2019s two kids, son Tanner, almost 5, and daughter Chloe, who will be one next month, and Chris\u2019s daughter Kami, who will be two in July. Son Chris lives the bachelor life in Hawaii.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s quite possible all five grandkids have already caught on to what a great day it is. And it certainly is if they are around him and Sandy.<\/p>\n

Once a year his extended family gathers at his and Sandy\u2019s house for a weekend of fishing. That means brother\u2019s Ron, Jon, George and sister Barbara Scott\u2019s families come and pitch tents and take their boats out to see who is the champion fisherman. Then at night they sit around the campfire\u00a0 and share stories about the \u201cbig\u201d one that got away.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe go fishing together for bragging rights,\u201d says Carlsen. \u201cThat\u2019s what it is all about. We sit around the campfire and talk family stories \u2013 remember when dad did this? Remember when this happened to you? Of course, I always talk about the ones that got away, and grow a little bit bigger when I catch them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe younger generations just sit around and smile and listen to all the stories, and then they tell their own.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the following is from a story written by me for the Kitsap Sun four years ago. It sheds some light on what has made Carlsen who he is.<\/p>\n

Carlsen chokes up when he talks about his deceased parents \u2013 Clarence and Mary Carlsen. They are his idols and the reason why he is what he is, a man who for so long has had a large impact on so many with the positive and sunny personality his parents instilled in him.<\/p>\n

A football and track and field athlete at West Seattle High School, Carlsen got his athletic genes from his father, a talented athlete whose baseball career got sidetracked by a need to work. And from both parents he got the positive outlook on life that has been a large and looming fixture around Poulsbo, from the fields and gyms of athletic competition to the classrooms of academic pursuit.<\/p>\n

When Carlsen says, \u201c\u201cWhat a great day!\u201d it\u2019s not a rote mantra he says with his easy smile. It\u2019s a genuine expression of affection \u2013 love \u2013 he is willing upon others, who may desperately need it to hold back the black clouds that may hover over them like Charlie Brown in the Peanuts\u2019 cartoon character.<\/p>\n

No matter the weather, no matter the situation, Carlsen sees the good in the day.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s one of the most positive of people I have ever met in my life,\u201d says friend Virg Taylor, who coached with Carlsen in baseball and football at North Kitsap High School.\u00a0 \u201cHe\u2019ll say, \u201cWhat a great day\u2019 and he says it every day to all his kids in all his classes and when he coached he said that to every team he coached every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

It all comes from his parents, who raised five kids. Clarence and Mary Carlsen didn\u2019t believe in giving their children everything. Instead, they spoiled their kids with their time, a lesson that has served Carlsen well in his own life.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey didn\u2019t shower us with junk,\u201d says Carlsen. \u201cWe weren\u2019t hurting or anything. We just didn\u2019t have fancy or flashy. They gave us their time. I was always told by my parents to give your kids time. You can never give them too much of that. You can give them too much of other things, but you can never give them enough of your time. Give them all you got.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Carlsen talks about his parents \u2013 his father died in 1986, his mother four and half years ago \u2013 it brings tears to his eyes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were just wonderful, loving people,\u201d he says. \u201cThey loved people, and they were nice to people. They were just special parents. When you get special parents and you go on and teach and coach other kids, you learn how to love them the way you were loved as a kid.\u201d<\/p>\n

So defiantly, Carlsen wakes up every day with a warm smile on his face and gentleness in his heart and wishes a great day on everybody he meets.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s very positive,\u201d says another longtime friend and coaching colleague at North Kitsap High School, Steve Frease. \u201cI think he\u2019s a realist, but he tries to put a plus spin on everything \u2013 even when I out-fish him.\u201d<\/p>\n

That last remark is an inside joke between Frease, who teaches PE at North Kitsap and is a former baseball and football coach at the school, and Carlsen, his former assistant, who have fished together for years and still haven\u2019t settled their friendly debate who is the best fisherman. Sometimes the fish seem to swim on Frease\u2019s side of the boat and sometimes on Carlsen\u2019s side.<\/p>\n

\u201cSteve is the best netter,\u201d says Carlsen, his big smile bigger than usual.<\/p>\n

Carlsen graduated from Central Washington and did his student teaching with Les Eathorne at Bremerton\u2019s East High in 1973. He counts Eathorne as being his first coaching mentor. Jerry Parrish, Frease, Jeff Weible, Taylor, the late John Broderson and Jim Harney have been others who he says have been important figures to him in his own coaching profession.<\/p>\n

Including youth sports, Carlsen coached for over 100 sports\u2019 seasons.<\/p>\n

He also coached all four of his sons \u2011 Ben, the oldest, Jeff and Clary Jr. (both played minor league baseball, Jeff with the Chicago Cubs and Clary Jr. with Philadelphia) and youngest son Chris, who played football at Eastern Washington.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had the good fortune to work with a lot of good men,\u201d says Trish Olson, who team-taught PE \u00a0with Carlsen. \u201cHe\u2019s right there at the top. He\u2019s the salt of the earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know anybody who doesn\u2019t like Clary Carlsen,\u201d says Taylor, \u201c and I\u2019m glad to call him my friend.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now it\u2019s time to turn the chapter and close the book on teaching for Carlsen. Now he will have more time to fish, more time to putter around in his garden, which he loves to do, and more time to spend with the grandkids, which as one might expect is first on the to-do list.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will miss it,\u201d Carlsen says of teaching, \u201cbut it\u2019s time to do something different. Family is so important to us (he and Sandy) and I need to give more time to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s typical of Carlsen that by retiring he sees the positive for somebody else. His leaving, he says, opens a spot for somebody else to get hired, and in a troubled economy that is forcing the NK School District to rift teachers, this is a positive.<\/p>\n

Of course, it\u2019s always been positive for Carlsen.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery day is a great day,\u201d he says. \u201cEvery day we get is a good day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then as we parted, Carlsen couldn\u2019t help himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd you have a great day!\u201d he quickly added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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