John Blanchette: Spokane basketball won’t be the same without Glenn Williams
These things are seldom inspiration or impulse, just carefully considered decisions that ripen in a moment. The moment had come for Glenn Williams to deliver another batch of Otter Pops for his summer basketball campers at Mead High School. On the way, he stopped at his sports director’s office and said, “It’s time.”
And the next day he popped his Achilles and played old-man pickleball.
If it were a sign that retirement isn’t all it’s supposed to be, there wouldn’t be a re-examination.
“In every career you get to the point where you realize that you can’t do this forever,” he said, “even if you love it enough to do it forever.”
A high school basketball season kicks off Tuesday night in Spokane for the first time in 40 years without Glenn Williams coaching anyone – the freshman team or a pathetically inexperienced college or the C-ranks or a contender for the state championship.
Something like this seems to take forever.
32 of those seasons were head coach – nine with Lewis and Clark, the last 23 with Mead. It’s an amazing number for several reasons:
• Williams still looks like he graduated from Whitworth last spring.
• Only the legendary Squinty Hunter – 39 years with LC – stayed longer among Spokane’s head coaches for boys’ programs from the 1920s.
Only four others – Ray Thacker (29), Rick Sloan (22), Dave Robertson (20) and Marv Ainsworth (20) – joined the Greater Spokane League or its predecessor as head coach for up to 20 years. Jay Humphrey, who made two GSL stops before landing in West Valley, is starting his 24th season this week.
Sometimes it’s best not to get attached to numbers. Great coaches can make their mark in five or six years. Good coaches are also fired. Others get parent-itis. Some switch to administration. Some stop to watch their own children play. Life happens.
Glenn Williams prides himself on his longevity, but he also winks at him.
“Some great coaches on this list – people who have forgotten more about basketball than I’ll ever know,” he said. “I think I could be the only one who has finished every position in the league in his career.”
From front to back, he says. And it’s true. He was 19-0 and 1-17 and every combination in between.
“I don’t know what that says,” he said with a smile, “but it gave me perspective.”
Well, there can never be enough of that, especially in high school sports.
It came honestly, if painfully. In 1996, he steered LC to his first state tournament site in 33 years – only to be released at the whim of an administrator eager to take the ubiquitous “new direction”. Williams landed in West Valley and trained the C-Team.
“I remember going to the KeyArena and telling the guys, ‘Hey, Michael Jordan played here last week,'” he recalls. “A year later, I’m on a bus trip to Clarkston with the Season C boys and freshmen girls. A bit like a switch. “
He was hired at Mead in 1998 – and five years later the Panthers fell in the State 4A title game with a team that included future Gonzaga star Adam Morrison and Williams’ son Bryan.
LC has not been mentioned for reference purposes since this trip in 1996.
But you’ll never lure Williams into a neener-neener. The trainers who followed him at LC were just as dedicated and just as capable. He knows the ups and downs – of talent, size, experience, commitment, passion – through a high school program and the value of administration and parental support.
“Do coaches make a difference? Absolutely, ”he said. “But I’ve always wanted to do this experiment where you mix up all the coaches in the league and then randomly distribute them to the schools to see how different things could be. Or maybe it’s not that different.
“Except with Wayne Gilman. What is the old saying? ‘He could take his and hit yours, and take yours and hit his.’ ”
The late Ferris coach was indeed a role model, not just for the way he taught the matchup zone. The objectivity and proportion that made him stand out can also be seen in Williams’ approach – especially anyone who has peeked into his English class, using everything from Harper Lee to Sports Illustrated to instill appreciation for what was written Word. At the end of his teaching career, he took a bold step and switched to Riverpoint Academy in Mead, “where I had to discard all teaching concepts that I had” – but he found that he could be successful there too.
“My favorite thing was when my kids in class didn’t even know I was the coach,” he said. “I loved that. And you shouldn’t know, should you?”
Except he’s still the coach – he’s helping Bryan’s sixth grade AAU team and sitting in training in east Washington as an extra pair of eyes for freshman coach David Riley, the son of Williams’ old Whitworth roommate.
“You worry about the same things as us,” he said with a laugh. “Too much sales. Too many second chance points. “
But when he’s out of the high school game, he may still have some health concerns – whether the requirements of specialization and the grail of a college scholarship make the idea of why there are high school sports, forever distorted and placed too many expectations on the children.
“What has always driven me and the people I’ve been with is that they want to be better people,” he said. “It’s cheesy, I know. But if that’s not the case, what’s the use of high school sports? We try to learn to work together, sublimate one’s ego, cooperate and be loyal while having fun – all the things that seem so rare in our culture these days.
“Sport is life. Not that it matters more – of course not. But if the ball is thrown up or the gun goes off on the lane, nothing is given. Everything is earned. You have to do your best and when it’s worst, what we do is most important. “
Glenn Williams knew when it was time. But he still sounds like he could do it forever.