Some Notable Athletes I Knew...

There are all kinds of memories about North Coast sports stuff that I knew I would never be able to tell. And, damn if they aren't some of the best stories.

For two of the years I was particularly lost and confused, to the point my first wife most justifiably left me, I was a part-time P.E. teacher at Cutten School and a 7th grade boys basketball coach at Winship Junior High School. It would've been about the best time in my life...if I had stuck to my pledge to go to college, finish my degree and become an actual reliable, adult husband. As usual, I let Amy take care of the hard stuff and I did the fun stuff...and, eventually, I had to do the hard stuff and the fun stuff when she left our marriage. It must've been hard carrying me on her shoulders for years.

I had the good fortune to get to know, and coach, an extraordinary collection of kids who went on to be famously known H-DNL athletes. The first class of Cutten sixth-graders was highlighted by Shawn Thompson. I did P.E. classes for kids from third grade on up, but I most enjoyed the older kids. Being a bit more "coach" than "teacher," I used to marvel at how clearly the great athletes stand out -- in action and attitude -- from the rest.

Thompson, and a fifth-grader named Mike Mari, took every single activity in every single P.E. class as a test...a challenge. It didn't matter if they were running a mile or playing disc soccer -- they gave it 100 percent and insisted everybody else at least try their best. Jason Morrow was in Thompson's age group -- like Mari, he went on to be a sports star at St. Bernard. Thompson, of course, became a baseball-football star at Eureka. I think some of my popularity with kids who hated P.E. came from letting them do their own thing. Actually, I enjoyed paying more attention to Thompson, Morrow and classmates like Brandon Banducci.

I used to think of sports-related things those kids could do because...they enjoyed sports-related P.E. games. I turned the President's Physical Fitness tests into a school-wide competition. I believe a sixth-grader named Liz Smith ran the fastest 50-yard dash and Thompson couldn't believe. Liz could run. Thompson must've made me time him 20 times to see if he could run a better time. (He eventually did, but I didn't tell him until he'd run his absolute best. How far would he push himself, I wondered?)

Mari just stood out as a leader. There are kids who don't like "jocks." People didn't look at young Michael as a "jock" so much as an athletic kid who followed the rules, played hard and didn't do things to hurt others. Surprise! Mari's a college football coach after a great football career at St. Bernard and Humboldt State. Leaders are born...and their families nurture that which they were born with.

That first Winship team I coached had a kid named Don Ciancio -- who happened to be a youth football quarterback who eventually played varsity football as a sophomore at Eureka High. He actually had limited athletic ability compared to Thompson, who was just stronger, faster and tougher than everybody else. But, Don was a winner, you know? He absorbed whatever I tried to teach the team and busted his ass every single day.

It was my personal pledge to try to develop kids who, maybe, weren't naturally the biggest, strongest kids. So, I didn't take Ciancio and make him a point guard. I grew immediately attached to crew-cut, wildly willing Ross Killingsworth...and he became a 7th grade point guard who pleased everybody, all the time, but never seemed pleased with himself. Gosh, he tried so hard. It was impossible not to like him. Guys like Ross, and there were a few, sent me hustling to learn more and more and more about basketball so that I could teach them more than I came to practice knowing.

Ryan Baum? When I saw his name on the tryout list, I thought, "I went to school with his mom and dad!" So, I was ready to make sure I didn't favor Ryan. He made it impossible not to favor him because he curried favor with his athletic ability and desire. He had a fire not all little kids had. And, I believe, he played second base when Thompson played shortstop for a truly great Humboldt Eagles baseball team.

It made me laugh when people would write or otherwise bitch that I didn't like the Eagles, didn't pull for them. One of my favorite Winship basketball kids was Scott Eskra...arguably the North Coast's best baseball player of the 1990s and biggest star on that great Eagles team.

I'd followed Eskra through Little League. So, I knew he was athletic. I didn't know if he could play basketball, but...in seventh grade in Eureka...back in the 1990s you picked athletes and winners and tried to use what they could do to win games. Eskra wasn't one of the top five basketball players, and everybody knew it, but he started for us because I suspected he'd be on top of any loose ball before everybody else on the court could blink. He was ... again ... a winner.

We never beat Zane! In two years, we beat everybody else -- avenged every loss. We never beat Zane. The Falcons had great teams and Duane Peterson was a superior coach. My teams were at a coaching disadvantage, obviously.

I've never seen a better kid athlete than Shawn Thompson...and I probably never will. Now, the "star" kids are entitled and they don't listen to anybody except former pro and college players who get paid to coach. Thompson listened to anybody who might help him and his team win. The same held for Morrow, Killingsworth, Banducci, Baum, Ciancio, Eskra, Mari and a bunch of others I knew as kids and had to root for (quietly) from afar in their high school careers.

Morrow, Banducci, Baum, Eskra...wasn't that the bulk of the great Eagles teams in the 1990s? Oh, no...I didn't like the Eagles. Of course, to me, they were Winship basketball players...

I loved coaching kids like that because they inspired me to learn more so they could learn more. Nothing bothers me more than coaches who only teach what they learned in 1974, you know? I read books and studied videos because, obviously, the sky was the limit for those kids ... if their coach could keep up.

I'm sure I'm forgetting kids who should be mentioned. But, I have to mention a kid who tested me, challenged me, questioned me and did every single thing I asked -- thus leading his Winship team past better teams. He wasn't a fanastically skilled basketball player, and he wasn't afraid to question the coach, but ... he had swagger before swagger was cool. His name was Eric Karjola. Man, that guy was something else! I remember arguing with him on the bench, then him going out and playing harder than ever.

I have no problem with kids questioning me. I mean, if I couldn't explain why a 1-3-1 zone trap was going to work better than man-to-man...what kind of coach was I? Eric Karjola would ask me to explain it...sometimes during timeouts in the fourth quarter.

These kids followed me, or I followed them, from basketball to baseball for a couple years. I remember helping coach a Babe Ruth All-Star team. I was the nominal pitching coach, pushed on a staff of guys who didn't know me or care what I knew. At any rate, Ciancio pitched the first game over in Weed...Eureka won. (Jay Brauning was our second baseman. There's a North Coast baseball kid who should've been playing in this era when the only thing keeping you from learning is your willingness to find knowledgable coaches. Brauning was amazing.) So, we go through the weekend with the guys who run the team pitching the kids they liked and relied on all year.

We finally lost a tournament game and faced elimination. I'd mentioned that Eric Karjola hadn't pitched yet. Nothing. The guys went back and forth about maybe pitching Shawn Thompson -- who utterly and openly hated pitching, even though he did it well enough in Babe Ruth League baseball. Finally, I said, "Look...the kids are tired. They're looking for a reason to lose. We need somebody who can't believe you can beat him on the mound tomorrow. And, I'm telling you, Karjola's the only guy we have who believes the other team can't beat him."

The guys I coached with were OK with starting Eric...if I swore to get him ready, warm him up, talk to him before the game and stay on him as long as he pitched. They weren't big fans of his swagger or his questions, I guess. But...Karjola got to pitch.

I remember it being like 106 degrees and thinking, "This is an impossible situation to throw Eric into!" I can't remember who won, in part because I only remember Karjola's response to me telling him he was going to start that game. He snapped, "It's about time!"

Save that I lost my first wife and wound up living in a one-bedroom apartment with my two sons, those were glorious times. In fact, my sons love the memory of the tiny apartment because they connect it to memories of all the kids mentioned here. These kids were my kids' heroes.

That's something you'd only get in Humboldt County.