FEBRUARY 6, 2015, KEIZERTIMES, PAGE A13
NICK,
continued from Page A12
in Keizer is a different deal
because of the reputation of
the city. People think Keizer
and they think baseball. If you
think things like that don’t
matter, they matter halfway
around the world.”
Nicholas’ career would
likely have been much differ-
ent if he hadn’t been pressured
to come back to Keizer 30
years ago. He was a McNary
graduate, but he’d started
teaching in St. Helens with-
out any desire to leave his new
home.
“It was a one town com-
munity and it was a kick. The
fi shing was outstanding, hunt-
ing was outstanding and there
wasn’t anything you couldn’t
do outdoor-wise,” Nicholas
said.
Then he received four
phone calls. Two from his for-
mer teacher and coach, Vic
Backlund, and two from then-
principal Kathleen Hammond
asking him to transfer to Mc-
Nary.
Hammond scared Nicho-
“Teaching them
that they could
work hard was
the one
thing I knew
I could do.”
- Craig Nicholas
las, then and now, but it was
Nicholas’ father who fi nally
convinced him to return to
the Iris City.
“I was talking with him and
he reminded me that ‘it was
Vic Backlund,’” Nicholas said.
Backlund and other teacher-
coaches at McNary were the
ones who inspired Nicholas to
teach. “I watched them and it
just looked like fun.”
When Nicholas played
baseball for Backlund in high
school, the thing that im-
pressed him most was the
sense of purpose.
“Every day that we went
to practice, we had a plan and
we had a reason for everything
we did if someone asked us,”
Nicholas said.
Nicholas took over the
freshman baseball squad in his
fi rst year back at McNary and
lost six games. It made him
fear for his job security.
“But after that year, we sat
down and put together a base-
ball manual that detailed how
we do it at McNary. If we had
questions, the answer was in
that book. We weren’t just on
the same page, we were on the
same sentence,” he said.
Not long after he returned
to the school, Jerry Lane and
John Whelan enlisted him as
a wrestling coach. That pair
of mentors supplied him with
more lessons about what it
took to coach well.
“Whelan’s philosophy was
that you could be mentally
tougher than anyone else, and
you didn’t give in. He was a
bulldog. If you gave in and
lost, you were going to get it.
If you lost and never gave in
that was as good as a win,” he
said.
He credits Lane, “who
didn’t sugarcoat anything,” as
the biggest infl uence on his
own demeanor.
In 1992, Nicholas was an
assistant coach in baseball
when the team won the state
title. The most overwhelming
emotion was a sense of relief
for himself and, more so, for
Backlund. It also changed his
perception.
“Getting to that game and
winning was something I
didn’t think you could ever
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do, but we had a great team
that stole something like 180
bases that season and got
thrown out twice. We ran wild
on everybody,” he said.
At the time, Nicholas was
also an assistant football coach
and took on the junior var-
sity squad under Head Coach
Gary Swanson, who had come
from Roseburg High School.
Swanson’s pedigree of milita-
ristic preparation simply didn’t
mesh well with the existing
program, but Nicholas says
Swanson is still the best person
he’s ever known.
When Tom Smythe arrived
at McNary, he told Nicholas
they’d be state champs in three
years.
“Everyone thought Smythe
was arrogant because he would
stand on the sideline with his
arms crossed, but that wasn’t it.
He was planning his next fi ve
plays and fi guring out how to
score without embarrassing
the other team in the process,”
Nicholas said.
Three years later, in 1997,
the Celtics took the state title
with a fi eld goal.
“That fi rst time, I thought
I was going to have a heart
attack,” Nicholas said. But
recalling the game also sum-
mons up one of his most
powerful memories. “I was up
in the booth as defensive co-
ordinator and we were on the
home side. They said there was
something like 9,000 Keizer
people at the game and they
all started stomping and yell-
ing, ‘Defense, defense.’ The
vibrations rose up through
the fl oor and I still get goose-
bumps on the back of my
neck thinking about it.”
The program took a second
football title in 2001.
The year after Nicholas’
team took the 2009 state title
in baseball was one of his low-
est. Despite having a number
of returning players from that
championship team, it never
coalesced into a family the
way they had the prior year.
In his fi nal game, a playoff
game, the team was shut out
by a second-string pitcher. On
the way home, those feelings
of having let the city down
returned. He even started hav-
ing chest pains.
The next morning, he
wrote his resignation.
It wasn’t so much disap-
pointment in his kids, but
Nicholas felt he’d lost the
ability to teach a team the one
thing he’s tried to impart to
all his students – how to work
hard.
“On the fi eld or in the
classroom, we end up with a
lot of kids who either don’t
want to work hard or don’t
know they can. Teaching them
that they could work hard was
the one thing I knew I could
do,” he said.
After hanging up the base-
ball cleats, Nicholas continued
to coach football with Tom
Smythe at Lakeridge High
School, but their plans for the
program were never fully re-
alized. When Isaac Parker was
hired as McNary’s new foot-
ball coach, he asked Nicholas
to return as defensive coor-
dinator, but Nicholas still had
one more year’s commitment
to Smythe, a gentleman’s
agreement between the two
veterans.
In Parker’s second year with
the program, he asked again
and Nicholas accepted out of
a sense of mutual respect.
“When I was defensive
coach for McNary, we went
on a run of six or seven years
when South Salem High
School hadn’t scored on us.
Then they brought in Isaac as
offensive coordinator and they
got a touchdown on us. I was
ticked. The next year they beat
us,” Nicholas said. “People al-
ways say don’t go back after
you leave, it won’t be the same.
But, when I left in 2008, we’d
had a great group of kids who
had bought into the program.
Parker had gotten the new
kids to do the same thing.”
Nicholas taught wellness
classes at the school for most
of the time he’d taught at Mc-
Nary, and runs into former
students frequently on visits
to the doctor and at the emer-
gency room. He’s turned out
more than a few emergency
medical technicians and nurs-
es.
Along the way, the students
continued to teach him.
“They taught me that if
you think there’s one way to
do it, you’re wrong. There’s
all kinds of horror stories.
You think everybody’s got the
same thing and they don’t,”
he said. “They also taught
me that there are very, very
few bad kids. They have bad
home lives or they’re reacting
to something else. People do
things for a reason, they don’t
do it because they want to, it’s
some kind of outreach.”
He offi cially retired Janu-
ary 16, and was on his way
to spend “as many days as he
wanted” at Disneyland with
his wife. After visiting friends
in Arizona for the better part
of a month, he’s boarding a
plane bound for Germany.
He’s joining Smythe again
to coach the Saarbrucken
Hurricanes in the German
Football League.
“The next seven months of
my life is everybody’s dream.
Smythe took them to league
championship last year and he
wants havoc on defense this
season,” Nicholas said. “He
told me he thinks we’re going
to win it all this year. I asked
what happens then. Smythe
said, ‘They’ll name a country
after us.”
Nicholas said it was an as-
toundingly quick 30-plus year
career. But, there’s new music
playing for him – probably
something with accordion in
it – and he’s not ready to quit
dancing just yet.
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Aymee Narvarz, 244. Women’s
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642. Women’s high game: Con-
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Sportsbar
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Men’s high game: Steve
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series: Donny Grubugh, 616.
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