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Saturday, July 16, 2022
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B1
IRRIGON BASKETBALL
JAYSON
JACOBY
ON THE TRAIL
Giving
familiar
peaks a
fresh look
M
his junior year in high school. He
played football and participated in
track at Henley High School.
“It wasn’t like he was a star
athlete,” taylor said. “He coached
his little brother Jake’s little
league baseball team when he
was a sophomore in high school. I
was 5 when he started coaching my
t-ball team.”
From there, Wilson coached
volleyball, softball and basketball
at various levels in Pilot rock.
When taylor was in the fourth
grade, she and her friends wanted
to play volleyball. Wilson got a
book and gleaned what he could to
help the girls. From there, the youth
volleyball program was born.
“Volleyball wasn’t his favorite,
but he did it for us.,” taylor said.
Volleyball turned to basketball
and softball, where Wilson was in
his comfort zone.
Joan Harrison’s daughters Jacki
and Ginni played for Wilson, and
Harrison kept his basketball book
for years.
“I cannot imagine life with-
out him,” Harrison said. “He was
always there. My youngest (Ginni)
was a bashful girl. He took her
under his wing and made her a
strong, confident woman. He had
such a great sense of humor, he
loved crazy music and the girls
still listen to it. My girls are just
devastated.”
Jacki Harrison shared her feel-
ings for Wilson in a Facebook post.
“I struggle to believe he is
really gone,” she wrote. “One of
ountains are boring.
they just stand
there, after all, insen-
sate as the stones of which they are
constructed.
But for the occasional volcanic
eruption or landslide, mountains
can hardly be said to move.
People, on the other hand, tend
to get around.
We scurry about, hither and yon,
even when our every detour into
a gas station leaves us feeling as
though we ought to have received
an escrow statement in addition to
a receipt.
Our itinerant nature does quite a
lot, I think, to enrich the reputation
of mountains. It also has much to
do with our fascination and affinity
for high places.
Certainly our mobility, which
allows us to see mountains from
every conceivable vantage point,
infuses them with a compelling
personality they otherwise would
lack.
this is not to suggest, of course,
that mountains never change.
Nature can remake a peak’s
visage rapidly, needing just a few
minutes of waning sunlight to
transform the dull white of a snow
slope into the brilliant pink of
alpenglow.
It is of course an optical illusion,
but the Wallowas, which I can see
well from my driveway, sometimes
appear to my eyes something like
half again as large, and as near,
depending on the quality of the
light, the absence or presence of
clouds and snow cover, and prob-
ably other physical factors I can’t
name and don’t understand.
Other alterations are less imme-
diate but equally entrancing.
When the tamaracks turn in
late fall their yellowing needles,
even from many miles away, paint
swathes that didn’t exist in spring
or summer.
The effect is even more vivid
in places such as Steens Mountain
with its broad groves of quaking
aspens.
But those accoutrements, the
snow and the glow and the colorful
leaves or needles, are temporary —
seasonal shifts akin to a man who
cultivates a beard only in winter.
to fully appreciate mountains, it
seems to me, requires that you see
them from a variety of directions
— or at least from the four cardinal
points.
The differences can be dramatic.
take, for instance, Mount
Jefferson, Oregon’s second-tall-
est summit at 10,495 feet. this
dormant volcano in the central
Cascades, when seen from, say,
redmond to the east, hardly seems
to be the same peak that I grew up
gazing at from my hometown of
Stayton, well west of the mountain,
near where the Willamette Valley
gives way to the Cascade foothills.
From Redmond, Jefferson’s
ridges and faces converge at the
summit in what appears to be a
single spire — a classic pyramidal
shape.
But from the west, the great
gouge that glaciers have cleaved
from the mountains’ midsection
is conspicuous, and Jefferson’s
summit ridge culminates in two
pinnacles which seem, from a great
distance, to be about the same
height.
Jefferson’s more ancient, and
heavily eroded, volcanic neighbor
to the south of Santiam Pass —
Mount Washington, which geolo-
gists believe almost surely is dead
rather than dormant — boasts an
even greater variety of visages.
See Wilson, Page B2
See Peaks, Page B2
Irrigon High School’s new boys basketball
coach Mark Wyant on Tuesday, July 12,
2022, gets ready for a new season.
Yasser Marte/East Oregonian
STARTING OVER
Wyant is working to
rebuild Irrigon boys
basketball program
By ANNIE FOWLER
East Oregonian
I
rrIGON — Mark Wyant is no stranger
to success on the basketball court, but it
wasn’t an easy road.
He graduated from Emmett High
School in Idaho, where the Huskies finished
sixth at state his senior year and he was named
second-team all-state.
“I got cut as a sophomore,” he said. “I
played JV my junior year. In college, I was a
second-team NaIa all-american in 1991 at
Columbia Christian College. that is some of
the wisdom I can pass on now. I wasn’t a great
student. I just got my degree four years ago.”
Wyant, who recently was named boys
basketball coach at Irrigon High School, can
relate to the players who are trying to bounce
back after the pandemic and playing for their
third coach in three years.
“they just have to put in the work,” said
Wyant, who also will teach physical education.
“There is no confidence. If I can get some of
these kids believing, it will go a long way.”
Wyant replaces Eric Solis, who stepped
in to fill the void after Davie Salas stepped
down before last season after failing to follow
Oregon’s vaccine mandate, that required
teachers, staff and coaches to be vaccinated.
The Knights finished 1-9 in Eastern Oregon
league play and 2-20 overall last season.
Irrigon will drop down to the 2a Blue
Mountain Conference for the 2022-23 season,
where the Knights will face Enterprise, Grant
Union, Heppner, Stanfield and Weston-McE-
wen.
“Heppner and Stanfield will be good again
this year,” Wyant said. “I’m trying to install
confidence in the kids. Boyd Davis is a kid I
need to have step up. Kids follow what he does.
He could be a force.”
Wyant, 54, has been working in the aerial
application business for years, working in the
office, not the plane.
“I do the billing, pretty much everything
but fly the plane,” he said. “I have been up
in the planes, but you have to have a special
stomach to do that.”
In the winter, Wyant has been assistant
basketball coach at Irrigon and Hermiston.
“I haven’t done a lot of coaching,” he said. “I
coached three years of JV ball in Irrigon when
my uncle-in-law abe Burnett was coaching. I
coached for a year under drew Preuninger at
Hermiston with Rylie Smith (Stanfield coach).
that will be interesting when we play.”
Starting with the basics
Wyant has had open gym sessions with his
players and a few from the middle school.
“I put some summer stuff together, but a
lot of them work,” Wyant said. “We are going
to be senior heavy. They lack confidence, but
they want to compete. I think that was from
being locked up the last two years. they
worked so hard and when the season came
around they didn’t get to play. If you put in
the work, you can be good at anything. time,
passion and dedication.”
Part of the summer program is a shooting
drill, that when completed, they can earn a
green shirt.
“the younger kids are really taking to it,”
Wyant said. “they all want to know what they
need to do to earn a green shirt.”
It’s a good start.
Wilson left his mark on the Pilot rock community
Beloved basketball
and softball coach died
July 11 at age of 52
By ANNIE FOWLER
East Oregonian
PIlOt rOCK — Butch Wilson
was humble, generous, a beloved
father and coach, and one of the
most respected men in Pilot rock.
the outpouring of support and
memories from the community
have been touching since his recent
passing, something that he would
not have wanted.
“It was all about the kids with
him,” said former Pilot rock
softball coach darin Fitzpatrick,
who coached with Wilson for the
better part of 20 years. “It was a
good collaboration of our coaching
skills. We always had a lot of fun
and taught the girls how to play the
game right. He was taken from us
way too soon.”
Wilson died Monday, July 11,
2022, at his home in Hermiston.
He was 52 and was recently diag-
nosed with cancer, according to his
daughter, taylor Wilson.
there will be a celebration of
life for Wilson at 6 p.m. on Satur-
day, July 16, at the Pilot rock soft-
ball fields. Everyone is welcome.
“Obviously, I think of him
as the best person in the world,”
taylor said. “He has this way
about him, where people want to
make him proud. you want to do
good by him. that’s how he is.
you immediately respect him. you
look to him for guidance.”
Taylor Wilson/Contributed Photo
Butch Wilson, far left, with members of Pilot Rock’s 2010 2A state cham-
pionship softball team. At far right is the late head coach Rick Hoising-
ton. Taylor Wilson is holding the trophy, surrounded by teammates Ash-
ley Gambill (11), Kylee Jensen (2), Amylee Perrine (to right of Jensen) and
Liz Holcomb (in glasses). Wilson died Monday, July 11, 2022, at his home
While he was a dedicated coach,
Wilson was a journeyman line-
man with Pacific Power and was a
member of the International Broth-
erhood of Electrical Workers local
125. He spent more than 30 years
with Pacific Power.
He also was an avid outdoors-
man, and enjoyed hunting and fish-
ing with his younger brother, Jake.
He recently moved to Hermiston to
be closer to the river to go fishing.
Wilson grew up in Califor-
nia, and moved to Klamath Falls