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Wallowa County Chieftain
Wednesday, May 19, 2021
Legend: ‘He was able to get us to the next level, and it seemed easy’
Continued from Page A1
she said. “He just said, ‘You
know Susie, if someone saw
something in you this early,
someone else will.’”
Sather’s encouragement
reassured her she wasn’t
making a mistake by turning
down the off er, and, indeed,
the right position came her
way shortly after.
On the sideline, Sather
didn’t raise his voice, which
the players appreciated, even
more so when they later
found as a coach they did so
themselves, to a degree.
“One of the things that
stuck with me about his
coaching style is he was not
a screamer during the game,”
Jorgensen said. “I didn’t
appreciate that as much until
I started coaching my own
kids and rec teams. I found
myself being somewhat of a
screamer during the game.”
Jim Hayes, a member of
the 1987 boys third-place
team, put it this way: “You
could always hear his voice.
He wasn’t a yeller, but you
could hear him. You wanted
to be in tune with what he
wanted to say.”
On-court success
Sather coached at Joseph
at the tail-end of his three-de-
cade career. He spent his fi nal
12 years in Joseph — four of
them coaching both the boys
and girls basketball team.
He, in fact, had a coaching
resume that saw him not only
be a head coach for boys and
girls basketball in Joseph,
but even volleyball.
He got his start coaching
in Oregon at Wasco County
in 1960, where he coached
the boys basketball program
for nine years, then spent a
decade at Neah-Kah-Nie —
also coaching boys hoops
— before heading to Joseph
for more than a decade. He
wrapped up his career in
1990.
Sather, of course, is best
known for his run with the
Joseph girls — a 27-0 sea-
son in 1981, a 24-0 cam-
paign in 1982 and a 26-0 run
in 1983 — but he also won
more than 300 games across
three decades coaching boys
hoops at his three schools.
His best boys squad was in
1987, when the Eagles took
third at the state level with a
23-3 record.
And in 1981, a Sather-led
In 1987, the boys team
made a run to the state semi-
fi nals before slipping by
Portland Christian in the
third-place game, 74-72, to
take third and go 23-3. To
date, it’s still the best run
ever by a boys basketball
team at Joseph.
Hayes, one of the seniors
of that team, said Sather was
the same as he was when his
cousin, Patton, and brother,
Blane Hayes, placed in the
early ‘80s.
“He was completely a
straight-shooter in the class-
room and when he was
coaching,” Jim Hayes said.
The standards were always
the same.”
He coached the boys three
more seasons after the 1987
run before hanging up the
whistle in 1990.
He fi nished his career with
a record 302-378 in 31 years
as a boys coach, and 88-9 as
a girls coach. His combined
mark was 390-387.
Wallowa County Chieftain, File
The Joseph Eagles celebrate their third straight state title in 1983. The championship cemented the fi rst dynasty in Oregon girls
basketball history, as the win was the 77th in a row by Joseph. The streak reached 79 straight games. Gary Sather, the head
coach for the Eagles at the time, died March 21, 2021.
Eagles volleyball team took
fourth at state during one of
his two runs as the school’s
volleyball coach, which he
led for a total of six years.
He even served as an assis-
tant football coach.
“He was a better basket-
ball coach, but the cool thing
about him and volleyball
is he knew he didn’t know
much about it, so he wasn’t
afraid to say, ‘What do we do
here?’” 1982 Joseph gradu-
ate Dixie McCadden said.
Sather already had two
decades under his belt when
he took over as the girls head
coach prior to the 1980-81
season. The Eagles had sev-
eral players back from a
team that took fi fth at state
in 1980.
“I think that we had the
skills,” McCadden said. “I
think we would have been
good no matter what coach
(we had, but) I don’t think
we would have been what
we were without him. We
were faster, taller, deeper in
the bench. It was the perfect
storm of people at the time.
“He was able to get us to
the next level, and it seemed
easy.”
Given the way Sather
quickly gained the respect
and trust of his players, they
never second-guessed any-
thing he told them on the
court.
“We all trusted him, and
when he said, ‘Here is the
game plan,’ that is what we
did,” Patton said.
The wins started coming
in a fl urry for Joseph during
that fi rst season, but it was
never anything the players
— or Sather — dwelt on.
“I don’t even remember
seeing it in the paper until
15-0,” Coughlan said. “It
didn’t mean anything. It was
game to game to game. Then
we started seeing it in the
paper and said, ‘Wow, that is
something.’”
Sather, instead of track-
ing the team record, focused
on every facet of the game,
which Jorgensen said was
vital to the team success.
“He hammered us so hard
in the fundamentals that
we were comfortable,” Jor-
gensen said. “There was no
need to hype us up. He never
talked about the win streak.
He would say ‘Everyone else
is talking about it. We don’t
need to.’”
Jorgensen said with
Sather’s coaching style,
teaching the fundamen-
tals meant starting with the
small things and building up
to a polished product. Every
detail mattered.
And when the Eagles took
the court, they were never
found lacking.
“It just became auto-
matic,” McCadden said.
“We didn’t make very many
mistakes.”
Wins, then
championships
Joseph completed its fi rst
undefeated season with a
40-38 win over Pilot Rock
in the title game when Patton
hit the winning shot in the
closing seconds.
“He had called a time-
out, and he told us to run our
the Eagles hanging on for a
43-40 victory.
That 1982 run also was
special in that Sather also
coached the boys team
to state, through their run
ended prematurely with two
straight losses.
“We never really excelled
until we got to district and
regionals,” Mallon said. “It
was really magical, to tell
you the truth. I don’t think
any of us had an expecta-
tion of winning districts. We
were going to play our best,
run the system.”
Exceeding expectations
The streak was supposed
to end following the 1982
season.
“We lost the size on our
team, and I think a lot of
people thought it was a big
drop in talent, which it was,”
Jorgensen said. “I never felt
stressed going into a game
feeling, ‘Oh no, we can’t be
the one to lose the streak. He
kept us focused on our job.”
The team faced numer-
ous challenges in the play-
off s that year, but overcame
them all.
The fi nal four wins Joseph
earned — which moved the
winning streak to 77 games
— came by a combined
eight points, and included
one-points win over Wasco
County (41-40) and Crow
(58-57) and a three-point
victory against North Doug-
las (43-40) to reach the fi nal.
The battle-tested Eagles
fought off a fourth close con-
test to complete the title tri-
fecta by defeating Harrisburg
for the 1983 crown, 50-47.
The run fi nally did end
with a 30-26 overtime loss
to Wallowa on Dec. 10,
1983, in the third game of
the 1983-84 season, capping
the streak at 79 games. That
season saw Joseph go 11-9.
Sather stepped down as the
girls coach following the
season.
Gary Sather and his
wife of 65 years, Jeannine,
remained integral parts of the
community after Gary Sather
retired until they moved out
of Northeast Oregon.
It was during a class
reunion about two decades
after the fi rst championship
that the court was renamed
after the local legend.
“He was very humbled by
it,” Patton said. “He was very
surprised, humbled, and that
was really when he spoke to
all the factors that went into
those successful years, that
it wasn’t him. We would all
argue that maybe not, but he
was a big part of it.”
Patton said at that reunion
that Sather said of the suc-
cess, “We had the good for-
tune of having the right kids
in the right place in the right
community at the right time.”
“And we would all add we
had the right coaching,” Pat-
ton said.
Sather’s passing left a
hole in the basketball com-
munity in the city of Joseph
— especially those whom he
aff ected the most.
“He still means a lot to
me personally,” McCadden
said. “I don’t have a nega-
tive thought about him. The
last time I saw him was at a
reunion a few years ago. He
was still the same guy. He
was a positive, caring guy,
he wanted to know how we
were doing, and when he
asked it he meant it.”
Hayes said he became
emotional on learning of
Sather’s death, calling the
coach a local legend in his
eyes.
McCadden said she felt
lucky to have him as a coach.
“I played in college, and
he was by far the best coach
I ever had,” she said. “And
I played three sports in high
school and in college. He was
by far the best coach I had in
any sport.”
Jorgensen agreed, and
said she was grateful to get to
know him.
“There is nobody that
touches Gary Sather.”
Congratulations!
BARGAINS
OF THE
MONTH ®
HATS OFF TO
WALLOWA COUNTY’S
CLASS OF 2021
While supplies last.
YOUR CHOICE
8.99
off ense and said to me, if I
get a chance, drive baseline,”
she said. “Cindy Turner is
our point guard and made it
happen. She got the ball to
me. I remember thinking,
‘I have to do this, it’s what
he said to do and it has to
work.’”
Along the way, the Eagles
knocked off a team in Cor-
bett that became a rival of
sorts come playoff time. Cor-
bett won the state title the
previous year, edging Joseph
in the semifi nals by a 41-39
margin.
In 1981, the Eagles took
down Corbett 61-52 in the
quarterfi nals, then won a
low-scoring battle, 33-24,
over Yoncalla in the semifi -
nals on the way to the title-
game win over Pilot Rock.
It was the start of a spe-
cial time on the court, though
for some players, it didn’t
immediately register how
special the run was.
I knew we had done
something really important
after we won in ‘81 when the
whole town greeted us after
we won. That was pretty
touching,” McCadden said.
Early in the 1981-82 sea-
son was when Jorgensen
knew.
“We were beating big
teams. We played some big-
ger metro schools and we are
beating them by 30 points,
and we (starters) are sitting
out in the fourth quarter,” she
said. “You just knew you had
something special then.”
The streak hit 30, then
40, and reached 51 when the
team won its second straight
title in 1982 in a game that
didn’t come down to the wire
— a 56-39 blowout win over
Sacred Heart.
“I don’t know that there
was a lot of thinking about it
back then,” Patton said of the
streak.
Win No. 50 came against
Corbett in the semifi nals in
yet another showdown, with
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