GreatLakeState
Mentor
- Joined
- Apr 22, 2005
- Messages
- 1,057
Old school, all the way to the coaches hall of fame
By Stephen Bell News-Review Sports Writer
Friday, September 15, 2006 1:17 PM EDT
And you thought old school was a movie. Or a cynical marketing
expression; hip-hop sloganeering.
No, if you want old school, the real deal, try Bruce Waha, the cross
country and track coach being inducted Michigan High School Coaches
Association Hall of Fame in Mount Pleasant on Sunday.
And it's not just that fact that Waha, at 80, is well, old, that makes him
old school. Ted Kennedy, Noam Chomsky, they're not exactly straight off
the farm. But time on earth alone hasn't given them wisdom, or a
backbone, or the ability to shape lives.
Because old school is an ethos, one Waha, a Charlevoix resident, has
embodied for a long time.
Like when he threatened to quit as Detroit Redford's coach when the
principal wouldn't back him on the haircut requirement for track team
members. There was no bluff to call. So when Waha's sincerity became
apparent, the offending party showed up in the lockerroom, with a fresh
brush cut.
Or when Waha caught a kid smoking in the bathroom. He chose Waha
Justice over being turned in to the principal, and ended up having to chew
up (but not swallow) the rest of the pack.
There was the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championship in Detroit,
where the organizer, legendary University of Michigan athletic director
Don Canham, wanted to disallow Texas A&M's Randy Matson from using a
steel shot put, as it would hit the concrete and bounce off endangering
any in its way.
"But I told Don, there were no rules prohibiting its use, so we had to let
him go ahead, and Don didn't like it one bit," Waha said.
The solution? Waha, the field judge, took a big foam pad, positioned
himself in the landing area, and ran down, shortstop style, the small
cannonballs being hurled by the man considered history's greatest shot
putter. For his efforts, Canham gave Waha a meet MVP trophy.
That do-it-yourself ethic served Waha well in 1963, when a millage failed
to pass and the Detroit Public Schools cut the "minor" sports. Never mind
that Redford had just won back-to-back Class A state titles. It was
particularly painful, because prior to 1961 Detroit teams didn't participate
in the state finals, when Redford had worthy candidates.
"I said at the time, 'The idiots downtown (the school board) took another
state championship away from us,'" Waha said.
But the Huskies still had a season, running in AAU and college meets.
And again after 1971, when Waha left for Howell High School after 20
years at Redford, where there would be 80 kids out for cross country. At
Howell? Three. So he walked the halls wearing a sandwich board
advertising the need for runners and mustered up a team. By the time
Waha went on to coach at Michigan State in 1978, Howell had won six
straight league championships.
There's the thing. Waha wasn't a hard-ass disciplinarian teacher for some
ego trip. It wasn't about him. It was the kids, his students, his athletes,
and getting results. On the track, and off it.
They won. Redford cross country is the Michigan Track Coaches
Association (of which Waha is a founding member) team of the decade for
the 60s. Thirteen straight league titles. In track there were state
champions, like Richard Sharkey in the two-mile to Clarence Chapman
setting a state long jump record before he landed in the NFL. For which
Waha takes little credit.
"Coaches are always looking for that once-in-a-lifetime kid," he said. "At
Redford I'd get two or three every year. It was such a big school. With
4,200 students you're bound to get some good ones. You can coach all
you want, but if you don't have the athletes it doesn't matter."
For Waha's pupils, athletic success translated to success later in life. Like
the kid from the wrong side of the tracks who ran for Waha before going
off to Vietnam. Today he teaches medicine at Northwestern. The CEO of
AT&T and Hughes Electronics, the VP of Stanley Tools, former Redford
runners. One of his assistant coaches is the chancellor at Emory
University.
And the boy busted smoking in the boys' room? Now the manager of the
GM test track in MIlford, he recently found Waha, via Google, to thank
him. Two years after the run-in, his father had died of lung cancer.
"You saved my life."
In the spring of 1988, Waha saved his own life.
"The doctor said there was too much stress, I had a virus that left my
body as if I'd been running marathons for two weeks, and if I kept at it I
was going to die," Waha said. "I got a second opinion - 'You're going to
die.'"
Which made the decision easy enough, and it was off to the North. But
Waha wasn't through coaching, as he assisted Hal Evans and Ken Plude at
Charlevoix High School. Even now he's not done entirely. At his
granddaughter's behest, Waha worked with one of her friends, Katie
LaValley, and in 2005 the Grand Rapids Forest Hills Central senior set the
state record in the 300 hurdles. Another protégé, Emily Heffling, set the
Charlevoix school record in the 300 hurdles last spring.
Waha's message hasn't changed working with athletes through six
decades. But the athletes have.
"It's completely different," Waha said. "In the 50s you'd tell a kid to do
something, 'OK!' In the 60s, 'Why?' By the 90s, 'Why?', and you'd explain
it, and 'Why?' again.
"Still, the good ones would go out and achieve. But I couldn't put up with
the attitudes. If it's just one, OK, but two, three, four, that hurts the team
and it's not worth it anymore."
But let's not confuse rigid standards with a closed mind. In fact it was
Waha's progressive thinking in his sport that separated him, helped make
him a hall of famer. He introduced to American runners distance training
based on pulse rate. He brought out the stop watch to field events, to
find consistency in the approaches of his jumpers and vaulters. For 20
years he was a one-man Internet for the Detroit News, collecting event
leaders for all of Michigan every week, by so doing promoting the sport
and creating community in a large, disparate state. He and Canham had
the NCAA indoor meet pulling in 20,000 fans a day. Waha had 150 teams
competing over three days at the Spartan Invitational. Big ideas, and big
results.
Of course, in true old school fashion, Waha deflects praise, credits others
for these successes. Saying every teacher has former students show up
30 years later to thank him for changing their lives. But someone knows
better, Joan, his wife of 48 years.
"He's been such a great influence on so many people, he's certainly
deserving of this honor," she said. "This is a very high quality individual."
By Stephen Bell News-Review Sports Writer
Friday, September 15, 2006 1:17 PM EDT
And you thought old school was a movie. Or a cynical marketing
expression; hip-hop sloganeering.
No, if you want old school, the real deal, try Bruce Waha, the cross
country and track coach being inducted Michigan High School Coaches
Association Hall of Fame in Mount Pleasant on Sunday.
And it's not just that fact that Waha, at 80, is well, old, that makes him
old school. Ted Kennedy, Noam Chomsky, they're not exactly straight off
the farm. But time on earth alone hasn't given them wisdom, or a
backbone, or the ability to shape lives.
Because old school is an ethos, one Waha, a Charlevoix resident, has
embodied for a long time.
Like when he threatened to quit as Detroit Redford's coach when the
principal wouldn't back him on the haircut requirement for track team
members. There was no bluff to call. So when Waha's sincerity became
apparent, the offending party showed up in the lockerroom, with a fresh
brush cut.
Or when Waha caught a kid smoking in the bathroom. He chose Waha
Justice over being turned in to the principal, and ended up having to chew
up (but not swallow) the rest of the pack.
There was the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championship in Detroit,
where the organizer, legendary University of Michigan athletic director
Don Canham, wanted to disallow Texas A&M's Randy Matson from using a
steel shot put, as it would hit the concrete and bounce off endangering
any in its way.
"But I told Don, there were no rules prohibiting its use, so we had to let
him go ahead, and Don didn't like it one bit," Waha said.
The solution? Waha, the field judge, took a big foam pad, positioned
himself in the landing area, and ran down, shortstop style, the small
cannonballs being hurled by the man considered history's greatest shot
putter. For his efforts, Canham gave Waha a meet MVP trophy.
That do-it-yourself ethic served Waha well in 1963, when a millage failed
to pass and the Detroit Public Schools cut the "minor" sports. Never mind
that Redford had just won back-to-back Class A state titles. It was
particularly painful, because prior to 1961 Detroit teams didn't participate
in the state finals, when Redford had worthy candidates.
"I said at the time, 'The idiots downtown (the school board) took another
state championship away from us,'" Waha said.
But the Huskies still had a season, running in AAU and college meets.
And again after 1971, when Waha left for Howell High School after 20
years at Redford, where there would be 80 kids out for cross country. At
Howell? Three. So he walked the halls wearing a sandwich board
advertising the need for runners and mustered up a team. By the time
Waha went on to coach at Michigan State in 1978, Howell had won six
straight league championships.
There's the thing. Waha wasn't a hard-ass disciplinarian teacher for some
ego trip. It wasn't about him. It was the kids, his students, his athletes,
and getting results. On the track, and off it.
They won. Redford cross country is the Michigan Track Coaches
Association (of which Waha is a founding member) team of the decade for
the 60s. Thirteen straight league titles. In track there were state
champions, like Richard Sharkey in the two-mile to Clarence Chapman
setting a state long jump record before he landed in the NFL. For which
Waha takes little credit.
"Coaches are always looking for that once-in-a-lifetime kid," he said. "At
Redford I'd get two or three every year. It was such a big school. With
4,200 students you're bound to get some good ones. You can coach all
you want, but if you don't have the athletes it doesn't matter."
For Waha's pupils, athletic success translated to success later in life. Like
the kid from the wrong side of the tracks who ran for Waha before going
off to Vietnam. Today he teaches medicine at Northwestern. The CEO of
AT&T and Hughes Electronics, the VP of Stanley Tools, former Redford
runners. One of his assistant coaches is the chancellor at Emory
University.
And the boy busted smoking in the boys' room? Now the manager of the
GM test track in MIlford, he recently found Waha, via Google, to thank
him. Two years after the run-in, his father had died of lung cancer.
"You saved my life."
In the spring of 1988, Waha saved his own life.
"The doctor said there was too much stress, I had a virus that left my
body as if I'd been running marathons for two weeks, and if I kept at it I
was going to die," Waha said. "I got a second opinion - 'You're going to
die.'"
Which made the decision easy enough, and it was off to the North. But
Waha wasn't through coaching, as he assisted Hal Evans and Ken Plude at
Charlevoix High School. Even now he's not done entirely. At his
granddaughter's behest, Waha worked with one of her friends, Katie
LaValley, and in 2005 the Grand Rapids Forest Hills Central senior set the
state record in the 300 hurdles. Another protégé, Emily Heffling, set the
Charlevoix school record in the 300 hurdles last spring.
Waha's message hasn't changed working with athletes through six
decades. But the athletes have.
"It's completely different," Waha said. "In the 50s you'd tell a kid to do
something, 'OK!' In the 60s, 'Why?' By the 90s, 'Why?', and you'd explain
it, and 'Why?' again.
"Still, the good ones would go out and achieve. But I couldn't put up with
the attitudes. If it's just one, OK, but two, three, four, that hurts the team
and it's not worth it anymore."
But let's not confuse rigid standards with a closed mind. In fact it was
Waha's progressive thinking in his sport that separated him, helped make
him a hall of famer. He introduced to American runners distance training
based on pulse rate. He brought out the stop watch to field events, to
find consistency in the approaches of his jumpers and vaulters. For 20
years he was a one-man Internet for the Detroit News, collecting event
leaders for all of Michigan every week, by so doing promoting the sport
and creating community in a large, disparate state. He and Canham had
the NCAA indoor meet pulling in 20,000 fans a day. Waha had 150 teams
competing over three days at the Spartan Invitational. Big ideas, and big
results.
Of course, in true old school fashion, Waha deflects praise, credits others
for these successes. Saying every teacher has former students show up
30 years later to thank him for changing their lives. But someone knows
better, Joan, his wife of 48 years.
"He's been such a great influence on so many people, he's certainly
deserving of this honor," she said. "This is a very high quality individual."