1985-02-28-sc-p31-basketball-not-only-game-in-town

February 28, 1985 Spokane Daily Chronicle Page 31:

Basketball no longer the only game in town

Reardan schools are achieving a better balance between athletic and academic programs

By MICHAEL MURPHEY

Staff writer

REARDAN, Wash.—To an outsider, it doesn’t appear that much changes in a place like Reardan.

The State B High School Basketball Tournament only reinforces that impression.

For the most part, that’s what the outside world sees. It’s that little school with the good basketball team that’s always in Spokane at the end of February—18 of the past 20 years, as a matter of fact.

If you follow basketball at all, you probably know those are Gene Smith’s kids out there on the floor. And often as not, they aren’t going to overwhelm anyone with their athletic talent.

It’s more a matter of Smith’s coaching, basketball buffs say; his ability to convert an old-fashioned work ethic into wins.

He teaches aggressive defense, deliberate team offense and discipline—with emphasis on the latter, physically manifested by the length of his players’ hair.

There is no mystery about what a Reardan basketball player’s ears look like.

Yes, an observer looking for respite from the rude manner in which the world keeps changing might see something of a refuge in the little town and its plucky team that squeaks about the Coliseum floor with such comfortable regularity each February.

The truth is, though, the basketball program may be one of the few things about Reardan that isn't changing.

Reardan has been swamped with change in the past decade, and it hasn't been easy. Some parents have come to question the traditional balance between academics and athletics.

“When I was there, there was a real philosophical schism in that district,” said former Superintendent Frank Kelly. “It is a conflict between a traditional point of view and a more progressive point of view. And there’s no doubt that the conflict is related to the substantial demographic change that has taken place.”

Twenty years ago, when its remarkable State B basketball tournament string began, Reardan was a school district peopled by farm families. Among the largest school districts geographically in the state—Reardan encompasses about 630 square miles of Spokane and Lincoln counties—most of the students came from the Lincoln County portion of the district. They lived on farms right around Reardan, and the school was the focal point of their families’ lives. As in most small towns, the school athletic team was a principal source of identity and entertainment for adults as well as students.

And, according to some old-timers, people were pretty much in agreement about what they wanted from a school. They wanted the basics; they wanted discipline—which included the theory that it probably was good for a kid to be grabbed by the scruff of the neck now and again; and they wanted a sports program they could be proud of.

But the district began to change. Spokane began spreading into the extreme eastern part of the district, and these newcomers were working and recreating in Spokane, not Reardan.

Today, perhaps two-thirds of the students live in Spokane County. Their parents are merchants and attorneys and university professors as well as blue-collar workers and farmers.

Kelly, superintendent of San Juan Island School District the past four years, came to Reardan as superintendent in 1978 and tried some changes—mostly, he said, to put school policies on a better legal footing.

"We instituted regular written teacher evaluations, textbook and materials re- views, more legally defensible discipline procedures regarding student rights and, responsibilities, and we changed the dress code," he said.

There was resistance to many of the changes, but most of it, he said, came from rural-oriented people whose children had gone to school years before. To them, he said, the school—and the athletic team—still was an important focal point of their community interest.

“I think there was a tendency in Reardan to equate the overall effectiveness of the school with the success of the athletic teams,” Kelly said, “and people felt that as long as the team was good, they had a good school.

“And when we pointed out areas that needed improvement, and suggested substantial departures from past practices, the natural tendency for people who felt things were in good shape was to challenge that,” he said.

One of the most visible areas of conflict was the dress code because it impinged on Coach Smith’s long-standing rule about haircuts.

“It was a real conflict,” Kelly said, “between the traditional point of view that schools should be structured and regimented and controlled, and the more progressive point of view that kids ought to be treated... as individuals and that they operate best where they feel they have the ability to affect what happens in the school.

"The coaches were into the short-hair thing. My feeling was that philosophically, if a kid goes out and works hard and respects the rules and does his best, he shouldn’t have to further prove himself by altering his appearance in a way that’s going to make him uncomfortable."

Both sides had vocal parent supporters, with the lines drawn more or less between the old-timers and the newcomers. As the controversy continued, it spread beyond haircuts and discipline to academic concepts.

It wasn’t that one side was right and the other wrong, Kelly said. It was just that the two groups were different.

The groups still are different, and there still are those who say they are frustrated because the athletic program carries the political clout to get its way at the expense of other programs.

“There’s no question but what there are people in the district who feel that athletics is overemphasized here,” said school board member Jim McManus—a relative newcomer to the district who owns a business in Spokane.

“I’d be lying if I said there wasn't some sentiment that way,” McManus said. “And it is frustrating that you can get 1,000 people in a gym for a basketball game, but you can’t really get people interested in our academic programs.

“But that isn't the fault of the basketball program.”

Manus and Superintendent Gil Johnson—who makes it clear that he supports traditional disciplinary concepts and short haircuts for athletes—are concerned about removing Reardan’s academic achievements from the shadow of its basketball success within the district.

“I really think that one of the reasons for a successful program in any school is the interest the community has in the program,” McManus explained. “If the community is looking over your shoulder and displaying a genuine interest, you program is going to improve.

"That’s my motivation for trying anything we can do to get more community awareness for our academic programs.

“I feel that students come here for an education,” Johnson said. “That’s our main objective. But we don’t have to bring down the level of our athletic programs to do that.

“We want to bring academics up to the level of our athletic success.”

Johnson cites academic factors of which he is proud. Reardan was named by the Washington Roundtable recently as one of the 39 best school districts in the state. The Roundtable is an independent study organization sponsored by the Fortune 500 companies in the state.

He directs visitors’ attention to an extensive computer training program in the mathematics department. A chemistry teacher has a Ph.D. The music program is expanding. Vocational programs have achieved consistent success in competition with other schools.

When anyone suggests to Smith that Reardan might emphasize basketball at the expense of academics, he has a read answer. This year, the boys’ basketball squad has a cumulative grade-point aver- age of 3.52 for the first semester. The girls’ team, making its seventh straight appearance in the girls’ State B tourney, has a cumulative 3.45 GPA.

Smith’s peers say he is a good biology teacher as well as a good coach.

“Coaching is teaching and teaching is coaching,” Smith said. “I tend to teach more to the kids who are not motivated. Last year I felt we really brought three or four of those kids along in the classroom, and I got a lot of satisfaction from that.”

Members of the basketball team say nobody does them any favors in the classroom,

Sherman Alexi, a senior starter this ear, is a member of the Spokane Indian ribe who went to school on the reservation until eighth grade, when his parents moved him to Reardan. He recently scored in the 99th percentile in the national Scholastic Achievement Test—the highest ever for a Reardan student—and wants to go into medicine or law.

“I came here because Reardan was academically much better than where I was,” Alexi said. “I play basketball because it’s fun and because it teaches character and perseverance.

“But there’s also a lot of pressure from coaches to do well academically—not just pass, but to do well.”

[photo] Gene Smith, highly successful, longtime Reardan basketball coach, stands at center court in the high school’s gym, football in hand, as he instructs a boys’ physical education class.

Staff photo by DAN PELLE