If you're a high school basketball coach, the place you make your mark is in the gymnasium. It is where Coach Rick Baker is at home. “I have been doing it now for the last 48 years,” he says. “It has become my passion.”
Observing him at a recent game, Baker, no longer occupying the seat at the head of the bench, to me, seems out of place. He logged almost 30 years as a head boys basketball coach, including a state championship campaign. Back in the 90’s he was demonstrative. He was a foot stomping, in your face type of coach who perpetually prowled the sideline. He was as an opposing coach irritatingly relentless, one who through his body of work earned your respect. Coach Baker was a very good coach and a worthy adversary.
The best team I ever had in Kansas opened the season on a Friday night with a 27-point win over the pre-season #2 ranked Class 5A team in the state. The next Tuesday we traveled south down I-35 to Winfield for a visit with the Vikings and Coach Baker. It was never close. We were embarrassed. The next day newspaper headline was my one sentence post-game statement to the media: “I missed my son’s Kindergarten Christmas Program to watch this?”
But now he sits stoically next to fellow assistant coach Ed Talton and two seats down from Panther Head Coach Brock Edris. He rises from his padded chair only for timeouts, and then he stands several strides away from the intensity of the team’s huddle, alternating postures from hands on hips to arms crossed as he listens to instructions barked by Edris. A head coach has no such time out decorum dilemma. You push your way to the middle of the players huddle, drop to one knee and deliver rapid fire hand gesturing instructional wisdom until you hear the buzzer.
Edris tells me I have misled myself. Baker’s in-game persona may be flat as the state of Kansas, but in the big picture his influence soars. In a business in which coaches get reassigned, recycled, and relieved as a matter of course, Baker has been Edris’ top assistant since a wet behind the ears Edris took the reins of the Panthers in 2012. The two inherited a program with a 40-game losing streak, longest in the state. They ran it to 44. No one back in the 1980’s would have ever believed Monroe City could lose 44 consecutive boys basketball games. It was bad.
Twelve years later, the Panthers enter the season as the number one ranked team in the state of Missouri’s Class 3 division. They have been to the state Final Four the last two seasons, have won the last five district tournaments and have claimed the Clarence Cannon Conference crown for three consecutive seasons. All three streaks are “and counting.” The Panthers are, this winter, rolling again.
“I can't say enough about how much Coach Baker means to me and so many in Monroe City High School,” Edris says. “I was so fortunate that Coach Baker offered his experience to help me out as a first-time coach. He's genuine, honest, man of character and a friend. Every head coach needs a Coach Baker on his or her staff.”
Throw in Assistant Coach Ed Talton and Edris says he has the backing any coach would love. “We blend well as a staff. Both have different strengths and fill different roles for us, but what both share is (unquestionable) loyalty and ethics.”
The chronological steppingstones of the Panther coaching staff seem reversed. The Head Coach, Edris, is nearly 20 years younger than Talton and close to 40 years younger than Baker. However, the man with the top billing should not fear the “poisoned chalice’ backstabbing fate of so many Shakespearean Kings; both Talton and Baker neither see a head coaching position in the future. “No way,” says Talton. “Do I look crazy,” responds Baker.
Edris says game time impressions are not as they seem. “He (Baker) is very vocal to me, in games and out. We talk all the time. I want to hear what he sees, what he thinks, what I am doing that is not working. I always get input from both assistants before I talk to the players in a time out. The same before I talk to the team at half time and after the game.”
What Edris is acknowledging is that Baker's eyes have seen a lot of basketball.
In a line of work in where image is a matter of obsessive concern, Head Coach Edris’ choice to seek out input from a staff not afraid to disagree is a welcome departure. An assistant coach who's afraid to speak his mind will be of no help to the man in charge. A “yes-man” will just widely inflate a head coach’s ego, and most I have known don’t need any help.
Baker's nearly half century coaching odyssey has had more twists and turns than an Ozark Mountain logging road. “I grew up in Rochester, New York,” he says. “I came to Kansas for college. When I graduated from the University of Kansas in 1974, I got a job at Valley Falls High School in the central part of the state. I was very fortunate. For three years I had a great mentor, and it laid the foundation for my coaching philosophy.”
Remember the 1970’s quirky TV show Kung Fu? "When you can snatch the pebble from my hand, it will be time for you to leave,” the Master would in the weekly introduction tell David Carradine’s lead character. “That was me, the Kung Fu character,” Baker says today with a laugh. After three years at Valley Falls, “I thought I could snatch the pebble and it was time to go.” But he would learn that the lesson is often a lot harder than it seems.
“I took a job in a little town named Lewis, just outside of Dodge City, in the western part of the state,” Baker recalls. The high school today no longer exists, swallowed up by consolidation in 2006 when high school enrollment dropped to below 50. “For three years I was both the head football coach and the head boys’ basketball coach. That was a very challenging three years, but I also learned a lot. But I still felt like I needed more time as an assistant.”
With head coaching experience now under his belt, Baker moved on to a three-year stopover in Valley Center, a much bigger school than Lewis. He once again, he says, fell under the guidance of a strong coach. He labored at Valley Center as an assistant coach in the boys’ basketball program.
His next stop was at Garden Plain. “I was there five years,” Baker says. “And we had a great run of kids go through during that time. It's very similar to what we have going on in Monroe City right now, great athletes and great kids. That combination will spoil you. We went to the state tournament three times in five years. We won a state championship my last year there (1989). We also had a state runner up and a state 3rd place finish.”
Baker says after the state title at Garden Plain, he felt the natural next move was to gravitate to a bigger school that needed rebuilding. Winfield, Kansas High School needed a builder and Baker took the job. The Vikings played in the Ark Valley League, nicknamed throughout the state as the “Valley of Death”- a conference overflowing with tradition, interest, and talent.
“The competition in the AVL was just unreal,” remembers Baker. “Great players, great coaches and packed gyms (AVL member Hutchinson's gym held 8,000). We had been down for a number of years. I'm proud of the work we did there (Winfield). In seven years, we had three teams go to the state tournament: 1993, 1995, and 1997, which was my last year.”
For his final two years Baker also served as the Viking’s athletic director. “The Superintendent didn't like me being both the head coach and the AD. I felt I could handle it. I had my building Principal’s backing to hold both positions, but she (the Superintendent) was insistent I had to give up one (job). I didn't want to give up the basketball coaching, but I also didn't want to take a $6,000 pay cut by stepping down as AD. It was a tough decision, but I decided it was best for my family that we move on.”
“I wanted to get into the Kansas City area,” Baker continued. “But I couldn't find anything in Kansas that I felt good about. I took a job across the river in Savannah, MO, just south of Saint Joseph. I stayed there four years.”
Candid as always, in self-evaluation, Baker says, “I just didn't get it done there.”
After the four frustrating years at Savannah, in the fall of 2002, Baker landed in Monroe City. He served as the Panthers’ head boys’ basketball coach for seven years. After a two-year hiatus, he returned as Edris’ assistant in the fall of 2011. He also currently serves as an assistant in the fall to the softball program and in the spring to the track and field team.
Baker says the culture of not only the basketball program, but of Monroe City High School is 180 degrees better today than when he hit town 20 years ago.
Unfortunately, for a basketball coach, Baker arrived in MC at the most inopportune time. The program had been long neglected and in steady decline.
“We were not as good as I would have liked for us have been,” Baker states about his team’s won loss record during his first Panther tenure. “But I have no doubt that we did leave the basketball program better than what it was. There is no way, at my age, I would be doing what I'm doing now if the school culture had not changed dramatically. The current coaches and administrators have had a lot to do with the positive feel we now have here. They work together."
Baker and his wife Stephanie have four grown children. His daughter Kasi graduated from Savannah High School in 2002. His youngest three are all graduates of Monroe City High School. Son Clay in 2003, daughter Brittni in 2012 and son Brady in 2016. Clay played basketball for his father. Brady played under Coach Edris.
Baker has no set timetable for retirement. Busy coaching three sports as a Septuagenarian does not leave much room in his life for nostalgia. He is looking forward, not back. He deftly deflected any attempt by me to let him play the role of a Secondhand Lion. I ask about his memories of his 1989 state championship team in Garden Plain, KS. “We won,” he said.
He is a man locked into the present. Recently, Baker without prodding, discusses in detail with me why Charleston coming out of the state’s bootheel is a team he is keeping an eye on for the upcoming Class 3 state tournament. “They are always a team with a chance, always underrated. I hear they are bigger this year.”
He will turn 71 this season, and still he coaches. Why? Why is high school basketball special? Winning, sure, and Monroe City is doing that in bunches, but there must be more. At some point along the way most just stop caring - coaches burnout. Baker dares to avoid the skeptic and defy the norm. At his age, he says, he has no time to waste. He hears Charleston is bigger this year.
No comments:
Post a Comment