The Front Row with Mark Nelke June 9, 2013

You never know what skills you're going to have to master when you choose to enter the teaching profession, especially at a smaller school.

Front-door greeter. Coffee maker. Fight breaker-upper. Snack orderer. Bear chaser-offer. Popcorn maker. Ankle taper.

Tim Ross did that and much, much more in nearly 40 years and three stops along the teaching/coaching trail - at Hagerman, at Clark Fork and finally, for the last few years, at Sandpoint Middle School.

At 61, the popular teacher/coach/friend/just about everything else is retiring, effective at the end of the school year, leaving quite the void at Sandpoint Middle School - just like he did at Clark Fork, just like he did at Hagerman.

"Anybody that knows Tim Ross, the best thing he did was be Tim Ross," said Byron Lewis, who hired Ross at Clark Fork Junior/Senior High School in 1981, and spent 11 years there as principal. "I don't think there were any kids that played for Ross or had his class that didn't like him. What I remember was, he made me feel good about being around him."

TIM ROSS graduated from Sandpoint High and the University of Idaho, then started his teaching career at Hagerman, a small school like Clark Fork, located just off Interstate 84 between Mountain Home and Twin Falls. He coached Hagerman's girls to the state A-4 tournament in 1978, in just the third year of the tournament.

He also led Hagerman back to state in 1979.

After six years at Hagerman, he was hired at Clark Fork, roughly a half-hour from his hometown.

"The people down in Hagerman loved him, and they didn't want to lose him," recalled Lewis Speelmon, who spent 25 years at Clark Fork as a coach and athletic director, and later as principal.

During his time at Clark Fork, Ross was at various times the football coach, girls basketball coach and girls track coach, and also was a junior high football coach.

"He was always upbeat; even with things were going bad, he was positive," said Rich Hanna, who was head girls basketball coach at Clark Fork in the early and mid-1980s, with Ross as his assistant.

"We had a couple years when I was head coach and he was assistant, and we didn't have a whole lot of talent, so we had to make practices as upbeat as we possibly could, and as simple as we could."

(I remember those years. The Wampus Cats endured a winless season in 1982-83, before ending that 32-game winless streak late in the following season).

"He came up with some drills that made all the girls feel like they were able to contribute," Hanna said. "He made it so all the girls felt good about themselves, even though we couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with a howitzer."

When Hanna resigned as girls basketball coach in 1987, Ross replaced him as head coach - and was assisted for a few years by Speelmon. Ross took the Cats to state three times in five seasons. Before that, he was head football coach for three seasons (1983-85).

For years, Hanna was the boys track coach, Ross the girls track coach - and coached his share of standout teams and individuals on the track. For most of the last four decades, Ross has volunteered at the state track meet at Bronco Stadium in Boise, helping run the high jump for many years. Even in the recent years at SMS, when he didn't have a handful of athletes to coach at state, he continued to volunteer at state track.

"He knew a LOT of people," Hanna said. "We'd go to state tournaments down south and every time we'd go to a game, he'd know somebody in the stands."

"There weren't too many people that he didn't know," said Speelmon, who also hunts and fishes with Ross. "And it's the same thing with kids."

TO HEAR Speelmon tell it, during the school year at Clark Fork, coffee was at 5 a.m. The group usually consisted of a bus driver, a maintenance guy, and two or three teachers.

"We had these seats out in the foyer (of the school)," Hanna recalled. "He (Ross) was the greeter in the morning when kids walked in the front door. He sat there, and every morning, when kids came through he'd say hello to everybody. If you asked the kids, they would say, 'I remember Mr. Ross, I saw him first thing in the morning.' He filled the pop machine, ordered candy, ordered pop for the concession stands. You name it, probably over the years, at one time or another, Tim did it."

"Tim was pretty much of a leader when it came to taking care of the kids," Lewis added. "He was always there and was always an advocate for the kids."

At small schools like Clark Fork, the coaches were also de facto athletic trainers. His wife, Sandy, who coached volleyball at Clark Fork, recalls her players asking to get out of class so Tim could tape their ankles before they hopped on the bus for a road match.

And if a visiting player came to Clark Fork and needed taped, well, he'd help them out, too.

"He could tape good, and he could tape fast," Hanna said.

When he wasn't coaching a Clark Fork team, Ross often was running the clock, or keeping book at a Wampus Cat game. That was back in the days, Lewis recalled, when teachers came early, stayed late, and did whatever needed to be done at the school - even if it wasn't technically "their job."

"Those were the unwritten things that you did to help support the school," Speelmon said. "(The benefit is) the exposure that you do have to young people, if you're doing something like that, or even if you're just in the stands watching - they know that you're there. They know that you care."

When he left Clark Fork, "they're still fighting to try to fill that void," he said.

ONE TIME, in the late 1980s or early '90s, Ross was coaching junior high football at Clark Fork. One afternoon during practice, Ross called Speelmon, who was AD at the time, to report that a bear was on the football field.

Yes, a bear.

"I said, 'Well, scare it off,'" Speelmon said, "and he said, 'We've already done that, and it came back.' He said, 'Why don't you do something about it?'

"So I called the mayor, and she says, 'I can't tell you to shoot in city limits, but I wish you'd get rid of it.' So I called the game warden, and he says, 'You know, I can't give you permission to shoot, but I'm out of town on Saturday between such and such a time ... ' so I got a neighbor and his son and we went out across (the football field) to the other side, and his son shot that bear.

"So I got rid of the bear for him."

RICH LUND spent 35 years at Kootenai High, most of those years as the boys and/or girls track coach. To say he coached against Ross wouldn't be quite accurate; to see them at meets looked more like a reunion of old college buddies, which might be more accurate, since they both went to Idaho around the same time.

Lund, who retired five years ago, said he thought one reason the Kootenai and Clark Fork teams got along so well in those days was because the coaches got along so well.

When Ross wasn't coaching at track meets, he was often starting them - at Sandpoint, at Kootenai, wherever. Rare was there an invitational at Kootenai where Ross wasn't the starter, Lund said.

As a track starter, Ross had a reputation for running a fast meet - but he also had time to joke with the athletes just before their races.

"He was probably one of the most fantastic track starters I've known, because of his personality and his jolliness," Lund said.

Lund recalled one meet in the mid-'90s where, in a particular girls relay, Kootenai had the only team entered - so all the Warriors had to do was finish the race cleanly to collect the team points.

"There was an exchange between my daughter and one of her best friends," Lund said. "One of them took off a little soon, so this girl kinda tossed the baton, out of the blue, and my daughter catches the baton, and takes off and finishes the race.

"I look at Tim and he looks at me, and they haven't even come across the finish line and he comes over to me and goes, 'Do you want to tell them, or me?

"I said, Why don't you?

"So they come across the finish line and he says, 'Great job ladies, great catch. You're DQ'd. You can't do that."

"We can't?"

SHORTLY AFTER Sandy Ross accepted a teaching job at Sandpoint Middle School, Tim came into town as well, joining his brother, Dick, on the faculty at SMS.

Ross, who taught U.S. history and social studies for most of his career, became track coach at Sandpoint Middle School.

"He was a great get for us," said Dave DeMers, athletic director at SMS, head track coach at Sandpoint High - and these days, also dean of students at SMS, in addition to teaching three periods of U.S. history.

"I told him I have a track position, and you're going to get it, whether you like it or not," DeMers said with a laugh.

"Timmy is the consummate teacher," DeMers added. "He cares a lot for kids, cares a lot for what he does."

(In fact, as DeMers spoke on the phone late on a Thursday afternoon, Ross was down at Silverwood Theme Park, chaperoning a group of eighth-grade students.

"He volunteered," DeMers said.)

Sandpoint Middle School will not only have to replace a teacher and a coach - but also a greeter, on the north end of the hallway, near the wrestling room and the portable classrooms.

"Every morning he's on the back door," DeMers said. "He opens that door and every kid that walks through that door, he knows every kid's name. I go back there and I stand by him and he knows every kid that walks through that door, and he calls them by name. He knows every kid's name and he's there every morning."

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at CdAPressSports.