THE FRONT ROW WITH MARK NELKE: Thursday, October 15, 2015

A little over a year ago, perhaps the most famous offensive line coach in NFL history was in town, as a favor to a longtime friend and former player who was running a fundraising golf tournament to help an ailing friend.

On the day he was to fly back to St. Louis, a couple of people were invited to have breakfast with Jim Hanifan, who coached the Super Bowl champion “Hogs” offensive line with the Washington Redskins, and did the same for the Rams roughly a decade later.

One of those people was Henry Hamill, who sat across from Hanifan, picking his brain on offensive line play.

One of the top offensive line coaches in the Northwest, trying to pick up some pointers from the guru of offensive line play in the NFL.

“He sought out people that knew what they were doing, and tried to learn from them,” recalled Kelly Reed, who coached football with Hamill for years at Lake City High. “And that’s a credit to him; sometimes coaches think they know everything, and don’t ask questions.”

Hamill, longtime assistant coach at Lake City, and before that at Coeur d’Alene High, died Sunday night at age 67. He will be remembered at halftime of Friday’s Coeur d’Alene-Lake City football game, and his memorial service is scheduled for Saturday at 10 a.m. in the Lake City High auditorium.

His obituary can be found on page A6 of today’s Press.

HAMILL WAS offensive line coach and co-offensive coordinator at Lake City, until retiring in 2007. Reed coached the wide receivers, worked with the quarterbacks some, and called a lot of the pass plays. Hamill and Reed spent the games up in the press box, and Hamill, Reed and head coach Van Troxel could chat with each other through the headsets during the game.

“Oh, my gosh, I don’t even know where to start with how much he helped me with my coaching,” Reed said. “Not just in football, but in any sport I coached (Reed is Lake City’s head track and field coach, and an assistant boys basketball coach). One of the biggest lessons that I’ll always remember is he said, ‘football’s not about tricking ‘em, it’s about execution. Who cares if they know what we’re doing; they’ve got to stop it.’”

Hamill was friends with Dennis Erickson, and twice took Reed with him to spring practice at Oregon State when Erickson was there, and “the amount of information and knowledge I gained there was just immeasurable,” Reed said.

Hamill also chatted briefly with Bill Walsh once when Walsh was coach of the San Francisco 49ers. Many years ago, he found a way to journey back to the Midwest and spend a little time learning from Ohio State coaching legend Woody Hayes.

“He had a fantastic sense of when to call a trick play — a kickoff reverse, a halfback pass … ” Reed said. “And Henry was an exceptional practice coach. We did stuff over and over, and did it until he deemed it was right.”

Hamill was offensive line coach in 2006, when the Timberwolves steamrolled to a 12-0 record and the state 5A title. In the second half of the title game against Highland of Pocatello, Lake City, behind an outstanding offensive line which featured several future college players, pretty much ran the ball up the middle every play, and there was little the Rams could do about it.

“I’m like 100 percent positive, his O-line in ‘06 did not have one holding penalty called the whole year,” Reed said. “That might be one of the most amazing stats I’ve ever heard, for an O-line to go a whole season without a hold.”

Lake City High athletic director Jim Winger was in that role for many of the years Hamill was at Lake City.

“When he was our offensive coordinator, and we were rockin’ and rollin’ for all those years (state playoff appearances every year since 1997, with Hamill as O-line coach), in the second half I would slip up into the press box and there used to be a couch back there, and I would sit down, and I would just listen to him work. I’m not a football expert, but just to listen to him call plays … he was an incredible game coach. It was awesome to watch him work.”

“Another thing about Henry was how much he cared for his players,” Reed added. “The O-line was a big family. The kids who played for him were pseudo-sons in a way.”

His actual sons, Pete and Alex, played at Lake City when he coached there.

BEFORE COMING to Coeur d’Alene in 1986, Hamill coached at Thompson Falls, Glasgow and Helena in Montana, and at Grants Pass in Oregon. He was part of four state titles — one at Thompson Falls, one at Glasgow, and two at Lake City.

“Another thing I learned from him was to grade film,” Reed said. “He was the first coach that graded film like a test. You may think you know how they played, but you don’t until you grade the film. I learned a ton on how the receivers played (by grading the film).”

Hamill was Winger’s freshman boys basketball coach at Lake City in the mid to late 1990s. Winger said he “did an outstanding job,” in addition to coaching basketball, using that “old-school” approach to teach ninth-graders stuff like how to ride the bus, how to act in the locker room, how to behave, how to warm up, etc.

Before that, Hamill was an assistant football coach at Coeur d’Alene when Winger was named the Vikings’ boys basketball coach. In those days, Winger was known to get a little hot and stomp his feet when things weren’t going well.

When I first got started (in coaching) I got the (Coeur d’Alene) job it was at a young age, and he’d say, “Hey, will you calm down a little bit,’” Winger recalled.

“I said ‘Yeah, you’re probably right.’ He said, ‘It’s all going to be fine. You’re young, and you want to do it all right, but you ain’t gonna do it all right.’ I said, ‘I’m trying’ and he said, ‘Well, quit trying so hard.’”

When people would ask Winger about Hamill, he would describe him as someone with a “big bark, but a bigger heart.”

Reed agreed.

“He was one of my absolute best friends, and some of my best memories of coaching, in any sport that I coached, were with him in the press box, and I’ll cherish those memories forever,” Reed said.

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