THE FRONT ROW WITH BRUCE BOURQUIN: Friday, January 1, 2016

During the 1957 season at Tulare Union High in the central California town of Tulare, Calif., Percy Carr, then a sophomore on the varsity boys basketball team, learned a lesson that would propel him into one of the best community college coaching careers in the nation.

“We had a coach back then named Maurice Fitzpatrick,” Carr said. “He’s 87 years old now, he’s still alive. When I was a sophomore, he started five black players. He called us in and said they (the school) don’t want me to play all of you black kids. And so he played the best players. At the end of the year, they fired him. That’s what drove me into this. We want kids to graduate, because someone sacrificed for us.”

Carr is in his 41st year of coaching the San Jose City College, Carr has 845 wins, the most wins in California community college history and 14th in the nation in career wins. His Jaguars have had eight teams win the California Colleges Athletic Association state championship, won 13 Coast Conference titles and have reached the playoffs 34 out of 38 times. They are 6-8 this season.

FOR THE first time in NIC history, a California community college team played a tournament at NIC. SJCC, which over the past several years has been nationally ranked, lost Tuesday to Highline in the Coeur d’Alene Inn-vitational at North Idaho College, Carr’s squad couldn’t quite face off against the team his longtime friend, NIC athletic director Al Williams, used to play for. The team stayed in the Best Western Plus Coeur d’Alene Inn.

“He and I have been friends,” Carr said of Williams. “For at least 13 years, he asked me to come to play at their tournament (during the Thanksgiving weekend). But with scheduling, us not connecting to getting enough money to go, we had an opportunity to go this year. Al and I kept in contact all these years.”

RIGHT BEFORE the 1982 season, Williams would later help Stan Arnold, a former SJCC player who transferred to play for the University of Idaho, get accustomed to the campus and its facilities.

“I showed him around,” Williams said. “He was on the alumni team, along with Dwayne Warner, who has a son on this season’s NIC team, Kaleb Warner. Percy’s a throwback to the old school. He believes in discipline in the program. If you don’t have discipline, he’ll suspend you in a minute. You can’t play for him if you don’t have a thick skin, you better change for him, because he won’t change what he does.”

In September of that year, Williams playing on an alumni team with former San Jose City College players against San Jose City College’s then-current players. He was invited as a Division I player from the University of Idaho by Carr. From there a friendship emerged.

“It was a scrimmage and coach Carr wanted as many Division I players as he could get on that team,” Williams said. “It was so we could humble his kids so they didn’t have a big head before the season started.”

Williams was even more aggressive in getting Carr to come up to NIC, which for now is in the Scenic West Athletic Conference and eligible to play in the NJCAA championship. But next season, the Cardinals will join the Northwest Athletics Association of Community Colleges, which is more of a regional conference and will not play for national titles.

“I jumped on him early about two years ago,” Williams said. “I said how we’re a national JUCO team and if it’s going to mean anything, they’ve got to play up here soon.”

Williams also showed up to Carr’s induction into the California Colleges Athletic Association Hall of Fame in 2003 in San Francisco.

Williams credited the fact coaches from Division I programs such as Gonzaga, Washington State, Idaho, Oregon and Utah, along with Florida and Missouri, showed up to the tournament in part to watch coach Carr’s team.

“We recruit the same kids and more often than not, we get them to come up here,” Williams said. “We’re a national JUCO team and if they want more exposure, they’ll come here.”

CARR HAS more important goals on his mind than just winning state and conference titles, although his teams have regularly done that as well. Carr graduated from Fresno State University and coached for one year at Stanford in the early 1970s, and he took the job at SJCC in 1974.

“I have the highest graduation rate (of my former players) from four-year schools, 97 percent,” Carr said. My whole emphasis is graduating and going to class, do what you’re supposed to do. If they want to quit playing basketball, that’s fine. I have a guy who lives near me who played for me, who’s a doctor. I have them all over the place.”

Carr is well-respected around the country and he was offered jobs at three different Division I-A universities, which he would not name (my guess one of them may have been San Jose State University, but who knows?). But after thinking about whether or not to accept their offers, he passed.

“I kept thinking about them for three or four days each,” Carr said. “They held the job open. But I never wanted to leave my daughter (Casey Carr, a state of California administrator). Plus I knew I’d get fired. I didn’t like traveling (at Stanford).”

Carr also caught a Washington State University game while his team was up here in the Inland Northwest. Plus he’s seen some changes in today’s community college players.

“Nowadays they want to shoot more instead of running the offense,” Carr said. “It’s gotten worse this past year. We don’t want to run and fire it all the time.”

So of all the coaches and teams from California, it was pretty cool Williams invited a living legend such as Carr.

Bruce Bourquin is a sports writer at The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2013, via e-mail at bbourquin@cdapress.com or via Twitter @bourq25