‘Albi’ steps down

Until the coronavirus pandemic hit the U.S. earlier this year, Roy Albertson figured he still had a few more years of coaching football ahead of him.

Even at 72 years old.

But COVID-19 changed everything.

When the pandemic shut down schools, sports and nearly everything else in the country, and much of America hunkered down at home, Albertson did the same, with his wife Pat at their home in Spirit Lake.

Since March, Albertson had hoped to return for an 18th season as Timberlake High football coach.

But fears over the virus are still plenty, and Albertson, at his age and with pre-existing medical conditions, is considered a high risk to become infected with the disease.

So recently he made the difficult decision to resign as the Tigers football coach.

“I’m in the dangerous category. My family doesn’t want me to take a chance on getting this,” Albertson said Thursday afternoon. “Because when you’re in the school, you’re going to be around a lot of people, and they’re going to be around a lot of people. And I’ve been in the hospital enough times.”

In September 2017, his heart stopped beating while at practice at Timberlake. He collapsed, and assistant coach shocked him back to life with a defibrillator, and a triple bypass followed.

“When I was at Chewelah, I had a staph infection in my knee, and I was in the hospital for a month,” he said.

“I thought it (the decision) over for quite a while. It was a tough decision to make, because I don’t feel 72. I thought I could keep going.”

Albertson has a career record of 179-107-1 in 29 seasons as a high school head football coach.

He was 108-64 in 17 seasons as Timberlake coach. The Tigers advanced to the state playoffs 16 times, and made it as far as the semifinals six times.

Before that, he was 57-20-1 in eight seasons as head coach at Chewelah.

In the 1970s, he was 14-23 in four seasons as head coach at Dayton in southeastern Washington.

After his stint at Dayton, Albertson was an assistant football coach at Kennewick (Wash.) High under the legendary Ed Troxel.

Tim Cronnelly was recently named athletic director at Timberlake — his second stint in that position at the school.

He never thought one of his first duties in his new/old role would be to find a successor for his highly successful football coach.

“No, no,” Cronnelly said. “I thought he earned the right to coach as long as he wanted to, and obviously he was still doing a good job.”

Cronnelly said when Albertson told him he was resigning, “I was sad; he did so much for Timberlake. He was a mentor to all of our coaches. There wasn’t anything that we dealt with that he didn’t have a good perspective on.”

Cronnelly said interviews for the head coaching position are scheduled for next week, and the school hopes to name a new head coach by the end of next week.

Albertson said he misses his grandchildren, who live in Kennewick and in the Kelso/Longview area, and hasn’t been able to visit them because of the coronavirus.

Perhaps the deciding factor in his decision to resign came with Timberlake scheduled to host a three-day scrimmage camp with other area teams in July.

“There’s a lot of work that has to be done on that,” Albertson said of the camp. “I started thinking, ‘If I’m running this thing, I have to be down on the field, and doing the things that need to get done. I didn’t want to be hiding someplace.’”

Albertson retired as a teacher in Washington in 2003, when he took the Timberlake job. He retired as a teacher in Idaho in 2019.

All told, Albertson coached for 47 seasons and taught for 46.

Among others, Albertson thanked Chuck Kinsey, who hired him at Timberlake; Kurt Hoffman, principal at Timberlake for most of his career there; and all his assistants, including Brian Kluss and Mike Menti, who have been on his staff in Spirit Lake since Day 1.

Albertson said he’ll miss “the camaraderie of the coaches, and the kids, of course. I keep going for them.”

If the COVID-19 fears eventually subside, Albertson said he would consider coming back to the Timberlake program in a year or so, as an assistant coach or with an underlevel program.

Cronnelly said he would be welcomed back.

“He was more than a football coach, that’s for sure,” said Cronnelly, who came to Timberlake the same year as Albertson, and was an assistant coach for one season before becoming AD. “It was more than football. He never gave up on a kid; he kept encouraging him. That’s one thing he taught all of us coaches — just don’t give up on a kid. He used to say, ‘If you give up on ’em, it’s not going to make it better.’ I guess he was ahead of his time on that one.”

Of course, Albertson did have one more thank you to pass on.

Albertson said Pat, his wife of 49 years, has been “one of the best assistant coaches I’ve ever had.”

“She did a tremendous job raising our kids, while I was off coaching all the time,” Roy said. “She kept me organized. She made scrapbooks for our senior kids here at Timberlake. She’s been fantastic. They’ve got to be special, when you’re involved 47 years in coaching. She gave up a lot that she could have done, so that I could coach two and three sports along the way.”

Now he can be there for her.

“She’s making a gardener out of me,” he said with a laugh.