Hall o’ Fame inductees (clockwise from bottom left) Rose Bergdoll, Lori Stolee, Dick Bogardus and Breeanna Messner.
Jack Sell, back in the day, sharing the award stage with (l to r) Jim Keith, Stan Willhight, Alan Hancock, Paul Messner and an unidentified college coach.
Real, lasting impact.
It’s what each of the five members of the 23rd class to be inducted into the Coupeville Sports Hall o’ Fame share in common.
Both at CHS and away, the men and women in today’s class (after this they’ll be found atop the blog under the Legends tab) set standards of excellence.
So it is with open arms and a glad heart we welcome Rose Bergdoll, Lori Stolee, Jack Sell, Breeanna Messner and the late, great Dick Bogardus to these hallowed digital walls.
Up first are the ends on the ’66 Wolf football team, Sell and Bogardus, part of the wrecking crew that opened up space for fellow Hall o’ Famer Paul Messner as he roared to nearly 800 yards in just the first four games of that season.
Bogardus, an easy-going, well-liked guy who starred in multiple sports at CHS, was lost too soon, as a motorcycle accident claimed his life shortly after high school.
But his memory lives large in the town in which he once played, and a visit to the high school gym is all you need to realize that.
The school’s annual Male Athlete of the Year Award is named in honor of Bogardus.
Each time another young man claims that honor, from Corey Cross to Jon Roberts to James Smith to Nick Streubel, they form a link in the chain that carries us back and assures Bogardus will not be forgotten.
The other end on the ’66 squad is my landlord, a guy who has come back to the town that made him, after many years of traveling the world.
Sell readily admits he was undersized as a football player. But that never stopped him.
One of his first coaches looked at a scrawny freshman and intoned, “Sell … you don’t need to do this. You’re too smart to be playing football.”
The future ASB president shrugged it off, though, and learned a variety of blocking moves (some of which might not have been fully legal), playing four years for the Wolves and acquitting himself quite nicely.
Sell, like most everyone in those days, played both ways for Coupeville, and his 25-yard reception off of a fake punt (think a two-yard pass and 23 yards of leg-churning foot work by the receiver) against Granite Falls tipped the scales for the Wolves in their biggest win of the ’66 campaign.
After school, he was off to the U-Dub (he graduated in ’70), then skipped around the world with wife Char, working in far-flung environments on water resources and environmental engineering.
Since 1980, he’s been a partner in Layton & Sell Coastal and Civil Engineering out of Kirkland, and built his eventual retirement home overlooking Penn Cove a few years back.
Of course, that means he has to see my dilapidated car from his deck when in town, but, hey, we all make concessions. Maybe putting him in the Hall will ease that pain a bit.
No? Still want me to set the hunk o’ junk on fire and be done with it? Yep, I figured.
Our third inductee, Miss Rose E. Bergdoll, is a former CHS track star and cheerleader who once upon a time toiled with me at Videoville and Miriam’s Espresso.
Now a New Yawker, she gets in the Hall because she was peppiness personified (always a good skill to have as a cheerleader), but even more so because she is quite simply one of the loveliest human beings to ever walk the Earth.
Rose is sweet, caring, generous, kind, smart as all get out, funky, sassy, sharp and so much more. She is like a walking, talking sunrise come to life, but never cloying or fakey.
She is simply what she is — and what she is, is truly magnificent.
I have met a lot of people, some nice, some not so much, and there are but a handful who transcend space and time to make every moment they are in better.
It don’t get no better than Rose E., end of story.
Our fourth inductee shares a lot of Bergdoll’s traits, while also bringing in big-time athletic accomplishments fueled by the genes passed down by her grandfather.
Breeanna Messner, maybe the calmest fiery athlete I have ever covered, burned for success down to her very core, but that never stopped her from being a wonderful person at the same time.
A four-sport star (volleyball, cheer, basketball, softball), Breezy was a rock for every team she played for, and the next time she backs down in the heat of the moment will be the first time.
I was lucky enough to cover an overwhelming amount of her high school athletic accomplishments, and I could go on for days talking about all she did, and the grace she showed as she did it.
There was a moment in a basketball game, in particular, that stands out.
A rival player shoved two fingers into Messner’s eyeball (perhaps accidentally, perhaps not) and dropped Breeanna to her knees. She was obviously in pain and was having trouble with her vision, but she never left the court.
She also didn’t retaliate with a shove, or a punch or a burst of cuss words.
Instead she calmly stood up, paced around for a few seconds, wildly blinking, then started banging down three-pointers from all angles. Each time another one dropped, she smiled a small smile, turned and headed back up-court.
No over-the-top explosion as the ball hit net, just a cold-blooded warrior (metaphorically) punching her foes in the face, again and again.
It showed a backbone of steel, a refusal to give in to hard times and genuine classiness. It was about a five-minute span that should be shown to every high school athlete.
This? This is how you play.
I know, Breeanna doesn’t need my lil’ Hall. She’s going to accomplish truly staggering things — already has, for that matter — but too late, I already inducted you!
And we reach our final honoree, a woman who I clashed with at first, before coming to better understand her.
Lori Stolee’s run as Athletic Director at CHS was tumultuous at times, and if she is only remembered for the crackdown on the Wolf student cheering section, we do her a great disservice.
We have differing views on what is appropriate for that section, but let’s also acknowledge she had to answer to the school administration, the Cascade Conference and the WIAA (all of whom have become far more restrictive in recent years) and always tried to find a happy medium.
There was never a moment when I didn’t believe she genuinely cared, deeply, for every one of her students. She was unflagging in spirit, even when getting verbally lashed.
She also had to deal with something no previous AD had faced — me, newly free of professional newspaper constraints and running amuck.
In my early days here at Coupeville Sports, I was much more attack-orientated, and I know she fielded phone calls from King’s, ATM, South Whidbey, you name it.
I also know she shielded me, letting them vent their angina and only allowing a few small bits to trickle back to me.
Lori bent over backwards with me — how she didn’t ban me from the CHS campus in the early days is a bit of a mystery — and I’d like to hope I learned something from her, mellowing a bit and performing more of an out-reach program than a face-slappin’ program these days.
Well, most days…
And let’s also give Stolee a huge chunk of credit for what I believe is the defining moment in CHS athletics in recent memory.
She worked tirelessly behind the scenes to get Coupeville, the smallest 1A school in the state, out of the 1A/2A Cascade Conference and into the new 1A Olympic League.
A good idea when we first joined a decade back, the Cascade Conference, with huge 2A schools and private schools that could operate by their own rules, no longer fit, and the jump has been seismic.
Facing off with schools much closer in size, no longer dealing with the ingrained belief that merely seeing certain private school names on rival jerseys automatically equaled a loss, the Wolves have soared in their new home.
Coupeville has already put up three league championship banners, in girls’ basketball, girls’ tennis and boys’ tennis.
That broke a 13-year dry spell and provides current and future Wolves tangible proof of excellence that is not completely covered in dust.
The Wolves have landed MVPs in football (Josh Bayne) and basketball (Makana Stone), become contenders in virtually every sport and have the second-most overall conference wins since the league debuted last year.
It is a time of rebirth, of new hope, and Stolee, who is now working at Marysville-Pilchuck, deserves a round of applause for making it a reality.
She also deserves another round of applause for surviving me and my growing pains.
So, basically, keep the applause coming.
