The 1974 CHS football squad is joined by fellow inductees (l to r) Mert Waller, Cavan Simonson, June Mazdra and members of the 2010-2011 Wolf cheer squad.
We have a crowded stage today.
With two teams anchoring the 18th class to be inducted into the Coupeville Sports Hall o’ Fame, that’s a given.
But the Hall is a big one, with room for all within these hallowed digital walls (you can find it at the top of this blog, under the Legends tab), so no problem.
Let’s hear the stage groan as we welcome Mert Waller, June Mazdra, Cavan Simonson, the 2010-2011 Coupeville High School competitive cheer squad and the 1974 CHS football team.
The first two inductees are classic examples of hard-working, community-minded folk who dedicated a chunk of their lives to Cow Town.
Waller, father of current Whidbey News-Times Sports Editor Jim Waller, was once the coach at CHS.
And I do mean THE coach.
When Waller and family hit the Island in the ’50s, he was hired to coach all four of the Wolf varsity sports teams, including two in the same season.
Football, basketball and then double duty in the spring, running baseball and track (there were no high school sports for girls at the time), Waller did it all, and did it all with a deft touch.
Coupeville eventually lost him (and his sons) to the lure of the big city, where he coached basketball (boys and girls), track, cross country and softball at Oak Harbor, while serving as the school’s AD for a decade.
My path crossed Mert’s when he was assisting son Jim, my journalism teacher at OHHS, who was putting together a career that would land him in a real Hall of Fame as the Wildcat baseball coach.
His knowledge was all-encompassing, but his spirit, his kindness and his wit were also unrivaled. Wolf or Wildcat, Mert Waller was the real deal, a king among men.
And, if he was a king, Mazdra is a queen among women, a supremely sweet-natured woman who has continued to shine light on her alma mater.
A class of ’75 grad, she returned to the scorekeeper’s table in later years and has put in 20 years doing the score-books for Wolf girls’ basketball squads.
That has put her front and center for the most successful sports program the school has had in that time period, with her precise notations documenting the careers of legends such as Zenovia Barron, Ashley Ellsworth-Bagby, Brianne King, Lexie Black, Kacie Kiel and Makana Stone, just to name a handful.
She’s had a front row seat to teams that brought home state banners and broke school records and she remains the indispensable glue that holds everything together.
Without her, stats would be going everywhere and the media? We’d be even more lost than normal.
Our third inductee, Simonson, was a stellar cheerleader during her days at CHS and a pretty talented barista at Miriam’s Espresso. Athletically, though, her greatest accomplishments may have come after high school.
Cavan has transformed herself in recent years, morphing into a high-level kick-butt artiste in the world of bodybuilding and fitness figure competition.
Her dedication and drive is uncanny, yet she remains the same sweet ray o’ sunshine she was as a teen, while now being able to crush walnuts with her abs.
Pay tribute now, so when Cav-Cav hits the really big time (a slam dunk certainty), she might remember all of us peons from her early days.
And then we arrive at our teams, two squads that showed you can become first-class in a very short time period.
The 2010-2011 CHS cheer squad returned to competitive cheer after several years of staying on the sidelines and made an immediate impact.
In their first time back on the mat, the Wolves brought home a championship trophy, winning the Seahawk Cheer Challenge at Peninsula High School.
That surprise finish qualified them for state, where they would go on to claim 6th place in a field dominated by big city schools.
It was a reminder of past glory for Coupeville cheer, which has a chunk of hardware in the school’s trophy case, and a challenge to future teams, should the Wolves return one day to competition.
Put in the work and you can excel. It’s not the size of the school, but the size of your athlete’s hearts.
Inducted, as a group, together one more time:
Sylvia Arnold (coach)
Courtney Arnold (captain)
Nicole Becker
Emily Clay
Kim Farage
Jai’Lysa Hoskins
Teri Lee
Kaitlyn Marcus
Jessica Ornburn
Tyler Potts (captain)
Madeline Roberts
Kristin Sim
Amanda Streubel
Rounding out our inductees is the ’74 Wolf gridiron squad, which bounced from a one-win season to a one-loss season, becoming the first CHS football team to make it to state since 1939.
A pack of fast-living, hard-partying (allegedly) guys who gelled as a team under a coaching staff that employed techniques which might be frowned upon in modern touchy-feely times, those Wolves shocked the pigskin world (and, maybe, themselves).
While they fell 12-0 to Willapa Valley at state, they left their mark and no gridiron team would match them for 12 seasons, when the 1986 squad also made it to the big dance.
They may no longer look like an outtake from Dazed and Confused, and most have gone on to have rock-solid lives as upstanding citizens, but those freewheeling Wolves will always stand tall.
Now give me 300 grass drills, gentlemen.
Inducted, as a team:
Larry Ankney
Mike Ankney
Chris Ceci
Charlie Cook
Raymond Cook
Mike Dunn
Ron Eastlick
Foster Faris
Scotty Franzen
Kevin Haga
Chuck Hardee
Tom Hardin
Randy Keefe
Pat Leach
David McDaniel
Frank Mueller
Ron Naddy
Ted Pyles
Terry Pyles
Mark Sem
Don Stevens
