Templeman Throws Himself Into Camp

The co-founders of one of the nation’s top throwing camps for high school discus, shot put and javelin throwers were modestly average throwers in high school.

Bart Templeman and Bryan Rasmussen, who will put on the seventh edition of the Iron Wood Throwers Camp beginning today, were much better football players than throwers as preps.

Not long after they started coaching, though, football took a back seat to the throws.

Templeman, 51, an assistant track coach at North Idaho College, and Rasmussen, 25, head track coach at Coeur d’Alene High, started their camp because they thought they could offer something better than camps they had attended together for three years.

Templeman and Rasmussen qualified for their state high school track meets just once, their senior years. Neither placed at state.

But both fell in love with the throws. That mutual interest led to the birth in 1989 of their camp.

Templeman, who coached Rasmussen at CdA High, has taught himself much of what he knows about the throws, supplementing his learning through reading and attending camps.

“I still have a 2-inch binder on the throws that I started in college, but that information is obsolete now,” said Templeman.

Though too modest to admit it, Templeman probably would have been more successful in high school had he known half of what he knows today.

Or if he’d had a coach.

“We had a track team my senior year (at Salmon, Idaho) - about six of us qualified for state - but we didn’t have a coach,” Templeman said.

Templeman said that’s one of the reasons he became a throwing coach.

“It would be a shame to waste knowledge,” Templeman said. “There are too many takers and not enough givers anymore.”

Templeman thought he had the perfect combination for an occupation - he was a high school teacher and coach.

He started his teaching career at Minico in southern Idaho, where he spent six years as an assistant track coach and three as a head football coach. He went on to Boise High, where he was a head wrestling coach and assistant football and track coach.

But Templeman decided he needed a career change and a change of scenery. Both decisions landed Templeman and his wife Pat, his high school sweetheart he married 32 years ago, in Coeur d’Alene in 1979. He works as a salesman for a lumber company in Spokane.

A couple of years after moving, Templeman, who has coached about 20 state champions and more than 40 placers, became an assistant coach to CdA High head track coach Gary Rasmussen, Bryan’s father.

At least one former student at Minico and now an actor on the sitcom “Coach,” believes secondary education lost one of its all-time best teachers when Templeman left.

“The day he quit teaching was a great loss for education,” said Minico grad Bill Fagerbakke, who plays Dauber on the popular ABC show. “He was not only a great coach, but the same intensity and love he had for athletes he had for all students in the classroom. My brother was running around with the hippie crowd and he had Bart in a government class. Bart had the same impact on him as he had on me.”

Templeman won’t like reading this story. Not that anything is nonfactual, but he won’t like the focus being totally on him.

A giant of a man at 6-foot-2 and 250 pounds, with hands the size of tree trunks and fingers the size of limbs, Templeman has a heart of equal, if not larger, proportions.

In the past 15 years as an assistant coach at CdA and NIC, Templeman hasn’t accepted one cent for salary. The two years Gary Rasmussen tried to pay Templeman, he gave the money back to students in scholarships.

Though coaching runs in the family, Bryan Rasmussen didn’t hesitate to credit the person who most influenced his decision to coach.

“I wouldn’t be a track and field coach without (Templeman’s) guidance,” Rasmussen said. “He started taking me to camps as a sophomore.”

Longtime NIC track coach Mike Bundy thinks he has the best unpaid coach in the nation.

“He’s an artist, a genius,” Bundy said. “A lot of people understand the principles of the (throws), but it’s the rare person indeed that can transmit the principles to the young people and give them practical advice about it, too. He’s a master teacher.”

One of Templeman’s athletes this spring at NIC, Chris Thompson, plans to walk on at Boise State next year, continue throwing and with luck coach some day - all because of Templeman.

“I was very intimidated by him at first because he knew so much,” Thompson said. “I mean he could coach anywhere, he knows so much. What I’ve gained from him I want to give back to others. I need to give back what Bart has given to me.”

BSU coach Ed Jacoby has known Templeman since he coached at Boise High.

“He’s done more for the throws in the state of Idaho than anyone,” Jacoby said.

A parade of former Olympic cham pions and some of the top throwers in the nation will converge on Coeur d’Alene today. They will spend the next six days instructing nearly 125 athletes and about 40 coaches, including state champions from more than 10 states.

Templeman’s camp has grown from a handful of local athletes and coaches the first few years to being recognized as one of the top specialized camps around.

The long list of Olympic-level instructors attending certainly lends credibility to the venture.

Mac Wilkins, for example, a former world record holder in the discus and Olympic gold medalist in 1976, is making his third trip to the camp. It’s the only camp on Wilkins’ summer schedule.

“I do this camp because what Bart is doing is good for athletes,” said Wilkins, a salesman for a computer firm in Seattle. “He’s really concerned about doing it right, getting the most out of it for kids.”

The camp has grown so big so fast, Templeman said, that some changes will have to be made to accommodate the size.

Especially with a commitment for next year’s camp - during the Olympic year - from Wolfgang Schmidt, a former world record holder and Olympic medalist from East Germany.

“The thing we’ve got to keep in focus is the reason we started the camp in the first place, and that was to develop better throwers in the area and state,” Templeman said. “We want to help all kids, not just the elite kids.”

Templeman has a dream, one he hopes to live out before he puts the throwing implements away for good.

“My personal dream is to coach an Olympic medalist, male or female,” he said.

Templeman’s wife has always wondered why her husband was such a fanatic about coaching the throws, particularly since the rewards are often intangible.

She now understands her husband’s explanation.

“I draw a lot of energy from the kids,” he said. “My wife thinks I’m crazy because the hours can add up in a day. I can have some 14- to 15-hour days from the fall through the spring.

“I guess it goes back to the time I didn’t have a coach (in high school). Like I said before, there are too many takers and not enough givers anymore.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo