Coach Seeks One More Playoff Win In Drager’s Next-To-Last Football Season, Mullan Takes On Deary In A-4 Semifinal

A group of boys play on a snow- and ice-covered parking lot before the start of Wednesday’s classes at Mullan Elementary School.

Football is the game. Some carry a real ball. Others run with a piece of snow shaped like a football.

Coach John Drager smiles with approval from inside Mullan High School.

Those solid buildings, the 55-year-old added, he helped construct.

At the time, Drager never imagined they’d be his future for the next three decades.

Eight scrapbooks later, Drager IS Mullan athletics. He is a shoo-in as a Idaho High School Activities Association Hall of Famer upon retirement from coaching, acknowledges Idaho Coaches Association president Mike Knee of Fruitland.

Drager says 1996 will be his last year - the 33rd straight as Mullan team bus driver, the 31st straight as Mullan head football coach and the 28th as Mullan boys basketball coach. Add to that 18 North Star League track championships.

“I think it’s very rare,” said Knee of Drager’s coaching longevity. “I think it takes a real special sort of individual who loves what he’s doing, and you have to have tremendous respect in the community.”

Drager’s next-to-last season could come to an end Saturday. But he’s got his longshot Tigers (8-1) believing they can upset powerhouse Deary (9-0) in the teams’ State A-4 eight-man semifinal at the Kibbie Dome in Moscow.

He commands nothing less than respect in the close-knit mining town of 800. However, it really started about a few miles down the road in Wallace as a high school athlete in the mid-1950s.

There is a football in the Miners’ trophy case bearing autographs from the 1958 Notre Dame football team. The same day the Irish did the seemingly impossible by knocking off Oklahoma, tiny Wallace also grabbed national headlines.

The Miners, led by coach Bud Riley and Drager at end, defeated Pullman 21-18. “Pullman had the longest (high school) winning streak in the nation,” Drager reminisced. “It was a non-league game over there. The cars were all decorated.”

Drager played a year of football at Idaho, then basketball at North Idaho College before returning to Idaho to complete an education degree.

He worked construction and married his high school sweetheart, Evelyn, who teaches and coaches at the junior high level in Wallace.

At the age of 21 in 1963, Drager was breaking up cement for a sidewalk when he was approached by Mullan football coach Norm Walker about an assistant coaching position.

“I figured I’d be here a couple years,” Drager said. “I’ve had some tremendous offers.”

Even in retirement, Drager doesn’t plan to stray too far from his Osburn farm. “My wife (of 35 years) and I talked about going to Florida or California, but she said, ‘No way. I’m not getting over 50 miles away from the grandkids and daughter-in-law.’ “

“I was gone all the time,” Drager admitted, adding that he didn’t realize sons Mike and Jeff had grown so fast until Mike was a sophomore basketball player at Wallace High.

“There was 30 seconds left and Mike hit a free throw that tied the game. With 4 seconds left he hit the winning field goal to beat us,” Drager continued. “When they started beating Dad, I thought it was time to bring them up here (to Mullan).”

“I didn’t talk to him after the game,” Mike explained. “When I came home that night, he said, ‘That’s it.’ Oh yeah, I knew, but to get us to go to Mullan, things changed a lot. Then, he was pretty strict with us; we didn’t get to do too much. All of a sudden, he bribed us with the car; we got to stay out late - we kinda liked it.”

Any maybe Jeff has been the only athlete to defy Drager. “We never feared him as a coach,” Mike added. “It was harder for him than it was for us, with my brother especially. This is the guy who would say run laps and you wouldn’t even blink an eye. He’d tell my brother to run laps and he wouldn’t do it.”

Although that might have been a bit of the father coming out in the son. “When he was a high school athlete, he would have been his own worst nightmare,” Mike related of stories about Drager’s youth. “He was everything he would not want to coach. I don’t think he had much discipline when he was in school.”

The fear factor may have softened somewhat over the years, but Drager’s desire has never diminished.

“They know nothing but work,” Drager said. “I always keep telling them a miner can whip a farmer. Then their dads tell them.

“Probably the first years I coached, the kids played a little bit out of fear,” Drager added. “I did not accept losing. My idea is to work real hard Monday through Thursday and have fun on Friday afternoon.”

The Tigers have won 223 of the 271 football games (a .823 win percentage) Drager has coached.”These guys (fans) played for Drager. They may question what he does, but they don’t do it too loud because he still has control over them a little bit. They respect him is what it is. It’s just carried over as adult life.”

Current standout David Reed is a second generation player for Drager. Reed’s father Frank starred at linebacker for Mullan between 1969-72.

“He was not only a good coach, he kept me in school, his guidance and the way he is,” Frank Reed said. “When I brought my boy back here to go to school, he thought a bad dream was coming back, like deja vu.

“He always brings out the best,” he added.