Pirate Runs Tight Ship Whitworth’s Friedrichs A Skilled Captain, Cultivating Success On Long-Term Voyage

Whitworth basketball coach Warren Friedrichs was a small-town boy from the middle of nowhere in northeast Kansas before he took his first job as a teacher in Detroit. The year was 1971, just two years after that city’s riots.

Most often, he was the last and only white guy who stuck around Detroit’s Lutheran West High School past sunset, where he taught basketball clinics to predominantly black athletes.

A quarter of a century later, Friedrichs is still the last guy to leave the gym.

After every game, Friedrichs talks with his team in the locker room. When he emerges from the locker room, he takes time to chat and shake hands with fans and players’ parents before answering questions from the media.

From there, he goes back to shaking the hands of well-wishers who want to congratulate him after a victory - or to console him after a loss.

“It’s hard for him to leave the gym,” Whitworth assistant Rodney Wecker said. “Sometimes I’ll have to tell him, ‘Hey, go home and be with your family.”’

In his 11th season as the Pirates’ head coach, Friedrichs has established Whitworth as one of the premier small-college basketball programs in the Pacific Northwest. The Pirates are ranked No. 8 in the NAIA Division II coaches poll.

Friedrichs is the only Whitworth basketball coach to post five consecutive winning seasons (1987-92). From 1989-92, his teams posted records of 22-7, 22-9 and 19-9, producing three consecutive Northwest Conference championships and a trip to the NAIA Division II national tournament in 1991.

Last year, the Pirates finished 18-10 and were ranked as high as fifth.

All this, because of Friderichs’ intense love of athletics and his competitive spirit.

“When I first started coaching, I went to every clinic I could,” Friedrichs said.

Whitworth’s leading scorer, Nate Dunham, doesn’t find that hard to believe. He called Friedrichs a “strategist.”

In his first job at Detroit Lutheran West, Friedrichs was an assistant football coach under Dennis Tuomi, a renowned high school football coach in Detroit, for five years before taking over the head basketball duties. It was Tuomi that had a significant influence on his coaching career.

“In his basement every winter, he would have over guys like (Pro Football Hall of Fame receiver) Raymond Berry and (former Colorado football coach) Bill McCartney - the best he could find to come over to the house for mini-clinics to just talk about X’s and O’s.

“I just tried to learn as much as I could from those guys,” he said.

And one of the things Friedrichs learned was how to let an athlete be himself on the court while also getting that athlete to understand the importance of the team-first concept.

“I was a no finger-roll kind of guy back then,” Friedrichs said. “I wanted to be like Bobby Knight, that ‘my way or the highway’ kind of attitude. You didn’t finger-roll on my team. You laid that ball off the glass.”

But Tuomi pointed out the finger roll was just a different means to the same end. In the end, two points are two points.

However, Friedrichs did retain some of Knight’s coaching characteristics. Whitworth player John Beckman called Friedrichs a “disciplinarian.”

Said Wecker: “He’s not a dictator, but he expects your best. If you don’t give that to him - then he has a problem.”

Friedrichs eventually took over the head varsity duties for the basketball team at Detroit Lutheran West. In three seasons, he led them to a record of 66-5.

After DLW, Friedrichs moved to Concordia College at Portland and brought that program to its highest level in history, winning three straight NLCAA regional titles in a six-year period.

And since coming to Whitworth, it has all been uphill for the 49-year-old coach.

“We’ve done this program in a long-term fashion,” he said. “I want more freshman than junior-college transfers. And I think we’ve done a pretty good job of building relationships with the local high schools.”

Friedrichs’ commitment to building for the future may have taken his name out of contention for a big-time coaching job.

“I don’t think I ever aspired that way until it was too late,” Friedrichs said. “I never really thought that much about coaching at the Division I level. I’m satisfied being a small-college guy.

“The thing I enjoy the most about coaching is to see if you can develop and mold a real team. There’s nothing like seeing guys rise to the occasion.”

Friedrichs’ wife, Cindy, said her husband also gets gratification because so many of his former players have graduated and moved on to have successful lives.

“So many of them still call to say hi, to say thank you,” she said. “I think that says a lot about what he does as a coach and teacher.”

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