Runner And Coach Inspired, Uplifted Those She Touched

Every so often, athletes come along who touch a writer’s life as much as the writer touches theirs.

During the quarter century I have covered Valley sports, Tonian Kasparian Gray was one of those. A member of West Valley High’s 1986 State AA cross country champions, she wasn’t the team’s No. 1 runner. Two teammates at differing times beat her with individual title performances.

But Gray was, as WV coach Jim McLachlan will attest, the heart and soul of the Eagles. She was as much a coach as was he and the spiritual leader of the pack.

And it carried over during the past three years. While awaiting a teaching opportunity, Tonian helped McLachlan with the WV program. The girls responded with a pair of league championships and WV’s fourth individual state champion.

“Tonian is a driving personality, an intense coach,” McLachlan said last fall. “She has a tremendous amount of energy and is good at goal setting.”

My most vivid recollection of Tonian was during her sophomore year when she was carried from the Hangman Valley’s course in pain and tears by thenShadle Park track coach Chuck Bailey, unable to complete the district race because of injury. A copy of that picture still remains on the bulletin board in the Shadle offices a decade later.

The next two years she would finish fourth and third in the state meet.

What triggered these memories was a letter Tonian sent to colleague Kevin Taylor and myself, along with articles we wrote while she was in high school.

Spokane couldn’t find her a teaching and coaching job and is the worse for it. She wrote to say that she and her husband Rob are moving back to Bellingham.

“I finally got a real teaching job, so no more substitute teaching and coaching at West Valley,” she wrote. “I am looking forward to having a steady paycheck, but I will really miss the kids, community and support in the West Valley District.”

While packing she came across our articles and three hours later finally got back to packing again.

“Whenever coaching or training becomes challenging or difficult, I read the articles and I become motivated again,” she said.

WV finished second as a team before winning the championship her senior year. Tonian said the title run happened so quickly that its import didn’t really sink in. Eight years later those articles help remind her of an important event in her life.

There she was with Tricia Hepton pictured wearing nose glasses and teammate Lori McEwan with a rose clenched between her teeth a week before their trip to Port Townsend.

They were seated in a Fort Worden cafeteria when Taylor chronicled Tonian’s instigation of a bit of psychological trickery on rival Edmonds the night before the race.

She was a delight, gregariously willing to converse with anyone about distance running, not only as a high schooler, but also while bounding from place to place as a coach exhorting her charges to excel.

The successes last fall and this spring were tempered by the death in April of her father, Art, an ardent supporter of Valley incorporation, two days before the vote, and her inability and that of her husband Rob to find teaching jobs.

He’s still looking but one job is better than none. Tonian will teach elementary school in the town where she attended college, and she hopes to do some volunteer coaching.

Godspeed, Tonian. Be back soon.