Chamberlin Set The Standard For Mental Toughness, Tenacity

There is an eery symbiosis between the death last week of former University High three-sport star John Chamberlin and Terry Irwin’s announcement that he is retiring as basketball coach at Central Valley.

Irwin was my passenger when I drove to the State AAA basketball finals in Seattle in 1975 (and again a year later, his first as an assistant at Gonzaga Prep), when Chamberlin and his U-Hi teammates placed third.

Irwin got his first taste of coaching high school athletes as an assistant on the Appleway Chevrolet American Legion baseball teams on which Chamberlin pitched. Appleway placed second in state in 1975.

“He was a tremendous athlete,” said Irwin. “He had the skills in football and baseball to go on.”

Chamberlin, who was working in Boise, died at age 38 last week of a heart attack, just as his father died young of heart problems.

At 6-foot-4, 190 pounds, Chamberlin was one of three sophomores, including Mike Barrett and Jim Bjorklund, to make U-Hi’s 1972-73 varsity basketball team. The Titans qualified for regionals that season. It was the first of three straight appearances in what today is the equivalent of the state tournament.

Two others, Doug Steck and Rick Witt, who was then a sophomore, joined them the next season.

The 1974-75 U-Hi basketball team was arguably the finest in the school’s history. All five starters averaged in double figures on the 22-3 team.

Chamberlin was rock-tough. Never a fluid basketball player, his style lent more to football. Indeed, Chamberlin played at Arizona State University where he started on defense as a sophomore but only lasted that season. It was his biggest regret.

His mental toughness on the playing field was a perfect complement to his more skilled teammates and made it impossible to keep him out of the lineup.

My greatest memories of him in basketball were his physical strength and the way this unorthodox player could bang down a basket or grab a rebound precisely when needed.

Still vivid was the night 21 years ago when Pasco was threatening to disappoint the Titans in regionals for a third straight year. Unlike now, when 16 teams congregate in Seattle, only four advanced to the state finals from a quartet of four-team playoffs. One loss and the season was over.

In the regional opener, Titan foul troubles had put an inordinate offensive burden on Chamberlin and he responded. Late in the game a long pass to him was deflected by a Pasco player, yet he somehow grabbed it and scored an important basket during a one-point victory.

His Legion baseball coach, Ron Jackson, recalled a state tournament game in which Chamberlin was being rocked.

“I told him he wasn’t coming out,” said Jackson. It was up to Chamberlin to give up or get tough. “He struck out five of the next six batters and we won.”

Had Chamberlin completed college, who knows where football might have taken him. His was athletic promise unfulfilled.

But his impact on Valley high school sports two decades ago was undeniable.

Chamberlin was extremely likeable and a friend. The news that he is dead so young is disturbing.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: SUPCAT = COLUMN, OBITUARY - The Final Point