Elementary Life Became Dear To Watson New Nic Coach Switched Priorities After Car Accident

Every time Hugh Watson gets the feeling that living life is an easy thing, he rubs his elbow, where a chunk of glass has worked its way to skin level.

That’s one of the remnants of a life-threatening auto accident involving Watson seven years ago. Another reminder: threads on a screw he can feel when his left hand brushes over the top of his right.

“I’m on borrowed time,” said Watson, 55, the new North Idaho College men’s basketball coach. “I’m happy to be here, let me tell you.”

Watson has been making the rounds since arriving in Coeur d’Alene on Monday. He was introduced at NIC’s booster luncheon on Tuesday, shaking hands with well-wishers who didn’t realize that his right hand once had been mangled.

Admittedly exhausted from recruiting as the head coach at Hiwassee Junior College, Watson pulled into an intersection in front of an oncoming car he never saw on a September morning in Tennessee.

The impact on the driver’s side vaulted Watson’s car - reshaped in the form of a ‘U’ - airborne into a bank.

Watson had just left from visiting with his wife, Sue, at the school where she taught. She was brought to the scene by her principal.

“Everything was crushed in and glass was everywhere,” Sue said. “I just got in the car and started talking to him. He was just moaning and groaning.”

Watson was airlifted to the hospital at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. The driver of the other vehicle wasn’t seriously injured.

Watson’s only memory of the accident was hearing the whirling blades of the helicopter during a brief moment of consciousness.

As luck would have it, the nurse on the helicopter was a sister of a basketball player Watson once coached. Watson had coached against the doctor who performed one of his surgeries.

Those ironies begin to tell just how many people in this world know the affable Watson.

In the accident he suffered a bruised aorta. He had a broken wrist, broken hand and four broken ribs, which punctured his lungs. He lost a row of teeth and a window handle imbedded in his leg was removed.

After four days in intensive care, doctors determined he’d live. It was then, though, that doctors, who had been busy tending to his major injuries, discovered his fractured jaw and other splintered bones.

He left the hospital weeks later with an aching body, but a new, healthier perspective.

“I got so tied up in basketball that everything revolved around it,” Watson said. “It was an eye opener for me. In a splitsecond, I could have lost all of this. I wouldn’t have ever been able to hold my grandson.”

“After the accident I could see how much he appreciated his friends and the (smaller) things in life,” Sue said.

“Once I got home my biggest project was going to mailbox and back,” Hugh said. “Then next day it was to walk a little farther to a tree.”

In fact, a tree was planted in Watson’s name at the state capitol in Tennessee by a national seat belt coalition because it’s believed wearing the belt saved his life.

Doctors also told Watson he probably wouldn’t have survived if not for his being in outstanding physical shape.

Watson missed a couple of Hiwassee’s early season games before returning to the bench with his jaw still wired shut. Talking being one of Watson’s favorite pastimes, this was a little like placing a gag order on Geraldo.

“Can you imagine?” Sue joked.

Watson invented a new communication technique.

“The players would start running from me because I’d spit on ‘em when I was hollering at ‘em,” he said.

Hiwassee qualified for nationals that season, Watson’s last before he took an assistant’s job at Idaho.

It wasn’t until his early 40s that Watson felt an itch to try college coaching. He had worked at the high school level before going to Hiwassee.

Coming to Idaho, Watson knew that the school had a pattern of promoting assistants to head coaches. Watson turned down a higher-paying job at Washington State in hopes that he’d replace Idaho’s Larry Eustachy.

That opportunity came when Eustachy went to Utah State three years ago. In the meantime, however, Idaho had changed athletic directors and Watson didn’t get the job.

Watson’s fingers tap the table when he talks about being passed over at Idaho - the first job he interviewed for and didn’t get.

“If you hold grudges,” he said, “you age fast.”

After three years as a high school coach in Tennessee, Watson accepted the position at NIC last month. He takes over a program that has a solid foundation, though he might lose a couple of players to transferring or bad grades.

Watson has signed a couple of players and is crossing his fingers on a trio that will visit in mid-May.

“I only ask my players to do two things - No. 1, give the ball up to the open man; and No. 2, go 110 percent,” he said. “I’ll never belittle a kid on the court. I might chew his butt in the locker room.”

He said one of the secrets to getting good players - he recruited 17 high school All-Americans to Hiwassee - is playing uptempo.

“You better score points because that’s what the blue-chippers want,” Watson said. “I’ve been all over this country and I’ve never seen a kid working on his defense yet. They’re all working on their shot.”

Because of the accident, Watson’s shot probably isn’t as accurate as it was when he set the scoring record at Sweetwater (Tenn.) High.

But there’s no doubting his energy and excitement for his new job.

“The train stops here,” Watson said in his thick southern accent. “My wife’s done informed me. Our whole family just loves it here.”

Plus, Sue said, Hugh’s a better driver these days.

“It (the accident) might have slowed him down some,” she said.

Slowed him down, everyone agrees, without robbing him of his enthusiasm.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo