Who is Rick Steltenpohl and how did he earn that office on Wall Street?

Rick Steltenpohl recently turned 42. He started dating his wife, Martha, after their junior year of high school. They have been married for 20 years. They have two daughters, Chelsea, 15, a freshman at Mead High and Leah, 12, a sixth-grader.

Spokane attorney Barry Davidson is his brother-in-law. Nearly 20 years ago, the Steltenpohls expressed an interest in moving to Spokane from East Lansing, Mich., where Rick, a certified public accountant, had attended Michigan State.

According to Steltenpohl, Davidson set up three interviews, including one with the accounting firm of McFarland and Alton (now Moss Adams). One of the interviewers was Rick Betts, who became his boss.

Betts and Steltenpohl also became friends. So when Betts came up with the idea for Hoopfest in the summer of 1989, one of his first calls was to Steltenpohl.

“I knew I could get Rick involved for two reasons really,” Betts recalls. “No. 1, he worked for me and by virtue (of that), probably wouldn’t say no. Secondly, I knew he loved sports, loved basketball.”

They drove over to Seattle with Betts’ son, Brian, met their friend Jerry Karstetter and played in a 3-on-3 tournament in the Kingdome parking lot. The group then stuck around and talked with the organizers.

“It was kind of different,” Steltenpohl remembers. “Betts is over there to check it out, Karstetter is just goofing around and I want to win.”

According to Steltenpohl, with Betts and Jerry Schmidt the driving forces behind the idea, about 30 people came together that fall to hash out plans for what would become Hoopfest. Of that group six, including Steltenpohl, became the founding board members of Hoopfest.

By then Steltenpohl had left McFarland and Alton to work for a law firm doing its financial work.

The Hoopfest board ran the first three events. But by the third year, with the tournament having grown from 512 teams to 1,683, the board knew it needed a full-time executive director.

Up to then Steltenpohl was, by his own description, the detail guy, who did the books, served as treasurer, check-signer and bracket reviewer and made sure all the small details were taken care of.

But Betts thought he would make the best executive director.

It came down to two finalists, Steltenpohl and Rich Henkels, at the time employed doing sports for KREM-TV.

“It was a tough decision,” Betts recalled. “I had certainly asked Rick to apply. The bottom line about Rick is he’s got three things working for him. One is his passion for sports. Secondly, he’s really good at executing the details, at executing excellence, which is certainly our goal. The third thing is he just is, really, fantastic with people.

“He genuinely loves people. He’s interested in everybody, the committee, the volunteers, the sponsors, the players. The way I put it is, when you talk with Rick Steltenpohl, you feel like you are the most important person to him at that point in time.

“Back in the beginning, I knew he had the love for sports, I knew he was organized and could execute (our plan). I don’t know if I really appreciated, ultimately, how good he would be with people at the time.”

Steltenpohl got the job.