Al Snyder remembered as coach, friend

When former West Valley coach and athletic director Al Snyder died of cancer last week at age 77, one enduring image of him was his look in a photo I took as a young journalist in 1969.

The unassuming Eagles basketball coach was staring up at the clock following an upset victory over Gonzaga Prep in a district playoff. Was it incredulity or satisfaction?

Quite probably it was a little of both. The win was momentous at the time. Spokane Valley schools had been dropped from the old City League and could be pardoned for the chip on their shoulders.

That night the Border League runner-up Eagles not only upset the City champion 60-55, but picked their way through a district playoff field that included wins over third-place Rogers, and ultimately over City second-place Shadle Park to qualify them for regional.

That was, at the time, equivalent to playing in today’s 16-team state tournament. It was one of the two berths for Snyder teams.

The first came in 1966. Larry Schreck and I, both students at Washington State, scouted WV’s opponent Pullman at his behest. We must have done OK. WV prevailed 68-55 to advance.

Al was my PE teacher and track coach at WV – who, I might add, tried futilely to make this skinny kid into a quarter-miler (the 880 didn’t take, either).

I had learned of his leukemia prior to running into Al and his wife, Flurry, last fall at the Wenatchee fruit stand in Millwood, run by Schreck, a former WV and WSU athlete, Wenatchee teacher and coach. Eagles don’t stray far from the nest.

It was sad to see Al’s wife in tears and a man who seemingly had never aged resigned to the inevitable. He’d been given a clean bill of health following a physical in January 2006, he told me. A month later he received the tragic news.

Al spent years as an assistant basketball coach for Jud Heathcote. They had become friends as teammates at WSU. Heathcote said he helped get Al his WV teaching job out of the military. “When he got his first paycheck, he asked me if it was for two weeks or the whole month.”

When WV went to state in 1962, Heathcote wrote in our playbook, “Half the team will ‘wheeze’ over in the Blue Tortoise (his car) and the other half will ‘whiz’ over in the Snyder Racing Car. The managers will hitchhike.”

(He wasn’t kidding, either. Fortunately, rather than sticking out a thumb by the side of the road, we caught a ride with a family friend, who was heading to Seattle to visit her son at college.)

Al became basketball coach in 1965 after Heathcote went to WSU on the first step of his journey to coaching NCAA champion Michigan State. Our paths continued to cross in our capacities as journalist and coach. Those were years spent wandering the schools for weekly visits (or to catch up on gossip with Flurry, who was a counselor at East Valley).

Al was forced to resign as basketball coach in 1974, a source of acrimony. Fortunately, there was some closure a year ago when 55 years’ worth of former coaches gathered to celebrate Eagles basketball during an alumni game.

Heathcote said that he and Schreck will speak at Al’s 2 p.m. service tomorrow at Millwood Presbyterian where more memories of this man of subtle humor will be relived.

“He was a great guy and a great gentleman,” Heathcote said.

I’ll remember Al as my coach, colleague and friend.