John Blanchette: Steltenpohl returns tanned, rested, ready

So, not only can you go home again, but you can even get your old job back.

Not that Hoopfest was a job to Rick Steltenpohl so much as it was a cause, at least perhaps up until the last of his 14 years as the event’s executive director.

Anyone can get a little fried after that long. Plus he was tempted by the stirrings of a new cause, the chance of maybe making a mark nationally in sports marketing, of taking the things he’d learned putting on the biggest streetball party in the world and applying them to bigger dots on the map.

So he left. In a little more than a year, his family steered him back. And here’s what Rick Steltenpohl discovered in the process:

He’d already made that mark.

Now he can make it bigger, or at least bolder. In a turn of events that stretches the definition of serendipity, Hoopfest and Steltenpohl are partners once more. His old post as executive director came open unexpectedly last week and Steltenpohl was not only available but eager, making the announcement of his rehiring Thursday both predictable and welcome – and a cinch for one of the year’s top 10 moments in civic good sense.

That said, let’s reel in the hoohah just a little.

Hoopfest is, by its very biology, a low-to-the-ground operation. Its heartbeat is the dedication of countless unpaid volunteers and too many unsung souls who took one facet or another of the staging and over the years made it their own. And probably 23,000 of those yearly ballers wouldn’t know Rick Steltenpohl if he dunked on them, which won’t be any time soon no matter what division he plays in.

Still, at least one of those ballers needs to be a big-picture guy, and nobody has seen the big picture quite like Steltenpohl.

That was affirmed in his response Thursday when asked if Hoopfest finds itself at the same sort of crossroads any 18-year-old does.

“I think so,” he said. “I think we’re in that period – and that period will probably last from here to eternity.

“We’re mature. It’s a mature event. We’re not putting in new and exciting things in the same exponential way we did in the early years. And we have to come up with new ways and fun and interesting things so we can keep saying it’s a live, growing thing. You run the danger of complacency, for sure, if you’re not growing and getting better – and I don’t mean growing in numbers.”

So he’s looking to have a “blank canvas” session in the fall to examine what he calls “the wow factor.”

For the time being, then, let’s look at Steltenpohl’s return – which is more along the lines of the “Hey, what do you know?” factor.

If he had to jump through one hoop to get rehired, it might have been explaining not so much why he left but if he’d scratched the itch that took him away.

From Hoopfest, Steltenpohl had joined Northwest Sports and Entertainment, a promotional and marketing firm based in Phoenix that, among other things, puts on Gonzaga’s annual “Battle in Seattle” game. But his family quickly developed heat rash and homesickness, and Steltenpohl decided the horizons weren’t enough to justify their unhappiness.

“Honestly, I never thought I’d leave Hoopfest,” he said. “I kind of got swept off my feet. I thought maybe there’d be some hurt feelings that I left, but as Rick Betts (one of Hoopfest’s founders) told me, ‘People leave jobs. It happens.’ “

When he met with Hoopfest’s board Monday, Steltenpohl said, “They at least wanted to know that I was committed to the organization. They wanted to get to the bottom of that – and I did too, actually. I wanted to know that the feelings were strong on both sides, that this wasn’t a stopgap. If that was going to be the case, then it’s not real.

“I think they were happy – or at least satisfied – with the reasons I left and that this is a long-term thing for me. I’m not looking to go to Phoenix again.”

In fact, Steltenpohl’s devotion to his old cause stirred again almost as soon as he left. During his time away from Spokane, he interviewed with Hoop-It-Up, which is sort of the Burger King of 3-on-3 streetball tournaments.

“It was to take over their operations on a national level and I thought about doing that, but we broke it off,” he said. “What I felt with them is that their numbers are dwindling. They’re not relevant.

“No one’s ever been bigger than Hoopfest and so in one perspective, yeah, that’s a national impact. Sometimes you have to leave and come back to see things like that.”

So he came back, to borrow a Nixonism, tanned, rested and ready.

Ready to add something new to his old gig.

“I don’t want Hoopfest to be the same as it was two years ago,” he said. “I don’t want the same job I had two years ago.

“But I have an incredible passion for this event, the organization and the people who’ve built it. And I truly believe it’s what I do best.

“It’s what I was meant to do, really.”