John Blanchette: Williams’ dedication leads to dedication
Rolly Williams’ name goes on the court at North Idaho College’s Christianson Gym on Saturday, and he’s more than grateful.
But really, the joint on College Drive has been his for 52 years.
“I played on that court when I was at Kellogg High School and we won the state championship there – in 1955,” he said. “First state championship that Kellogg had ever won.
“That gym was opened about 1950 and it was the big arena. We never played Coeur d’Alene at the high school, it was always played at NIC – I guess to hold the crowds. But it was really the place.”
The place to make a life.
The 1:30 p.m. court dedication commemorates Williams’ 35 years as basketball coach, during which he took the program from playing a city-league schedule to a pair of trips to the national junior college tournament – and 731 victories in all. But his involvement at NIC has been so intense that you wonder if his name shouldn’t be out front instead.
He taught classes and headed the P.E. department. He was athletic director. He coached the first baseball and track teams (“not that I knew anything about either,” he said). He sent four kids through the school. He started the booster club. He ran the intramural program.
If the court needed swept, he manned the broom. Now he chairs the board of trustees.
Devotion is a choice and not an accident, but Williams couldn’t have known this would be his life’s work when he took the job in 1961.
After playing at the University of Idaho, Williams was drafted by Hawaii Chiefs of the short-lived American Basketball League.
He took no pretensions to training camp, only the stories he heard as a tavernkeeper’s son in Wardiner.
“I spent a lot of time listening to guys saying, ‘I could have done this, but it was the Depression and I had to go to work,’ or something,” he recalled. “I never wanted to have to say, ‘If only…’ “
He lasted to the final cut. But Chiefs owner Art Kim also owned a team that served as a touring opponent of the Harlem Globetrotters, and offered Williams a spot on that roster. In the meantime, NIC dangled its coaching job.
“Or I could go back and work in the mines and make the same money,” he laughed.
It has become reflex to identify Williams with NIC and Coeur d’Alene, but he is very much Kellogg through and through. He remembers, fondly, working for “Uncle Bunker,” the endless miners’ stories at his father’s saloon, his first harrowing skip ride – transportation not particularly suited for anyone 6-foot-6. Mostly he remembers the social structure – because there wasn’t one.
“My brother ran a bar that was the place you went to socialize,” Williams said. “You could sit with the head of the mine on one side and the banker on the other. There was no caste system. I thought when I went to Idaho that other guys were different than us, but I finally realized it was Kellogg that was a different world.”
Still, he chose the coaching job – and soon wondered if it wasn’t a mistake.
“Our first game was against the Idaho freshmen and we’re getting killed,” he recalled. “And it dawns on me that there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. It was clear to me that if you don’t have the horsepower, you’re in trouble.”
So he set out to recruit some – whether from next door or the next continent.
As in his hometown, there was no caste system on his basketball team. The kid from Rathdrum played alongside the kid from Chicago, Native Americans alongside Brazilians and Germans. His international recruiting was a practical matter, but also rooted in learning.
Surely there was no harm in making NIC a window to the world, as Idaho had been for him.
“My first roommate in college was a kid named Nick Palacios from Saipan,” he said. “You want to talk about an education. He was older than I was and was on Saipan when it was occupied by both the Japanese and Americans. I remember sitting up until 3 in the morning listening to his stories.”
There are endless testimonials to Williams’ acumen, but none greater than his ability to take such a diverse cast, have 50 percent of it turn over every year and still put together 25 consecutive winning seasons in one of the nation’s toughest JC regions. There you’ll find his real trove of stories: the hardcourt wars against Southern Idaho, the Cardinals’ nemesis. Here’s a sample:
“Mike Mitchell, who coached there, was a good friend,” Williams said. “We’re down to seconds in a game here and I’m running man-to-man defense. He calls timeout and I switch to a zone – and he sees it and calls another timeout. So the kids come back to the sideline and he backs out of the huddle and hollers, ‘Rolly, what are you going to run – man or zone?’ “
There are a thousand more stories in those old boards, and Saturday is a good time to tell them.
“Something that has come to me over the years,” said Williams, “is that your old friends are still your best friends.”
At NIC, they obviously got the message.