John Blanchette: With Bs, author can come home again

If Spokane has discovered anything in hosting little school tournament basketball for 51 years, it’s that there are no loose threads – whether the event is the B, the 2B or not to be quite the same ever again.

Curt Simmons has lived in metropolitan America for most of his adult life – Los Angeles, San Diego, Denver, Cincinnati, St. Louis and now Chicago. But his B roots are deep. His father, LaVerne, was a coaching icon in Darrington before Curt was even born, taking the Loggers to a pair of state championships in the mid-1950s. Later, Simmons himself played in two tournaments in the old Spokane Coliseum for Toutle Lake.

But his senior year, the Ducks were champions of the Inland League and took a 17-3 record into the district tournament, only to be eliminated.

“It was a huge disappointment not to make it over,” he remembered. “Billy Olsen of Wahkiakum made a shot from way, way out to keep us out.”

And 31 years later in a seat at the Spokane Arena, Simmons watched his alma mater win a quarterfinal game the other night over the Mules – who are coached by none other than Bill Olsen.

Whether connection or coincidence, this sort of thing is one of the endless fascinations of the old B/new 2B – one Simmons is happy to have reclaimed, if quite by accident. It is not, however, the focus of his book, which is about B basketball connections of a different kind.

“Small-Town Heroes” was published in 2006, a slice of Americana extrapolated into big-picture reflections on success and values. For Simmons, it was also about discovery.

LaVerne Simmons’ legend in the little town on the Sauk River may have been cemented with the Loggers’ second B title in 1957, but the foundation was dug two years earlier when Darrington beat undefeated and top-ranked Bainbridge in the championship game – a reserve named Roland Mount making the winner with seven seconds left. In 1964, the family moved to Toutle Lake, where LaVerne coached just one year before retiring, 10 years before his son would play high school basketball.

It was October 2002 when LaVerne Simmons died. Darrington coach Jeff Bryson – a native son whose attachment to B tradition is as unshakeable as anyone who’s ever brought a team to Spokane – asked the players on his 2003 team if they’d agree to salute the old coach’s memory by writing his initials “LS” on their sneakers.

Naturally, they won Darrington’s first state championship in 46 years.

Bryson invited Simmons back home for a ceremony to honor both the 2003 team and the legacy, and the story began to get under Simmons’ skin.

“I was still grieving and going through the loss of my dad,” said Simmons, who spent two decades in the ministry and has authored books on spiritual subjects. “I just found it all very inspiring and moving, and as I told other people about it they found it to be a pretty good ‘Hoosiers’ story, so I thought I’d share it.”

But through all of his moving around the country, Simmons “lost track” of Darrington. And because he wasn’t alive when his dad won those two championships, he had to rely on the memories of others. What he found was a bedrock connection between the approach of his father and that of Bryson.

“And so it became a lot about the qualities you find in small-town people and the things they share,” Simmons said.

He recalled that especially after an incident in Chicago, where he and his wife witnessed a constant stream of cars stopping at a neighbor’s house across the street. It turned out their son had just died of cancer.

“In a big city, you can live next door to somebody and never know who they are,” he said. “That will never happen in a small town. If somebody’s ill or dying, you’d be there and the community would rally around. I had forgotten how important it was to break down the big city into a smaller community.”

It’s been suggested that some of that has been lost in the evolution of B basketball, and even in splitting the tournament in two. There is no denying that the small-town feel provided by, well, small towns – Darrington, Toutle, Ritzville – has been impacted by the increasing presence of schools from Seattle, Tacoma, Redmond and, yes, Spokane.

That doesn’t mean the values have changed. Indeed, the case can be made that what the private schools aspire to build is that which is innate in small towns.

And it’s brought at least one wayward soul back – Simmons himself, who’s returned for the last State B in 2006 and this year’s event. He’s reconnected with both his hometowns and even established a scholarship in his father’s name at Darrington.

“It’s reminded me how much I loved growing up in small towns and the tournament and just being part of all that,” he said. “I had lost touch with how valuable it is to be raised in that atmosphere.”

And how necessary it is to tie up those loose threads.