Life of veteran coach to be celebrated Monday

When Pat Pfeifer retired as the Ferris football coach in 1994, he and assistant coach Bob Crabb went to dinner with their wives, where Crabb learned something new about his mentor.

“I didn’t know he went to school to be an architect,” Crabb said. “That’s when I figured it out. He could see patterns. After a play he knew what the guards did and what the quarterback did.”

That also explained why Pat and Sally Pfeifer lived in a beautiful house he built on the southwest side of Lake Coeur d’Alene, where Crabb spent so much time until Pfeifer, 62, passed away Saturday after a three-year battle with pancreatic cancer.

The celebration of Pfeifer’s 30 years as a teacher and almost 40 as a coach will be in the Lewis and Clark High School auditorium at 2 p.m. Monday.

Among his accomplishments, Pfeifer guided Ferris to the football semifinals in 1988 and the boys track team to second in state in 1990, as well as winning Greater Spokane League track titles 23 years apart with the Lewis and Clark girls.

“He was unfailingly cheerful,” Crabb said. “When Rick Giampietri and I were there Wednesday and asked how he was doing, he said he was doing fine. I never heard Pat complain about anything or anybody, except for maybe an occasional referee’s call. That was especially true about his illness.”

Pfeifer and Giampietri grew up together playing “Cross the Line” in neighborhood parks, where Pfeifer said he would get up and run out to put his mitt on third base before breakfast to ensure he got into the pickup games after breakfast. The two life-long friends played together at North Central High School in the 1960s and remained together as friends – and briefly rivals – forever.

“He was a great athlete; just so quick,” Giampietri said. “Pat was a big guy, about 190 pounds, and he used to run the 100-yard dash.”

Pfeifer was in college at Eastern Washington when he became a volunteer coach for the LC freshman football team. A year ahead of Giampietri, he helped his friend get into teaching and coaching at LC when he graduated from Eastern and they coached together for 13 years. The circle was completed with Pfeifer assisting Giampietri at Central Valley the last eight seasons.

“I just think his mind for football was unbelievable,” Giampietri said. “Pat was a very emotional coach, but when he coached with me he was always very calm. He was our calming influence. He was very analytical. His help with me, in my estimation, might have been his best coaching.

“(It is a) tremendous loss. He was suffering bad at the end.”

Pfeifer replaced Ray Hare as the Ferris head football coach in 1984.

“We were competitors on the coaching side and then became colleagues,” said Hare, who became the athletic director at Ferris during Pfeifer’s career. “The thing I found about Pat is he was very compassionate. He cared dearly about people.

“He had a sixth sense of knowing when something needed to be done. He helped me out immeasurably when I was an administrator.”

Pfeifer and Hare first squared off coaching junior varsity basketball.

Pfeifer also coached a little bit of wrestling and coached track for 37 years, 17 as a head boys or girls coach at either LC or Ferris, including doing both at LC in 1984. His track teams had a total of 11 state champions.

He coached the LC girls to a Greater Spokane League title in 1983 and again in 2005, when he emotionally said he was retiring, only to come back for three more seasons, even as he battled cancer.

However, he was most known as a football coach.

“He loved the game, loved the GSL, loved the whole arena of high school football,” Hare said. “He just had a love of coaching. You don’t see that in a lot of coaches any more.”

Crabb said, “He was so intense when he was coaching but he was never like that any other time. He was always cheerful, looking at the best side of things, the best side of people. Not too many people are able to do that as consistently and continually as Pat.”

Pfeifer was the Saxons football coach for 11 seasons, resigning in 1994 with a 52-43-2 record and three playoff appearances.

“He is the third coaching giant to die from cancer – Wayne Gilman, Tom Oswald and Pat,” said Hare, who worked with all three, Gilman at Ferris and Oswald at Cheney. “They were all three alike. They were coaches’ coaches. They loved to coach and it carried over into every aspect of their lives.”

All three were also considered outstanding teachers, and in 1992 Pfeifer received the Disney Teacher Award. Pfiefer, who taught typing his first year, was most passionate about economics and he helped turn physical education into more of a lifetime fitness program at Ferris. He retired after 30 years in 1999 but never quit coaching.

“You can’t separate Pat from coaching, but I remember him more as a friend and a teacher (and) he was a husband and father first,” Crabb said. “He always had a plan. No matter what was going on he had a plan for it. He was ready to make the most of every single day.

“When he was a finalist for the Disney Teacher Award, most people would be excited just to go to Los Angeles. Right away he had a plan to meet everyone, to hand out pictures and cards. He wanted people to know who he was and he wanted to know who they were. There were 36 finalists and he wanted to know them all and he wanted to learn what they knew.

“I think I would do it now because I learned from Pat but I don’t think I would have thought that on my own.”

“There is one other thing I always think about,” Crabb added. “At the end of every season, he took the seniors into the small wrestling gym upstairs and said, ‘Wherever you are, whatever is happening, I’ll be there.’ I know he meant it.”

Pfeifer is survived by his wife Sally, sister Nancy Bridgens, son Michael and daughters Jeannie Lynn Brown, Stephanie Pfeifer Splater and Alyssa Kaye Ando, and grandson Matthew Pfeifer. The family has asked that memorials go to Spokane Teacher’s Credit Union for the Patrick Pfeifer Memorial Scholarship.