Barbero on the home stretch

Bob Barbero says his career is going according to plan. After a fashion.

“My plan was to go run in college and then come back (to my alma mater) to coach,” the West Valley High School grad explained. “Meanwhile, they hired a guy named Jim McLachlan to coach cross country. OK, I thought to myself. That won’t be a problem because Jim doesn’t have that much of a cross country background.

“And then he stayed here for 40 years.”

So what if Barbero arrived at West Valley four decades later than planned, he’s glad to be there – close enough to the house where he grew up that he can stop after practice to check on his father, who still lives there. And closer to his longtime Spokane Valley home.

A bearded Wayne McKnight, the West Valley athletics director, denied limiting his search for varsity coaches to members of the state’s various halls of fame.

“It only seems that way,” McKnight beamed. His last two varsity coaching positions were filled by Hall of Fame applicants: wrestling coach John Owen and Barbero, member of the Washington State Cross Country Coaches Hall of Fame class of 2009.

“How do you replace someone like Jim McLachlan?” McKnight said. “You don’t. Fortunately you get someone like Bob to come along and take over.”

After running for West Valley – twice reaching the state meet (in 1968 and 1969) – and running at both Spokane Falls Community College and at Eastern Washington, Barbero took 11 boys teams to the state meet during 23 seasons as head coach at University, where his son, Mike, is now head coach. Three times he coached the Titans to a state championship and three more times the teams were state runners up.

In three seasons coaching the Mt. Spokane girls he led the Wildcats to back-to-back Greater Spokane League titles (in 2003 and 2004) and a state meet appearance.

In fact, last year was the first in his 36-year career when Barbero wasn’t coaching cross country somewhere.

“Last year was a tough one,” he said. “Both my wife and my dad were battling cancer,” he said. “Thankfully, everyone is fine now, but it was tough.”

Barbero has a pretty good list of temp jobs while waiting for the one you really want to finally come open.

McLachlan stepped down at West Valley so that he could work with his son, Sean, who is the associate cross country coach at Community Colleges of Spokane.

Still, it took a fortuitous turn of events to make the homecoming happen. In essence, the Eagles traded math teachers to get Barbero.

Tara Davidson, the assistant girls soccer coach, applied for an opening in the math department at Mt. Spokane so that she could work closer to home. When she landed that job, it created an opening in the West Valley math department that enabled Barbero to both teach and coach at the school.

“We’d talked about coaching here and teaching (at Mt. Spokane) and I told Wayne that I just didn’t think that would work, what with my other commitments there,” Barbero said. “I think you just need to have a presence in the school.”

It’s not Barbero’s first work with West Valley harriers.

“When Jim had his bout with cancer, before he went in for treatment, I helped him out coaching the girls,” Barbero said. “So I knew a bunch of these kids already. My No. 1 girl, Emily Nelson, ran for me.”

In fact, Barbero and McLachlan are longtime friends as well as colleagues. There have been countless hours talking about the sport they both love.

“That’s the great thing about cross country in Spokane,” Barbero said. “We’ve all known each other for a long time. I ran with (longtime East Valley boys coach) Dave McCarty, who’s now an assistant coach. Same with (longtime East Valley girls coach) Nick Lazanis. Both Jim and I have kids who ran for us who’ve gone on to be coaches in their own right.

“We go out and compete hard against each other, and when the day’s over, we stand around and cheer each other on.”

And Barbero hasn’t ruled out McLachlan coming back to help coach the Eagles.

“I’m looking forward to the track season and getting to coach with him,” Barbero said. “That’s another thing I can check off my list of things I’ve always wanted to do – coach with Jim McLachlan. I’ve talked with him about coming back and helping out when he can and I think he will. Meanwhile, there are a bunch of former West Valley runners who have come back to help out.”

Barbero was pleased with his team’s first outing for a Great Northern League dual meet. The Eagles swept their meet with Medical Lake Wednesday at Plantes Ferry Park. The boys topped the Cardinals 21-38 while the girls swept the top five places for a 15-50 victory.

Alex Coburn was the boys medalist, crossing in 18 minutes, 24 seconds, 17 seconds ahead of teammates and Kenyan exchange student Richard Nyambura.

Mariah Martin was the girls medalist, turning in a time of 23:18.

“I was very pleased with the effort we turned in for our first meet,” Barbero said. “We have a long way to go, but I think we are off to a good start. This is a good bunch of kids. I’m very happy to be working with them.”