Steve Christilaw: Heathcote’s life of service remembered

I saw Jud Heathcote coach one game in person during his long, successful career in college basketball, and it was memorable.

The fact that he had been the head coach at my high school alma mater put Heathcote on my radar, and the battle his Montana Grizzlies had given John Wooden and the UCLA Bruins in the NCAA Tournament at the end of the 1974-75 season put him in the national spotlight.

The next season was my freshman year at Gonzaga, and I happily joined the volunteer pep band to help support the Bulldogs. My experience of college basketball got off to a rocky start. The Bulldogs pulled out a three-point win over Pacific in the opener at Kennedy Pavilion, then promptly dropped the next six straight games against Division I opponents capped by a heartbreaking one-point loss to Idaho at home.

Back-to-back wins over Hardin-Simmons and a 70-61 victory over the Vandals in the rematch in Moscow buoyed our hopes, but falling to Washington State by one at home and by two at Montana State had us right back in a basketball funk. A 72-54 loss in Missoula to Heathcote’s Griz was par for the course.

Then came back-to-back games at home against Montana State and Montana, Feb. 6 and 7, 1976.

The Zags came out strong against the Bobcats and posted a 75-66 win. The next night, the Bulldogs held the Griz to 49 points in an 11-point victory.

To say that I remember Heathcote being unhappy by that performance is an understatement. Not that I felt all that bad for him. Hey, a Zag win was a Zag win in those days. And a win over the team that had given UCLA all it could handle in the West Regional final a year before was something to celebrate.

That was his final season in Missoula and he left for Michigan State and college basketball immortality the next season. Magic Johnson and a national championship with the Spartans came just three years later.

You root for the guy from your hometown to succeed. And succeed he did.

I liked that he returned to Spokane when he retired, and I believe his influence loomed large in the growth of Gonzaga basketball. There is something powerful to be learned from our elders if we only listen, and Jud Heathcote had much to share.

I have a friend who is a Michigan State graduate, and she lives and dies with the Spartans. Don’t even think about getting her on the phone during the Michigan-Michigan State football game and never, ever say anything negative about men’s basketball coach Tom Izzo.

I’ve had to remind her a time or two that Izzo was groomed for that job by his mentor, Heathcote, and that he did not spring forth onto the stage of the Big Dance fully formed.

Heathcote got the job as head boys basketball coach at West Valley in 1950 after graduating from Washington State. In his 14 seasons there he was 165-129 and took the Eagles to state four times in the days before a 16-team tournament.

I met the coach a time or two over the years and talked with him at length when West Valley’s then boys basketball coach, Jamie Nilles, invited back every coach in the school’s history for a reunion.

Al Snyder, Heathcote’s long-time assistant coach and successor, was in declining health, but he was there. Duane Ranniger was there, too. Both men coached the Eagles during my three years there.

I talked with Heathcote before that ceremony, and he was pleased to be recognized by the school and delighted to see the new school building.

My colleague, Mike Vlahovich, was a team manager for one of those last Heathcote-coached teams at West Valley, and I asked him about my follically-challenged friend.

He remembered Mike as a good manager.

“So, you knew Mike when he had hair,” I asked.

“Nope,” he said.

Gotta love his sense of humor.

Jud Heathcote was with us for 90 years and you can definitely say that he leaves the world a much better place than he found it.

His impact on the game of basketball is profound and is already generations deep.

Don Monson became an assistant coach at Michigan State when Heathcote arrived in East Lansing and is credited with recruiting a promising, young point guard who now is a part owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Monson went on to coach at both Idaho and Oregon and his son, Dan, started Gonzaga’s string of consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances.

Heathcote’s monthly luncheons with Dan Monson and, later, with Mark Few have become legend and his love of Gonzaga basketball was second only to his devotion to Michigan State.

I don’t believe men like Heathcote set out to change the world. Not in the way he ultimately did.

Heathcote was a teacher, and the way he changed the world was by being the best teacher he could possibly be. He set the bar high and then helped you clear it.

His was a life of service. To his game and to his players.

And we are all better for it.

Thank you, coach.