Central Valley boys basketball coach Rick Sloan will retire after 22-year career
As Central Valley basketball coach Rick Sloan prepares to ride off into the sunset, words he said announcing his surprise retirement this week resonated with those written at the dawn of his varsity career 22 years ago.
Sloan never wavered from his philosophy or his principles during 22 years coaching at his alma mater. It was about expectations imparted. He reiterated that X’s and O’s don’t matter so much as having players buy in – “drink the Kool-Aid,” as he put it.
“You have to check your ego at the door and play team basketball,” he said.
He was as much mentor as coach, looking at the broader picture of life more than the five Greater Spokane League championships, five state tournaments, two state finals, two fourth-place finishes, a couple more regionals and 63-percent winning mark.
“I’m the person I am because of him,” said Travis Brown, a member of his first state qualifying team who today is an assistant professor of neuroscience at the University of Wyoming and a high school basketball coach. “The No. 1 emphasis was he pushed us to not only be great basketball players, but good human beings. He was mentoring the whole person and not just in basketball. He took the time to get to know us as people and what made us tick.”
Why then would Sloan stand down as he approaches his 55th birthday?
“The time is just right,” he said this week. “My health is good, my family’s good, my relationships with my players and parents are all good. I just felt it was time to move on.”
A major portion of it, he said, is to give back to his high school sweetheart and wife Nanci, who has given as much to the program as he all these years.
“The only reason I coached as long as I did is having a supportive wife,” he said.
He calls her “a five-tool wife,” who even agreed to an induced labor so their first child, Mackenzie, would be born between Tuesday and Friday, the days of Greater Spokane League games.
“She’s smart, selfless,” he said. “She’s beautiful, a really good mom, a really good wife. I bet I could count on one hand the games she’s missed. I outkicked my coverage (by winning her over).”
Sloan, an was offensive coordinator in football and assistant in basketball previously, and said he would have applied for whichever head coaching job opened up first. Prior to becoming a teacher, he had no intention to coach.
He was working at a business when he decided that rather than moving with job promotions, he’d stay put after having played football at San Jose State and Idaho. While attending Eastern Washington to join his wife in education, head football coach Dick Zornes took him on as a graduate assistant and it went from there.
“It’s been a lot of fun, but I think it’s selfish to stay on too long,” Sloan said. “I don’t want coaching to define me. I want to be defined mostly as a father, a teacher and builder of young men.”
It’s now time to get on with the next phase of his life, even though he said he doesn’t know what that will be.