Steve Christilaw: University High football coaching tree adds new branch

Some things in Nature are just plain awe-inspiring. Mountains. Lakes. Beaches.

High on the list is a personal favorite: trees.

Part of that affinity comes from growing up next to an apple orchard. The smell of an apple orchard in the late summer and fall, with the fruit ripening and the tall orchard grass providing a soft-landing spot for apples trying to prove Newton’s Theory of gravity is heady stuff.

Hiking among the lodgepole, Ponderosa pines and the Douglas fir in the Northwest has a scent most of us find pleasing. And after living in Hawaii for a time, coconut palms swaying in the trade winds can sooth even a fevered mind.

Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, who died in 1941, wrote “The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.”

Coaches have their own kind of tree that they cultivate and nurture along, and if you polled any coach who has been around for a while they will tell you that it is, at the very least, as important to them as wins, losses and titles won. Most will say it’s most important to them – it’s their coaching legacy.

As an example, look at the NFL coaching tree of Bill Walsh, who was mentored by both Marv Levy, who took the Buffalo Bills to three straight Super Bowls, and the legendary Sid Gilman. Walsh’s disciples include Mike Holmgren, the former Seahawks head coach, who in turn fostered the coaching careers of Andy Reid, Pat Shurmur, John Harbaugh, Sean McDermott, Ron Rivera, Steve Wilks, Doug Pederson, Frank Reich, Matt Nagy, Jon Gruden, Sean McVay, Kyle Shanahan and Jay Gruden.

Not a bad coaching legacy.

Sometimes it’s just in the genetics. Adam Fisher, the longtime football coach at East Valley who stepped down to concentrate on watching his son play at Washington State, came at the game through is father, Ed Fisher, who had a long and successful run as the head coach at South Kitsap High, where one of his quarterbacks was Adam.

University High is in the midst of its own impressive but brief coaching run.

In 2009, with an opening for a head football coach, University High athletics director Ken Van Sickle got a surprise application from a man who gave a whole new meaning to the term “overqualified.”

Bill Diedrick is perhaps the most successful coach to ever come out of what is now the Greater Spokane League. A graduate of North Central who spent 11 seasons on the football sidelines in the league, including a five-year run as head coach at Rogers from 1976 to 1980. From there he had distinguished stops at Whitworth, Montana State (where he helped the Bobcats win a national I-AA championship), Idaho, Washington State, Washington, Stanford and Notre Dame in the collegiate ranks, and Edmonton, Calgary and Toronto in the Canadian Football League.

Diedrick coached a dozen quarterbacks who went on to have careers in the National Football League.

And he wanted to close out his football career at University High.

Diedrick led the Titans to three straight playoff appearances during his three seasons.

But that’s not the only impressive stat to come out of his brief, yet distinguished tenure.

His successor at U-Hi was his defensive coordinator: Rob Bartlett.

In Bartlett’s first season at U-Hi he coaxed Newport coach Adam Daniel to join his staff as offensive line coach, and when Bartlett became an assistant principal, Daniel took over the job and coaxed Kaleb Madison to leave Tekoa-Oakesdale/Rosalia to join his staff.

And now, this season, the Diedrick coaching tree adds a new branch as Madison moves up to be head coach.

The promotion has pretty much flown under the radar and Madison would be just as happy if it stayed that way. The problem he faces with that preference comes from putting in a lot of hard work getting ready for practices to start in just over a week. People notice things like that.

“We did spring ball and got a lot done,” he said. “We did one day of the Border League camp. We’ve worked out all summer with weight training and speed training.

“The big thing you’ve got to do is to show everyone your commitment to the program. On top of that, doing that summer work is a great time for the kids to bond with one another.”

Madison said his players have gotten a lot faster with the speed work and are stronger after a summer of lifting weights than they were in the spring.

“I’m excited to see the difference between what we saw in spring ball and what we’re going to see when we start fall turnouts,” he said. “I want to see what these kids have in terms of closing speed, finishing speed. Our motto is ‘Play Hard, Play Smart and Play Fast.’ ”

It boils down to Madison’s football philosophy.

“It’s what we talk about every day,” he said. “Respect, success – they’re earned; they’re never given.”