Larry Beatty shoulders grief, but carries same passion for community in return to coaching CC Spokane track and field

It’s a spectacular sunny day on the track on the campus at Spokane Falls Community College, where a time machine seems to be double-parked.

There’s Claude Defour on the far side of the infield eyeballing relay exchanges, mostly silent until he sees one he can applaud with a shout of “There you go!” In front of the grandstand, Linda Lanker aligns a flight of hurdles for a couple of men – and a precocious eighth-grade girl she’s towed along to practice. Throws guru Ryan Weidman is off in the tall grass, imparting wisdom on hip drive to javelin disciples. Sean McLachlan has his distance runners off pounding the streets or trails somewhere. A visitor to the track would have taken in the same tableau 15, even 20 years ago.

The band, how you say, is back together.

As is their bandleader, Larry Beatty, the most successful community college coach in the Northwest – in any sport – who walked away in the spring of 2011.

And to little surprise, the roster size has ballooned, jumpers may well launch themselves toward the moon and he’s been doping out the conference meet – which begins Monday in Gresham, Oregon – since sometime back in February.

Beatty dipped his toe back into coaching as an assistant last spring, and watched as rival Lane celebrated a 10th straight NWAC men’s title.

“That can’t be true,” he told McLachlan. “Well, we’ve got to fix that.”

The man likes to keep score.

This is true whether he’s counting points at conference, watching 4:30 high school milers turn into Division I prospects on his watch or just taking self-inventory.

“This is in my blood,” Beatty said. “I’ve been down in the dumps and I was telling my son that this has rejuvenated me. This is where the Lord directed me originally and now I’m back.”

This begs the question why he chose to retrench to his teaching job 14 years ago, and the answer is fraught with no little pain.

On their seven-acre plot in Otis Orchards, Larry and Brenda Beatty were consumed with a growing family – biological children Hunter and Jaedyn, Ethiopian adoptee Micah and, in time, two more, son Jacovie and daughter Ezriella. All were home-schooled and active in their church – and just active, period.

“As a coach, I spent a lot of time raising other people’s children – which is the way it is at this level,” Beatty said. “I probably have 12 guys right now in need of a father figure.”

“Team Beatty,” he decided, needed more attention. And Brenda Beatty had been grappling for years with mental health issues, which the arrival of the COVID pandemic and the ensuing shutdown in 2020 made considerably worse, Beatty said.

One Sunday in May 2022, Larry and the children returned from church to discover that she had taken her life.

“She was a beautiful woman who did so much,” he said, “but she was just haunted.”

Healing from the hurt and confusion took – and continues to take – time. Micah, who recently graduated from Army Ranger school in Georgia, struggled the most. Beatty, suddenly a single parent of a large family, suffered a minor, stress-related heart attack later that year. The support of friends, church members and colleagues has been crucial (“I don’t think I cooked dinner for a year because there was always something being dropped off,” he said). And the decision of Jaedyn and Hunter to join former coach John Spatz’s team in 2023 likely had a role in their father’s return to the track.

“He’s done the best he can to bring things together,” Hunter said. “It’s nice that Jaedyn and myself get time with him at practice, too. Our younger siblings are here a couple days a week and they’re super good friends with the people on the team. My brother has even started to lift with the throwers.”

Indeed, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Jacovie and Ezriella park at desks outside Beatty’s office to do schoolwork. Nursing instructors from the health sciences building next door have been known to stop by to do some tutoring; athletic director Jim Fitzgerald, too.

But for all the little gains, Beatty throwing himself back into coaching has been the biggest.

“This is who he is – it’s been his passion,” said Jaedyn. “You can tell in his eyes and voice how much he’s into it, and kids can’t help but pick up on that. He loves everything about the sport.”

Things have changed since he was last in charge. The track outside his office door at the Mission campus was paved over for a parking lot. The schools changed their collective name to Spokane Colleges. And, yes, Lane has flexed its muscle.

To combat that, Beatty first talked his old cronies – Defour, Lanker and Weidman – into joining newer staffers, even if only a couple of days a week.

“He’s the Pied Piper,” Lanker said, “for us as much as for kids.”

And do kids ever respond to his flute. This year’s roster is at 85, a marked uptick. His current recruiting sheet – prospects he tries to text or call once a day – is running about 10 stapled pages, and growing.

“I swear he could recruit Noah Lyles here,” said Jalen Brightful, a Richland jumper and sprinter who reconsidered walking on at Eastern Washington to join the Sasquatch.

It doesn’t hurt that he’s discovered a whole new army of connections.

“Every single high school in Spokane has a Sasquatch coaching, either as an assistant or head,” Beatty said. “I can call James Lehr at Mead or David Howard at Ridgeline and ask, ‘What’s with this kid?’ and get a phone number. And they’re all over the state. I guess that means we did a good job of getting kids through.”

And winning a few meets. Beatty has 35 NWAC track or cross country championships to his name, and has coached 220 individual or relay gold medalists in his previous 15 years at Spokane. It’s hardly a surprise, then, that when he stepped back in 2011 that Washington, Idaho and Boise State, among others, reached out to check on his interest.

“At my age, I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “One, I have tenure that I’m not giving up. But the other thing is, I have a niche here. We can take a kid who’s been overlooked or is a question mark and help him find himself and bring out his best and send him on to a good situation.

“I was one of these guys. This fits me and it’s great to be back.”

And moving forward.