Mr. Stutz, No Baloney

In fourth grade, there were few authorities in my life.

There was my father, my maternal grandfather and Bill Stutz.

Stutz was the basketball coach at Bethalto Grade School. He had a simple philosophy:

“There’s the right way, the wrong way…and my way,” Stutz would bark at practice. “I want you to do it my way.”

Bethalto was on a growth spurt in the mid-1960s and there was only one fourth grade basketball team. He had one gym and had to coach 30 of us while also handling a like number of fifth and sixth graders. I was on the third team, a scrub, and often had to stand along the sidelines to make room. I only was welcome to go to the home games. We learned the basics. Layups, free throws, dribbling, passing.

But for some reason, he took me to one road game that year. I actually got a road blue uniform and played a couple of minutes at Cottage Hills. It meant the world to me.

Fifth grade brought changes….A new Bethalto grade school and a growth spurt for my young legs. I started at Bethalto West. We beat Stutz’s teams for the next two years. Then as I arrived at Trimpe Junior High, Bill Stutz became the seventh grade basketball coach. We were reunited.

He once told us before a big game that if his team won, his wife Dutch would make him a steak for supper. If he lost, Dutch would serve baloney. I believed him. The thought that my missing a free throw would cost Mr. Stutz a sirloin….forcing him to eat processed lunch meat….was enough to make me work that much harder.

That was over a half century ago. And I still remember it as if it were yesterday.

So, when Carol and I ran into Mr. Stutz and Dutch today at Geno’s 140 Club in my hometown, I couldn’t help but embrace him. He seemed to be equally happy to see me.

Later, I dropped by his table to tell him how much he had meant to me, how, in my unpleasant times, I often escape to memories of those simpler days when he would blow a whistle and I tried to play just a little bit harder.

He remembered a game I played against him in fifth grade. He remembered when my team won a conference championship in eighth grade. It was amazing. Then he asked for my address so he could send me a Christmas card…

But I didn’t get to tell him something…

My oldest, Andy, is now the 6^th grade coach in Bethalto. He teaches the fundamentals and tries to inspire the way Mr. Stutz did back in the day.

Who knows? Who knows if Andy would have been would have developed the love for basketball and coaching if he hadn’t been infected by a dad who got to sit in the back seat of a big bus back in 1967---clutching his uniform on his way to play two minutes in a JV game in Cottage Hills?

That’s the legacy of Bill Stutz. He made a difference.

If he did it for me, he did it for hundreds of others.

When I lay down each night, I thank God for people like him.