Reflections on a career in sports Past coaches blazed path to good fortune

The thought occurred to me the other night following a conversation with longtime Bangor educator and football coach Gerry Hodge – a personal favorite – just how fortunate I’ve been to be involved in sports in various capacities in our region.

I think I knew from an early age that I wanted to coach.

As a young boy of 10 or 11, I was always rounding up neighborhood kids to play one kind of game or another at our Washington Street home in Brewer.

It was at the junior high there that I first met teaching and coaching giants such as Wes Jordan, who taught physical education and coached football and imparted daily lessons of fair play and sportsmanship.

To the late Wes, I proudly say this: The lessons stuck.

A move to Bangor and the old 5th Street Junior High brought me into the presence of another great man, Bob Kelley, who took a gangling teenager and softened the enthusiasm to the point of control, then molded it into leadership.

I have coach Kelley to thank for providing the example around which I would base my genesis for coaching basketball. He was a master of strategy, and his students and his players loved him.

What a way to make a living, I’m thinking. And that’s the career I pursued.

It was during this time – the mid 1960s – that I started following area coaches and their teams. There was the venerable Red Barry, Bangor High’s legendary basketball coach, who never knew it at the time, but I was firmly planted behind his bench, watching his every move.

The Bangor Auditorium rocked in those days during the regular season, too. Filled to the rafters by the start of the junior varsity contest, it was the greatest place in the world to grow up. I have my father to thank for that.

Up the road a piece at Orono High School, resided another hoop coach of renown, Bob Cimbollek. I liked watching Cim coach, and I especially liked how disciplined his teams were. I kidded him once about wearing white socks with a black suit, and he smiled and told me that his players could spot him better that way.

If you know him, only Cimbollek could fashion such a retort.

You see, I was putting together a notebook of leadership tendencies and styles.

In my head, I kept track of how winners went about their day-to-day routines.

When I started my own coaching career at the YMCA on Hammond Street in Bangor, I ran into guys like Mel Maidlow, an Indiana native, who gave thousands of hours to Bangor-area kids, Dave Mansfield, a referee by trade, and Joe Gould, a well-known sports announcer.

A lot of folks only know Joe from his broadcasting days with WLBZ radio and the Maine Public Broadcasting Network.

Gould had a profound influence on my coaching career, and what a privilege it was to sit beside him in MPBN’s TV booth for six years broadcasting high school tournament basketball games.

This year’s tourney seemed odd without Joe’s silky-smooth voice and his Down East edition of play-by-play enhancing the television pictures. Joe retired in November after five decades of announcing, and he’ll be remembered as a true broadcasting legend.

Yes, I’ve been lucky, and now I write for a newspaper that had giants there, too. Owen Osbourne, Bud Leavitt, and Bill Warner are all gone now, but being a part of this same newspaper is truly an honor – an extension of a career that I still treasure each time I sit down in front of this computer.

Yes, I have been fortunate indeed, and I am thankful to God and my predecessors for these opportunities.

NEWS columnist Ron Brown, a retired high school basketball coach, can be reached at bdnsports@bangordailynews.net