Gorman coach has playbook for life

This is the message you expect: Have faith in your abilities and courage in times of despair. Whatever happens, never give up. Leave it on the field.

It's a theme used by coaches in all sports when addressing a team before its biggest game. Funny, though -- as a chilly evening began setting on a Bishop Gorman High football practice this week, Bob Altshuler's closing remarks might as well have been about his own journey rather the one his Gaels will try to conclude with a perfect season and Class 4A state championship.

Gorman plays McQueen at noon Saturday at Sam Boyd Stadium, and a win will earn the Gaels their first state title since 1983.

Altshuler is the first-year head coach who arrived here after spending 30 years at West Valley High in Yakima, Wash., and in leading Gorman to a 13-0 record already has produced the school's most wins in a single season.

Maybe there will be a moment Saturday when he will think about growing up on welfare in Seattle, about the times his mother stood in line for powdered milk and cheese to feed him and three siblings.

Maybe he will wonder what the father he didn't meet until leaving for college would think of all this. The father who didn't die in the Korean War but might as well have mentally.

It all shaped Altshuler. The neighbors who introduced him to sports and washed his clothes and made sure he had rides to practices and games. The ones who bought his family Thanksgiving turkeys. It all delivered him to this existence.

"That's what I want out of this for our players," Altshuler said. "That to know when they get done playing football, it's not about league or state championships. It's about becoming better leaders in society. It's about responsibility and knowing how to game-plan for life, to understand things aren't always going to go right and you just don't quit on things.

"It's all about the kids. When I'm gone, no one is going to remember me. This has always been my way of giving back to all the people who helped me in so many ways, all those neighbors."

Altshuler is 53 and here with wife Debra because a retirement package in Washington would have significantly decreased in value had he continued to teach and coach the next 12 years. He left a program he helped earn more than 200 wins as both defensive coordinator and head coach. He is here because when Gorman went searching for someone with a proven system and professional approach, his credentials were exceptional.

You can see why. His practice plan is followed to the precise second. He is the best kind of head coach, which means he doesn't stomp around a field micro-managing assistants and wasting time with senseless yelling. The man just looks like a coach, authoritative and yet not in a standoffish way.

"Change is always hard at first," senior quarterback Dylan Barrera said. "A new offense, a new defense, a new way of doing things. It was definitely nerve-racking, because you just didn't know how it would go. But he works so hard in helping us remain focused. There is no slacking. He lets his coaches do their job. He's just really professional."

Altshuler played at Eastern Washington and didn't become a head coach at West Valley until 2000, until his two sons were grown and off to make lives of their own. He never wanted to miss with them what his parents did with him. The happiness winning brings, the life lessons losing teaches.

For 31 years now, he has coached football and wrestling and taught subjects from woodshop to yearbook to phys-ed. He might coach Gorman to a state title Saturday. He might not.

But in the big picture of his existence, it's another one of those moments that have helped shape his journey.

"The day I left for college, my mother asked me, 'Where are you going?' " Altshuler said. "I said, 'Do you remember that coach who helped me fill out those financial aid papers? I'm going to college.' Ever since then, it has been so important to me to give back.

"I think I am a good coach. For years, we've won games against teams with better players and more talent by working hard and game-planning. We have done that this season. I will go into Saturday expecting to win because I expect to win every game. But while winning a state championship would be the perfect icing, when I think about what we have done, I think first of the character our kids built this season.

"Faith, family and then sports. That's what I want our kids to know is important -- in that order."

Ed Graney can be reached at 383-4618 or egraney@reviewjournal.com.