Going The Rounds: Sid Otton not only won but treated opponents with respect

Retiring Tumwater High School football coach Sid Otton has little in common with the late basketball great Wilt Chamberlain.

But Otton probably could relate to one of Chamberlain’s most famous quotes: “Nobody roots for Goliath.”

Otton was seldom the sentimental favorite during a 49-year coaching career that including a state-record 394 wins and six state championships (five at Tumwater; he also coached at Colfax and Coupeville). That career ended Saturday when the T-Birds were eliminated by Archbishop Murphy in the state 2A quarterfinals.

I’ve always admired Otton, however, and not merely because of his coaching skill and the way his teams successfully represented Southwest Washington against more metropolitan areas in state playoff competition.

I applauded when, after winning one of his state titles, he called out the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association for a ridiculous postseason roster limitation rule that prevented his entire roster from suiting up for the championship game.

Most of all, however, I liked the respect and sportsmanship standards he displayed toward the opposition even in the most lopsided of Tumwater victories.

It’s been a while since I — or anyone else, for that matter — witnessed a Tumwater loss to a Grays Harbor team.

According to state historian Ralph Lovelace, Otton’s last defeat at the hands of a Harbor foe came in 1987. An Aberdeen team coached by Ron Langhans and featuring David Proctor, Curt Chapin and current Montesano Police Chief Brett Vance upended the T-Birds, 8-7, at Stewart Field. For the record, my late colleague Ray Ryan covered that game.

I’ve witnessed enough one-sided Tumwater victories, however, to recognize that occasional complaints about Otton running up the score were totally unfounded.

In 1989, for example, I covered a 60-6 Tumwater win at Hoquiam in which the T-Birds easily could have topped the 100-point barrier had Otton been so inclined.

During that contest, Otton followed what was evidently his standard blowout playbook— at least during an era before there was a running-clock mercy rule when the margin reached 40 points.

Tumwater’s offensive starters ran their customary arsenal of plays for about 22 minutes. After reserves finished up the first half, the starters returned to run one series for continuity’s sake opening the second half. Once the lead reached a certain threshold, the T-Birds never put the ball in the air.

Otton’s winning post-game quotes, while rarely memorable, invariably included unsolicited praise for the losing team and their coaching staff.

Once this was standard operating procedure for winning coaches in mismatches. A few, such as Montesano’s Terry Jensen, still subscribe to that policy. During a 63-7 drubbing of Rochester last September that I did not cover, Jensen reportedly had his third unit on the field by the midpoint of the second quarter.

But if they are not necessarily a vanishing breed, such old-school coaches as Otton and Jensen have become a threatened species in the way they handle blowouts.

Having covered more than my share of lopsided games over the past two or three years, I’ve been surprised and frankly disappointed by the number of prep coaches (both inside and outside of the Twin Harbors) who keep their foot on the accelerator long after the outcome has been decided.

To be fair, the unwritten rules governing blowout behavior are inexact at best. It’s a little like former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart saying he couldn’t define pornography but he knew it when he saw it.

That are often mitigating circumstances – defensive and special teams touchdowns, one-play “drives” — that cause a game to spiral out of control sooner than the winning coach anticipates.

Unlike some purists, I don’t mind a winning team’s reserve quarterback throwing an occasional pass in the fourth quarter of lopsided contests. But there’s no excuse for taking shots at the end zone in the waning moments of such a game.

Legendary Aberdeen High basketball coach Dick Dixon, according to Ray Ryan, sometimes reinserted his starters for brief curtain calls in the late stages of home basketball games when the Bobcats fielded hoop powerhouses in the late 1960s and early ’70s. His intention was to give home fans the opportunity to give these players an ovation when they left the court for good.

As Ray told the story, this well-intentioned gesture occasionally backfired when opposing coaches and their supporters would grouse (without providing the context) that Dixon still had his starters in the game with two minutes remaining.

Perhaps the most creative method of dealing with a blowout was provided by former Aberdeen football coach Rob Lonborg in the late 1990s. En route to a lopsided win over Hoquiam, Lonborg acknowledged calling plays that he didn’t think would work.

The strangest ending to such a game I covered came during a Lake Quinault-Wishkah contest a few years earlier.

With the Elks owning a commanding lead, their coach removed his starters at an appropriate juncture and was running out the clock in standard fashion. Then, with only a few seconds remaining, he called time, brought his starters back in the game and called a double-reverse deep pass that, if memory serves, was unsuccessful. I still wonder what that was all about.

Clearly, the take-no-prisoners approach taken by a growing number of high school coaches has seeped down from the college level where it has become commonplace.

From his days at Texas Tech, current Washington State coach Mike Leach has long been known for showing little mercy in the late stages of lopsided victories.

His Apple Cup counterpart, Washington coach Chris Petersen, hasn’t been much better in that regard this season. A fair number of Husky fans undoubtedly cringe when Petersen exposes star quarterback Jake Browning to injury in the fourth quarters of decisive victories.

Sportsmanship aside, that’s a good reason for removing starters at the earliest possible opportunity. If a standout player is injured in the late stages of a blowout, the blame falls entirely on the coach.

There’s little reason to believe that a new breed of high school coaches wants to learn the old-style way of handling lopsided victories. If they have such a desire, however, Sid Otton probably will have some free time to conduct a clinic.

Rick Anderson: (360) 537-3924; randerson@thedailyworld.com.