A Mid-Columbia coach is closing in on victory No. 500

Dean Wagenaar tried to retire from coaching once.

It didn’t take.

A group of parents asked him to come back, and he did. That was six years ago.

Wagenaar has spent 24 years as the boys basketball head coach at Sunnyside Christian and has compiled a record of 499 wins against just 113 losses.

With that record comes the last three consecutive state 1B championships.

On Saturday, when his Knights tip off on the road at 4:30 p.m. against the combined Klickitat-Glenwood team — Klickwood is what students there call themselves — Wagenaar and his team will try to get win No. 500.

At 5-6 right now, it’s very possible.

“If we can somehow win one more game this season, we’ll get to 500,” said Wagenaar.

He will become the 20th coach in the history of Washington state high school basketball to get to 500 victories. But Wagenaar would easily have the highest winning percentage. He’s currently at .815, with no one else near .800.

“I’d never thought I’d do this for this long,” said Wagenaar, who also is Sunnyside Christian’s principal, athletic director, and was grading tests when being interviewed. “I never had any aspirations to do this. But it’s been one year at a time.”

Stop and think about those numbers: Wagenaar’s teams have averaged over 20 victories a year in his career. When high school teams only schedule 20 regular-season games, it says that Wagenaar’s squads have gone deep into postseason play numerous times.

Like, for nine state championships.

It’s extremely difficult to win that many titles.

“You can’t have a bad game,” said Wagenaar. “To try to win a title, you have to be able to play a half court game.”

You can’t always just run everyone out of the gym.

Over the years, high school basketball has added the 3-point line and the shot clock. Every team seems to have at least one good outside shooter, and time management is a key factor in today’s game.

So trying to handle good opponents consistently is not easy.

Wagenaar’s best memories so far?

“The tremendous experience of all of those post seasons,” he said. “And then going to the Spokane Arena. I also have those great memories of us playing in the old Ellensburg gym, where we had regionals for five or six years, and you could literally fall off the back of the bleachers and die.

“And the thousands of bus rides,” he added.

Asked how many miles he thought he’s put in, he quickly says, “I have no idea. If you thought about it you’d never start.”

Every season, he says, is a complete book.

“It’s been an incredible ride,” he said. “I think about all of the families. It’s so neat to see the kids and families be a part of it.”

And for Wagenaar, who has been able to coach his three sons, he’s not done. This year’s team, while 5-6, is starting to come on, he said.

“We built a schedule against the best competition we could,” he said.

In his office, Wagenaar has a picture of the Spokane Arena, surrounded by snow. It’s a reminder to him and his players that that’s where they want to be come March: playing for the state title.

CWU Hall of Fame

Central Washington University announced its 2020 Hall of Fame class this week, and three of the four of them have Mid-Columbia ties.

Being inducted on May 2 will be men’s basketball player Lance Den Boer, football player Mike Reilly, and wrestler Joe Sanford. The fourth inductee is volleyball player Kate Reome-Ridnour.

Den Boer, a Sunnyside Christian graduate, played three seasons for Central in a career that ended in 2007.

Over that career, Den Boer averaged 19.9 points and 4.8 rebounds for the Wildcats. He is currently the athletic director at Kiona-Benton High School in Benton City.

Reilly, who played football at Kamiakin, was CWU’s quarterback from 2005 through 2008, and he amassed 12,448 yards passing over his career, tossing 118 touchdown passes for the Wildcats.

Reilly is currently the starting quarterback for the BC Lions in the Canadian Football League.

Sanford, a Pasco High grad, went 26-5-1 in the 150-pound weight class and won the 1978 national championship.

He went on to become a teacher, a coach and a rodeo clown.

College indoor track

There were plenty of highlights from Mid-Columbian athletes competing last weekend at the University of Idaho’s Vandal Open in Moscow, Idaho.

Kamiakin grad Samantha Raines, competing for Eastern Washington University, was the top area woman, winning the pole vault with a height of 12 feet, .75 inches; and also placing fourth in the women’s 60-meter dash with a time of 7.93 seconds.

Connell High grad Alma Manzo, a freshman who attends Spokane Community College but was competing unattached, placed second in the women’s 200 at 26.11 seconds, and was fourth in the women’s long jump with a leap of 17-8.

Nyenuchi Okemgbo, a Hanford High grad now completing as a freshman at EWU, had an impressive time of 8.96 seconds to place second in the women’s 60-meter hurdles.

On the men’s side, Richland High grad Riley Moore, competing as a freshman for Gonzaga, placed eighth in the men’s 3000 meters with a time of 8 minutes, 48.70 seconds.

Kamiakin sophomore Isaac Teeples, who won the Class 3A state cross country title back in November, held his own with the college guys, placing 14th in the men’s 1-mile. Teeples crossed the finish line in 4:28.73.

Notes

▪ Next year, with reclassification coming amid other changes — such as Sunnyside Christian’s Great Columbia Gorge 1B opponents moving to a league in Oregon – things will look different for Wagenaar and the Knights.

He’s petitioned District 9, and SSC will likely join a league that consists of Yakama Tribal, Liberty Christian, DeSales, Touchet and Dayton/Waitsburg in the West, and the Whitman County schools in the East.

▪ Kamiakin football standout Tanner Sullins announced on Twitter on Wednesday night that he’ll be playing football next fall for Whitworth University in Spokane.

▪ Congratulations to the Week 19 WIAA State Athletes of the Week, which includes three from the Mid-Columbia: Alexia Asselin of Kennewick girls wrestling; Aaron Pollard of Walla Walla Valley Academy boys basketball; and Emma Reed of Liberty Christian girls basketball.