Dyck Plans to Seek His Own Private Idaho : Preps: After 12 years as Beverly Hills High’s athletic director, he is hopeful of rekindling his spirits at Sandpoint, Ida.

Beverly Hills High Athletic Director Jack Dyck says he has seen too many empty seats at his school’s basketball games and fought too many political battles to raise money for a cash-depleted athletic department.

Dyck, who lives in Valencia, wants to work in a community where sports play a more prominent role.

If he had the power, Dyck says he would bring back the days when KNBC televised the high school game of the week and Ross Porter and Tommy Hawkins were the announcers.

Dyck has spent 12 years as basketball coach at Beverly Hills High and 10 years as the school’s athletic director. Looking for a change of scenery, Dyck, 38, is leaving a program that gets less attention than the drama department. He wants to see students fill a gymnasium on weekend nights, not just first-run movie theaters.

“There are so many other options for our kids to do on a Friday or Saturday night,” Dyck said. “Our football and basketball games are not well-attended. They wait until we get to the playoffs, and it’s still not like other schools. I think that hurts the athletic program.”

When he was a student at Granada Hills High, “you had to go early to the JV game to have a seat for the varsity game. Those are fond memories.”

Thus, Dyck is taking a one-year leave of absence to become the athletic director at a high school in Sandpoint, Ida.

“I’m looking for a change in environment,” Dyck said. “I’ve spent my entire professional career at Beverly. I need to experience a different style and method of operating an athletic department.”

Some of his colleagues believe Dyck won’t be coming back.

“We’re losing an important member of the staff,” Beverly Hills basketball Coach Jason Newman said. “Not only for his work as an athletic director and as a coach, but the kids are going to miss him.

“I also lost my golf partner.”

Dyck was a 6-foot-4 forward at Granada Hills and was selected to the All-Mid-Valley League first team as a senior in 1971.

When Pete Cassidy was hired to coach Cal State Northridge (then called San Fernando Valley State College), the first player he recruited was Dyck.

“He was the player I wanted for my program,” Cassidy said. “He was smart, tough and shot very well. He was everything in the world you would want in a student-athlete, in my opinion.”

In four seasons at Northridge, Dyck averaged 13.3 points and 6.8 rebounds a game. He played in 75 games and had 235 assists, third highest in school history.

Dyck was honored as a College Division All-American and selected to the All-California Collegiate Athletic Assn. first team in 1975. He was the focal point in Cassidy’s high-post offense, which was made famous by John Wooden at UCLA.

“I would put Jack at high post,” Cassidy said. “He was so good at shooting from that position. He could pass. He could drive. You (would) get him the ball at the key and he could do a lot of damage.”

While earning his teaching credential at Northridge, Dyck also played on the Matador volleyball team in 1976.

Dyck was inducted into the Cal State Northridge Athletic Hall of Fame in April. Cassidy, who said the honor was overdue, made a trip back from watching the NCAA Final Four to give the induction speech.

“I was not a spectacular player in any shape or form,” Dyck said. “A lot of people I played with and I have seen play had better statistics. I think I received the award for longevity.”

In 1977, Dyck was one of nearly 600 players selected to play in a summer pro league at Cal State Los Angeles, competing on a free-agent team against such NBA players as Moses Malone, Norm Nixon, James Edwards and Cedric Maxwell.

During the summer league, Dyck was offered a contract to play for BasketballKlub Klosterneuburg in Austria. He played three seasons, and the team qualified for the European Championships during his last two.

While working for a loan brokerage firm in Century City in 1979 after his return from Austria, Dyck was hired as an assistant basketball coach under Dick Schreiber at Beverly Hills High. He became head coach the following season and began teaching in the physical education department. Dyck was named athletic director in 1981 and held that job simultaneously with the basketball coaching post until 1991, when he resigned as coach.

His low-key style has served him well through tumultuous times at Beverly Hills.

In 1981, baseball Coach Hank Friedman was accused of making improper sexual advances to two female students. Friedman pleaded no contest to charges of contributing to the delinquency of minors and was placed on probation for three years. Two other head coaches were dismissed from the school for similar offenses. A television movie called “One Terrific Guy” gave a fictionalized account of the event.

“It was really shocking,” Dyck said. “No one could believe something like that could take place. . . . It was stupid. There was no rationale for it.”

In 1989, about 300 Beverly Hills School District teachers went on strike, including Dyck, demanding better pay and benefits. The strike lasted nearly a month, and the high school was forced to forfeit several games during its fall program.

“I think everyone lost big-time in the strike,” Dyck said. “We lost our monthly salaries and we never did get the raise we were promised. I think the strike left long-lasting scars between teachers and administrators.

“The strike was the low point for me at Beverly Hills, and there haven’t been too many low points. This is a great place to work.”

Dyck, however, probably performed his best work as an athletic director after the Normans canceled four games because of the strike. Dyck organized players and coaches to play the final game of the season.

When football coaches Dick Billingsley and Bill Stansbury left in 1990 to take positions at Oak Park and Paso Robles highs, respectively, Dyck immediately hired assistant Carter Paysinger, a 1974 Beverly Hills graduate, to become the first African-American head coach at the school. Paysinger had been a football assistant for 11 years.

“I didn’t hire Carter because he was black,” Dyck said. “It was never a factor. I hired him because he proved to be competent and did everything to prepare himself for the job.”

Dyck thrived on the basketball court, where his teams were 174-102 and won four championships in the Bay and Ocean leagues. He was honored as league coach of the year four times.

His best season came in 1990 when Beverly Hills went 25-4 and reached the Southern Section 4-AA Division quarterfinals, where they lost to eventual champion Glendora. Peter Micelli, now a redshirt sophomore at Northridge, was one of the team’s standouts.

His most memorable games are just as easily identified. In the 1987 Beverly Hills tournament, the Normans upset Mater Dei, previously undefeated and ranked third in the nation by USA Today. In the 1990 Division II-AA playoffs, Beverly Hills defeated perennial power Muir.

“I think beating Mater Dei was one of the highlights of my coaching career,” Dyck said. “Every move we made worked. Our kids played out of their heads. Our place was packed and in the fourth quarter everyone was going nuts.”

During the past 13 years, the Beverly Hills student body has become multiethnic, including many immigrants from the Middle East. The enrollment has dropped from 3,000 in 1979 to 1,800 in 1992.

“I now know how to say sit down and shut up in 27 languages,” Dyck said, jokingly.

Though the ethnic makeup of his teams may be different, Dyck said the level of competition hasn’t changed.

“The players might look different in their uniforms, but they still play the same,” Dyck said. “Beverly Hills attracts smart and very motivated kids, and I think our coaches are able to take advantage of their strengths.”

Dyck said he once used a numbering system in Farsi (the national language of Iran) when giving defensive assignments to his players during a game.

Dyck, however, will leave this glitzy multicultural environment for a much simpler lifestyle when he starts his new job in the small Idaho community. His wife and two children also will move from their home in Valencia.

“I think my impact as an athletic director will be greater in a small town,” Dyck said. “I think there will be a greater focus on the high school program than at Beverly Hills.”