Dyck’s Move No Mistake by the Lake : Basketball Coach Makes Fast Break From L.A. for Slower Pace in Idaho

Among the cedar and white pine framing the sunsets and rolling thunderheads that alternately wash over Lake Pend Oreille in the Idaho panhandle, Jack Dyck is living out an ever-popular Southern California fantasy: Escape.

Escape from the drive-by shootings, the two-hour commutes, the smog, the crowds, the gut-tightening pace . . . details all too familiar to many urban-weary Southern Californians.

Dyck too felt the squeeze of the city, saying it was especially constricting to one who grew up in the relative tranquillity of Granada Hills in the 1960s when the Valley, with its wide, clean boulevards and neighborhood schools, was a suburban sanctuary.

Dyck’s new sanctuary is Sand Point, a town of 6,000 about 60 miles south of the Canadian border and little more than a one-hour drive from Spokane, Wash. Surrounded in Alpine splendor, the Dycks live just 200 yards from their dock on the lake, which is 40 miles long, eight miles wide and sandwiched between the Coeur d’Alene and Kaniksu national forests. The Schweitzer Mountain ski resort is 10 miles from town.

That’s a short trip but Dyck’s commute to work is even shorter. In 2 1/2 minutes, Dyck travels from his front door to Sand Point High, a regional school of 1,300. For the past three years, the former Granada Hills High and Cal State Northridge basketball player has been the school’s basketball coach and athletic director.

The Sand Point job is a good one, but Dyck, a 41-year-old member of the CSUN Hall of Fame, enjoyed a similar assignment at Beverly Hills High. He coached the sons of privilege for 13 years in one of America’s most-famous cities and settled into a comfortable life in the Santa Clarita Valley with wife Robin, his high school sweetheart.

But life was turning sour for Dyck, who had ample time during his lengthy commute to lament the steady decline around him. When a student at Beverly Hills was killed in a drive-by shooting, Dyck was ready to uproot his family.

He took his wife, his family, his home equity, a substantial pay cut and moved north. Since arriving at the high school in 1992, he has repaired a troubled athletic department, laid the foundation for a winning basketball program and found plenty of time to fish the lake with his 12-year-old son Matthew. On a typical afternoon, Dyck sits on the back porch with his 9-year-old daughter Amy and watches the weather roll over the water.

“The other day I came home from work and my son said, ‘Dad, let’s go fishing,’ and in a few minutes we were out on the water,’ ” Dyck said. “This is just a great place to raise kids.”

Family friendly Sand Point also has embraced the school’s new athletic director. Principal A.C. Woolnough, another transplanted Southern Californian who taught at Palmdale High, credits Dyck with boosting Sand Point’s sports image.

“Our athletic department was in shambles,” Woolnough said, noting the school had three athletic directors in the four years before Dyck was hired. “The soccer teams in Washington refused to play us because of the behavior of our teams, coaches and parents. They were out of hand. Jack brought back a sense of order, dignity and pride.”

Local businesses must have noticed. Sand Point is the kind of town where you can go shopping and forget your wallet and store owners allow you to pay later.

“When it happened to me I thought they were kidding,” Dyck said. “Life is dramatically different in a small town. In some ways, it reminds me a little of what the Valley was like when I was a kid.”

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Dyck, a 6-foot-4 swingman with an accurate left-handed shot, played at Granada Hills in the Valley’s glory days of the late 1960s and early ‘70s when neighborhood rivalries spiced the high school sports scene and large, enthusiastic crowds routinely showed up for games.

The sold-out gym at Granada Hill High was the site of Dyck’s first athletic success. The crowds were so intense, he remembers, he could not hear the shouts of teammates just a few feet away on the court.

Dyck nearly joined the chorus of cheers while he sat on the bench at Canoga Park High during his junior year in one of the first games televised by a local station as part of a high school game of the week series. With Ross Porter and Tommy Hawkins, both now with the Dodgers, calling the action, Granada Hills defeated Canoga Park, 108-98.

“It was a great high school game,” Dyck said. “I sat there with my jaw on the floor. Guys just could not miss. I was an awed spectator. I was just nervous the coach would put me in.”

Coach Barry Bass gave Dyck ample playing time the following season. Dyck was the team’s leading scorer, averaging 19 points, and helped the Highlanders at midseason reach No. 1 in the City.

San Fernando was No. 2 and Granada Hills lost to the Tigers when the teams met at Hollywood High for a TV game of the week. The rematch for the Mid-Valley League title was scheduled at Granada Hills but was moved because of tensions between the schools. Earlier, when Granada Hills and quarterback Dana Potter upset San Fernando and quarterback Anthony Davis for the City football title, fans at Birmingham High rioted.

Fearing a similar fan reaction for the basketball matchup, officials moved the game and kept the new site secret, even from the players.

“After school we boarded a bus and got on the freeway and we had no idea where we were going,” Dyck said. “Finally, we pulled up at Palisades High, and there was the San Fernando bus.”

News crews from Los Angeles TV stations followed the buses to Palisades but weren’t allowed in the gym.

“About the only people there to watch were about 10 people from the Palisades team,” Dyck said.

San Fernando won the game and the league title, but Granada Hills still earned a playoff spot. The team’s first-round game was against Chatsworth at Reseda High. The date was Feb. 9, 1971.

That morning, the Sylmar earthquake rumbled through the Valley. School was canceled but not the game. Bass, the Granada Hills coach, asked Dyck to round up the players for the game. He contacted everyone but the team’s 6-7 post player, Don Fuhrman. He had been evacuated from his quake-damaged home to his grandparents’ house, which was around the corner from Reseda High.

“I was shooting a free throw in the third quarter when the gym door opened and I saw Don,” Dyck said. “He had no idea we were playing and had a look of horror on his face.”

Dyck was unnerved himself as the referees periodically stopped play while aftershocks rattled the gym. “I’m deathly afraid of quakes,” he said.

Dyck also was shaken up during his sophomore season at Northridge. After graduating from Granada Hills, Dyck became the first recruit for Northridge Coach Pete Cassidy and by Dyck’s second season he had earned a starting job.

When he was introduced before a home game against Cal State L.A., Dyck--the only white player among the 10 starters--was booed.

“There was a lot of racial tension on campus in those days,” Dyck said. “I was really disappointed at the time, but I’m glad it happened. It made me real sensitive to the issue of bigotry.”

Mike Scyphers, the former Simi Valley High baseball coach, was Dyck’s teammate that season. Scyphers too was stunned by the racial attitudes of the time, but like Dyck remembers his Northridge days as almost idyllic--even though the Matadors had losing records in Dyck’s three seasons.

“I didn’t know there was a black power movement going on,” Scyphers said. “The first time they played the national anthem and people didn’t stand up, I was shocked. I was naive.

“But Jack and I had a great time. We were just a couple of basketball junkies who couldn’t get enough of it. After three hours of practice, we’d meet at some high school gym and find some guys to play three-on-three.”

During three years as a Matador starter, Dyck fired his left-handed shots from various spots and angles. He played everything from off-guard to the high post, impressing his teammates with his versatility and court intelligence.

“He had a knack for putting the ball in the hole,” Scyphers said. “He was very unselfish. He wasn’t a flashy guy but whenever you looked up, you said, ‘Jack’s got 25 again.’ ”

Dyck finished his career with 996 points, 10th best in school history, and he ranks fourth on the school assist list with 235. Three years ago, he was inducted into the Northridge Hall of Fame, a well-deserved accolade for a class act, according to Cassidy.

“He was loyal to his teammates and me and I like how he played mentally,” Cassidy said. “His intelligence impressed me a lot. He understood how the game of basketball should be played.”

Inspired by Cassidy, who gave him his first coaching job with the Northridge freshman team, Dyck, after playing two years in Europe, was hired in 1979 at Beverly Hills High.

The Normans posted a 173-104 record, qualified for the playoffs nine times and won four league titles under Dyck. He loved the job but commuting from Valencia took its toll. Too many nights during the season, he slept on the couch of a friend who lived near school, rather than drive home.

The Dycks might still live in Southern California had Jack landed the basketball job at Hart High when he applied a decade ago. Passed over, he decided to move.

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It hasn’t all been wonderful at Sand Point. Missing friends and family the first year was difficult, Dyck said, and after a 15-7 record in his first season, Sand Point has posted consecutive 8-12 seasons.

And there are the other seasons to consider, especially winter. Snow and sub-zero temperatures are facts of life in the Pacific Northwest. The conditions can take a longtime warm-weather guy and throw him for a loop.

Or at least off the roof.

“The first winter we had record snowfall and my neighbor told me I had to shovel the snow off the roof of my garage,” Dyck said. “Well, I fell off the roof and hit my head on some ice. My kids thought I had bought the farm. That was a big-time rookie mistake.”

And everyone found out in a hurry. Dyck can’t walk two blocks without saying hello to 50 people in the close-knit community. Everywhere he goes--the barber shop, the market, out to dinner--folks have a kind word for the coach--and sometimes a strong opinion on his job performance.

“Everybody knows everyone and the whole town is actively involved in athletics,” he said. “If you live in Sand Point, you don’t check out of the job.”

You also must be a creative fund-raiser. The high school receives no state money for athletics except to pay coaches’ salaries and transportation. All other costs are paid by gate receipts and fund-raisers.

This year’s big money-maker is a Dyck brainstorm: the great cow plop contest. Dyck is selling 5,400 one-yard squares on the football field. At the first game next fall, a local cow will be let loose on the field and the first square she, uh, christens is worth $5,000. At 10 bucks a square, Dyck said, sales are brisk.

Dyck also anticipates changes in his basketball team’s fortunes. He has improved the youth programs in town and expects the Bulldogs to reap those benefits soon.

“In another year or two, we’ll have it down like we did at Beverly,” he said. “We’ll be .500 in our bad years and well above when we’re good.”

To keep his sports program strong, Dyck will continue to recruit Southern Californians--not players, coaches. Dyck lured Satini Puailoa from San Marcos High in Santa Barbara and has sought--vainly it turns out--to bring Scyphers north.

“I could make that move in a heartbeat,” Scyphers said. “The small community, the four seasons, the beauty of it, the lake. Those are all big-time pluses. If my children were younger I might move, but they’re too involved in things down here.”

Dyck must content himself with his new friends and neighbors in Sand Point--including notorious L.A. cop Mark Fuhrman. And three years after Dyck’s arrival, the reception for the new coach remains warm.

“Jack is a man of integrity,” said Woolnough, the Sand Point principal. “He’s the only athletic director I’ve ever known who lives and breathes, walks and talks that academics are more important than athletics. Winning and losing is not important. How he deals with kids, how he deals with the public, that’s where he gets an A-plus.”

That view, Dyck said, is nearly as gratifying as the one from his back porch.

“Yeah, I’m glad we made the move,” he said. “Life here has been great.”