Austin's retirement can't erase 31 years of memories

POTTER VALLEY - Fred Austin was in his truck Tuesday afternoon, staring out at Fred Austin Field, staring at the memories, and his eyes began to water. It wasn’t something in the air. It was something in his heart.

“This is so stupid,” Austin said as the tears streamed down his face. He gently pounded the dashboard in his truck with an anger that failed miserably.

“Why am I doing this?”

Of course Austin knew very well why. He hasn’t let go, not yet anyway.

The retirement is still too fresh, too raw; the official announcement was just 26 days ago. Austin didn’t throw his entire being into Potter Valley High School for the last 31 years to find he could easily pull the rip cord and parachute to some other place and some other time to make some new memories. No, no, Fred likes these old memories just fine and he would never think of running away from them.

It’d be like running away from himself, his family, his mom, his dad and the kids, all the kids in all those sports who played for him. All these people have become like a second skin to him, maybe his very skeleton in fact and, really, how could Austin think otherwise, given the fact he was born 61 years ago in a ranch house just three miles from the school.

He went to Potter Valley High School, came back to Potter Valley High School and so, if you don’t mind, Fred and his wife of 37 years, Judy, will stay in their house, the one that’s only a mile from the high school.

A mile, by the way, Fred doesn’t know if he’ll travel next fall on Friday nights. He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to attend Potter Valley’s home football games. The away games? No thanks, he said. He’d had enough of the three-hour serpentine bus rides to Point Arena.

But to the home games? Maybe, he thought, he could find a tree on a relatively obscure location near the field, plop a chair under it, and watch.

Sit in the stands? “Never,” he said.

“What if they announce on the P.A. system that Fred Austin is in the house?” I suggested. “The field, after all, is named after you.”

“I won’t ever come if that’s going to happen,” Austin said.

In truth, the only thing Fred Austin has figured out is that he hasn’t figured it out yet. What do you retire from? Actually?

Does Austin forget he once taught the principal of Potter Valley, Scott Paulin, how to drive?

Does Austin forget that he coached Paulin as a football player?

“Fifteen years ago, Fred was instrumental in getting my first teaching job,” said Paulin, 43. How does Austin properly store that, as well as this Paulin compliment: “Fred is my mentor, friend and hero.”

Paulin puts the number at 968, the number of athletes Austin has coached in football, baseball, softball and girls basketball.

That number is stunning, considering, as a representative example, next fall’s high school class at Potter Valley totals 88 students. Austin coached 20 players who were the sons and daughters of former players.

An even greater number he taught in physical education, drivers education and health classes.

If he were to stay a few more years, Austin said, he would be coaching some grandkids and, oh boy, he knows that’ll put some more gray hairs on his chest. He knows his dad would be proud.

“Son, don’t be out here in the dirt the rest of your life,” Averal Austin told his young son. Averal was a sharecropper at the nearby Engle Haven Ranch. He lived on the property with Nettie, his wife, and raised pears on a 40-acre spread. No Austin had been to college, much less graduated from one, but at 15 Fred knew his future. It would be as a coach.

“If you coach to make the kids better people,” Austin said, “and they turn out that way, you will have done your job.”

OK, along the way Austin wasn’t just running a human potential movement in football pads. He wanted to win and did, 61 league pennants in different sports and 157 football games. Sure, he spouted and fumed when things didn’t go well but he didn’t treat a defeat as a train wreck.

“I found out,” he said, “the longer I dwelled on a game, the longer the kids would, too. In reality, it’s just a game, after all. The sun comes up tomorrow.”

That perspective wasn’t always shared by parents. The pressure to win, he observed over the years, has reached an unnecessary level. Austin shrugged. He wasn’t going to change. He coached and would always coach by one very simple philosophy made famous by his hero, NFL great Vince Lombardi — play hard after each snap and leave nothing in the locker room. Everything else takes care of itself, including winning and losing.

His players responded. Oh, how they responded. In 1997 the students went to the administration and asked the football field be named after Austin. To say the adults were stunned is an understatement.

Teenagers, many times, have a world vision that maybe extends three feet beyond their nose. So for them to band together, to make Fred Austin Field happen, well, it still makes its namesake clutch up 12 years later.

“It was such an honor,” Austin said. “I never expected it. I was really surprised ...” And with that, tears once again trickled down his face and Austin gently pounded his truck’s dashboard with an anger that failed miserably.

The kids in 1997 heard from Austin what the kids in 1987 heard and what the kids in 1977 heard: “It’ll be what it will be ... it’ll work itself out ... we’ll find a way ... don’t worry.”

Over the years Austin has said these phrases and many like them so much, he sounded like a Hallmark card. He wasn’t passing responsibility but ensuring stability, quieting discord, tamping down panic.

So when he founded the Potter Valley Booster Club in 1976, and asked it to raise money to build a baseball field, then president Alvin Lyly said to Austin, “But how? We don’t have any money. And we don’t have a baseball team, either.”

“But you’ll find a way,” Austin told Lyly. “The only thing our baseball team had was a schedule. We had nothing else.”

Within a short time, Austin and friends were bulldozing a pasture, building a real-life Field of Dreams. The kids had uniforms and caps.

It was suggested Potter Valley’s baseball field be named “Fred Austin Field II” and Austin recoiled like he just stepped on a scorpion.

He couldn’t care less about the attention but he loved remembering and so when he stared from his truck Tuesday at Fred Austin Field, he saw what only he could see. His sweat. It was all over the place. The goalposts he helped build. The lights he helped erect. The grass that he mowed in 1976 by borrowing his dad’s mower from the pear ranch. And running, in front of him, a thousand ethereal footprints from Potter Valley football players over the last 31 years.

There was one set of footprints, in particular. Austin didn’t mention his name. Just what the kid, now a man, did for him.

It happened on June 5, on Graduation Day, when the administration announced Fred Austin was leaving and was awarding him with the school district’s first Lifetime Achievement Award. His former player now lives in Klamath Falls, Ore., and sent Austin a plaque and a letter. It quoted Lombardi. It mentioned how Austin was such an inspiration.

Austin cried then and now tears were flowing again as he replayed the moment.

“The most important thing,” as Austin remembered the letter as best he could, “was to know you gave it your all.” Lombardi said it. Austin lived it. For 31 years he lived it. And he’s living it still.

“You’re just a big softie, aren’t you?” Austin was asked.

Austin didn’t blink or pause or even attempt to blot the moisture.

“Pretty much,” said the coach who hasn’t quite retired yet.

For more on North Bay high school sports go to Bob Padecky’s blog at padecky@pressdemocrat.com. You can reach Staff Columnist Bob Padecky at 521-5490 or bob.padecky@pressdemocrat.com.