‘Father of Cascade High School’ recalled as a great mentor

Published 10:51 pm Saturday, April 10, 2010

At Everett High School, Reginald Scodeller was an all-state basketball guard and proud member of the Seagull class of 1946. Yet his career earned him the nickname “Father of Cascade High School.” And in 2001, Cascade renamed its gym the Reg Scodeller Gymnasium.

This January, Scodeller was one of six former Bruin coaches inducted into the school’s new Cascade Athletics Hall of Fame.

“He’s unparalleled,” said Charlie Cobb, who had big shoes to fill as Cascade’s basketball coach after Scodeller left coaching to become Cascade’s vice principal. Among Cascade’s first staff members in 1961, Scodeller was a history teacher who became the school’s first boys basketball coach, first baseball coach and first athletic director. He retired from Cascade in 1991.

“I never met anybody who had his way with group dynamics,” Cobb said. “He was a team player, but he always seemed to be the lead in the dog sled team, if you will. He was a wonderful mentor,” said Cobb, now athletics and operations administrator for Boys &Girls Clubs of Snohomish County.

Scodeller was Cascade’s basketball coach until 1978, and baseball coach until 1966. His teams won 350 high school basketball games, and in 1984 he was inducted into the Washington Interscholastic Basketball Coaches Hall of Fame.

Reginald “Reg” L. Scodeller died March 19 after struggling for several years with Parkinson’s disease. He was 81.

The Everett man is survived by his wife of 59 years, Betty Scodeller; daughters JoAnne Baseler and Debbie Warfield, and son Terry Scodeller; and grandchildren Cameron and Christopher Scodeller, Andrea Baseler, and Spencer and Paige Warfield.

Reg Scodeller was born April 24, 1928, in Vancouver, B.C. His Italian immigrant parents lived in Canada before moving to Everett when Reg was in first grade. He was preceded in death by his parents, Luigi and Asunta Scodeller, and by his brother Larry Scodeller.

“He was a great father,” said Betty Scodeller, who met her future husband the summer after ninth grade. Both attended Everett’s North Junior High and would go on together to Everett High.

“Our son, at age 2, would go to the gym with him. I don’t think I ever saw our son without a basketball in his hand,” Betty Scodeller said. “He got to play basketball for his dad at Cascade. That was a great relationship.”

Terry Scodeller, a 1973 Cascade graduate, said his father wasn’t only a coach, but a teacher of life lessons. “He had high expectations, but a compassionate personality. If something didn’t go right the first time, he always felt everyone deserved a fair chance,” Scodeller said.

He said his father loved gardening and reading history. He had a keen interest in World War II.

Scodeller graduated from Washington State University in 1950 with a bachelor’s degree in education and history. In college, he served in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. After beginning his teaching career in Mansfield, near Wenatchee, he was called up for Army duty. A second lieutenant, he served during the Korean War at Fort Ord, Calif., and Fort Benning, Ga.

He and Betty were married Feb. 15, 1951. Before teaching at Cascade, he also taught in Stanwood.

Lou Stevenson graduated from Cascade in 1964, a year after the first graduating class. Now overseeing athletics for the Everett Parks and Recreation Department, Stevenson remembers Cascade’s early days. Cross-town rival Everett High had a long, illustrious athletic history. Cascade’s gym wasn’t ready when the school first opened, and home basketball games were played at Everett High. The Cascade football team practiced at Emerson Elementary School.

“With the start of Cascade, there was a closeness with those beginning kids,” said Stevenson, who was coached by Scodeller in basketball, baseball and football. “I looked at coach just like a dad,” Stevenson said.

Back then, Stevenson said, the Wesco League included Wenatchee, Bellingham and several Seattle schools. “On some of those bus trips, coach would spend a lot of time talking to us. I think that’s where I learned to grow up a little bit,” Stevenson said. “He was a special guy.”

Stevenson played college basketball at Seattle University. “I found out in basketball how much he really did teach us about the game,” he said. Stevenson went on to teach Spanish at Everett High, and to coach there. He also became a lifelong friend of the Scodeller family.

“Every person who ever played for him loved the man,” said Ed Gay, a former Cascade basketball player. Now facilities administrator for Boys &Girls Clubs of Snohomish County, Gay used to get rides to school with Coach Scodeller after Gay’s family moved to north Everett.

“I had a tendency to sleep in,” Gay said. “He’d say he’d wait a minute, but if I wasn’t there he’d be down the road.

“Reg taught me a lot,” said Gay, who later became a baseball coach at Cascade and at Archbishop Murphy High School. “He was a great man who turned out to be a good personal friend.”

Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.

Celebration of a life

A celebration of Reginald Scodeller’s life is scheduled for 2 p.m. April 25 at the Reg Scodeller Gymnasium at Cascade High School, 801 East Casino Rd., Everett.