Everett has reputation for turning out quality coaches

Long before he became known as the First Gentleman of Washington state, Mike Gregoire was surrounded by greatness.

He just had no way of knowing it.

Gregoire’s football career at Everett High School was mostly about falling short of expectations, what with the Seagulls losing their long-standing grasp of the Western Conference during his senior season in the fall of 1962.

But in retrospect, Gregoire’s days as an Everett High football player were almost like spending time at the governor’s mansion.

Gregoire, who would later marry a politician named Christine, played with three future football coaches during his days at EHS, while he just missed playing with a fourth.

“It’s surreal,” Gregoire said when asked about the futures of some of his football teammates. “I’m old enough to remember when all the great coaches were coming out of Pennsylvania, like Chuck Knox and Chuck Noll. They had hard-nosed football programs from the coal towns of Pennsylvania.”

These days, many of the top coaches in the country come from the mill town of Everett.

“Sports were so important in that area. In Everett, that’s what it was all about,” said Dennis Erickson, an Everett High graduate who has coached at three Pac-10 programs and is coming off a successful first season at Arizona State. “Everett High School itself was one of the top athletic programs around. And there were so many good coaches when we were young, guys like Norm Lowery, Bill Dunn, Reg Scodeller, my father, (Mike Price’s) father, those were guys you wanted to be like.”

Erickson (Class of 1965) was a sophomore defensive back during Gregoire’s senior year as a 165-pound linebacker/guard. Current University of Texas-El Paso coach Mike Price (Class of ‘64) was the Seagulls’ starting quarterback that year.

One year earlier, when Gregoire was a junior, Everett High’s quarterback was Terry Ennis (Class of ‘62), who went on to become one of the most successful high school football coaches in state history. And when Gregoire was in middle school, Everett’s varsity team was led by future University of Washington coach Jim Lambright (Class of ‘60).

Between them, those four men have gone on to win 683 football games.

The office of Lambright’s Woodinville home still features a mid-1990s photograph that shows him posing with former EHS teammates Price and Erickson.

“At the time, we were the coaches of the three dominant programs in the state: me at Washington, Mike at Washington State and Dennis with the Seahawks,” Lambright said last week. “… That is really different. It’s a really special picture. That’s not normal. There was some real special coaching and teaching going on.”

For three quarters of the Everett foursome, that teaching came both on the practice field and at home. Erickson, Price and Ennis came from coaching families, although none of their fathers coached at EHS while their sons were playing.

Robert “Pinky” Erickson spent a year as an EHS assistant before taking over as Cascade’s first head football coach in 1960. Walt Price was the head football coach at Everett Junior College. Jim Ennis was a longtime football and basketball coach at EHS, but he gave up his coaching duties to become athletic director when Terry got to high school.

And even Lambright, as a fellow Everett native, feels like he was raised in a coaching family.

“I knew the whole Price family and the Ennis family like they were part of my family,” he said.

There were plenty of non-relatives who helped along the way.

In addition to Jim Ennis, Lambright played under future Snohomish High legend Dick Armstrong and an assistant coaching staff that included Pinky Erickson and Bill Dunn, both of whom went on to have plenty of success as head coaches at the high school level.

“Jim Ennis was the most influential,” said Lambright, a top assistant on UW’s national championship team before taking over for Don James in 1993. “It was his system; he was the driver. It’s very much a system I related to all the way through my career.

“It was a tough, no-nonsense system, very much like the Marines. It was like, ‘This is for the best of the best.’ It wasn’t for everyone.”

Dunn, who was a neighbor of the Erickson family, was not always as strict but demanded just as much discipline from his players. He was the head coach while Erickson and Price played at EHS and made such an impression on them that both coaches continued to talk football with Dunn right up until his death three years ago.

“Those guys had so much influence on my life,” Erickson said earlier this summer, “not just on the field but also off of it.”

The EHS foursome also leans on each other at times. Price and Erickson have maintained a close relationship over the years, mostly because of their proximity in age.

“I talk to Mike all the time,” said Erickson, who led a mediocre ASU football program to a surprising No. 16 national ranking in his first season in Tempe last fall. “We exchange ideas.”

Erickson and Price also leaned on each other in hard times when both of their careers took turns for the worse earlier this decade. Price lost the University of Alabama job before coaching a single game because of an infamous off-the-field incident. Erickson took a job with the San Francisco 49ers but was quickly fired — the second time he got ousted from an NFL position.

“I definitely sympathized with their struggles,” said Lambright, who compiled a 44-25-1 record in six seasons as the Huskies head coach. “With their careers, I have the same emotions. You hurt for their losses, and you celebrate their wins.”

When asked to explain how Erickson and Price have been able to bounce back from near failure in their careers, Lambright went back to his Everett High roots.

“It’s the way they were taught,” said Lambright, who now works at Turner Construction. “They were taught not to accept losing. There are going to be some bumps along the way — big bumps.”

For Erickson and Price, the bumps smoothed out. Lambright and the late Ennis — the former Cascade and Archbishop Murphy coach has the second-most high school wins in state history — had their share of success as well.

Everett High’s coaching foursome has done its alma mater proud.