Coach Guy Stegner
Coach Guy Stegner
The following article appeared in the Spokesman-Review on June 1, 1951.
Missoula High’s Guy Stegner Bows Out as State’s Top Coach
By John A. Linn
Missoula. June 1 – Something will be missing from the Montana interscholastic track and field meet next spring. That something will be a track team coached by Guy T. Stegner who has set a record for wins that can hardly be matched by any high school track coach in the country.
Stegner, who was born in Spokane of a pioneer family, has retired from coaching at Missoula county high school, although he will continue to teach. His record of winning nine of the last 10 Montana state-wide interscholastic meets will be hard to equal. This record does not include two state invitational titles in 1944 and 1945, when the Montana State university sponsored interscholastic meet was called off because of the war.
LC Graduate
A graduate of Lewis and Clark high school of Spokane and the University of Washington, Stegner speaks modestly of his own athletic prowess as a student. “A second-rater in basketball, track and baseball,” he says modestly of himself.
However, it was learned from a “Twenty-Five Years Ago in Sports” column in a Seattle newspaper that he was something of a wrestler. December 13, 1917, according to the account, Stegner wrestled Lloyd (‘Connie) Ireland, champion featherweight wrestler of the world, in what Ireland said was to be his last defense of the title. Ireland won.
At Newport, St. Maries
Before coming to Missoula county high school, Stegner coached at Newport, Wash., and at St. Maries, Idaho, where he won a football championship. He came to Missoula in 1924, where he coached all major sports until 1932, when he temporarily gave up coaching. His track teams of 1926, 1930 and 1932 won state interscholastic titles.
He was called back as track coach in 1937. His teams took crowns in 1939, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1946, 1947, 1949, 1950 and 1951. In 1943, 1944 and 1945 there were no official state interscholastic meets, although his teams captured class A invitational titles in ’44 and ’45, which took the place of the usual interscholastic.
Only One Loss
The only loss in the state meet in this period was in 1948, when Billings scored 45 ½ points. Missoula was second with 42 points.
In 1949 Stegner’s team bounced back to score a record-breaking 70 points and in 1950 shattered this record with 80 points. This spring the Spartans took the title by one point, despite the fact that Deno Damaskos, track captain and heavy point winner from the preceding year, was lost to the squad through injuries.
Squads Well Rounded
Stegner’s squads, even in defeat, have been well rounded. In most of the meets it has been customary for all men on the squad to score. He is a perfectionist, never being satisfied unless he has developed the best in each man. College coaches have consulted him on problems of coaching track.
The list of Missoula high track men who have been developed under Stegner and who have gone on to win laurels in college is too long to record.
Notable Graduates
Dick Doyle of Montana State university, intercollegiate discus champion; Captain Jimmy Kittell of Notre Dame, and football Captain Ted Holzknecht of the University of Washington are some of the more recent ones. Others who might be listed are Walter Custer, Ed Dvorak, John Mohland, Jack Reedy, Bob Latrielle, Glenn Hinton, Fred Stein, Bob Cope, “Soup” Jacobson, Rudy Sayler, Charles Bell and Howard Jacobson.
Stegner plans to teach two more years at least, then to go fishing and golfing, and enjoy more fully his two sons and four grandchildren.
During Stegner’s coaching hiatus from 1933 to 1937, he missed coaching the greatest runner in Missoula’s history, Greg Rice, who went on to win National Championships. Rice’s three-mile record would stand for 17 years.
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/22/obituaries/greg-rice-a-champion-runner-of-the-early-1940-s-dies-at-75.html