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By SCOTT SANDSBERRY
YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC

In his 20 years as a high school head coach all over the state — Nespelem, Hartline (now Almira/Coulee-Hartline), Tolt (now Cedarcrest), Indian Heritage and now Chimacum — “Torpedo” Bob Thompson had, until Wednesday, never been to the one place all school coaches want to be. On the sidelines at the state tournament.

He’s also been somewhere they would never want to be.
In a chaos of shattered glass and mangled metal while a Jaws of Life operator pried a chunk of automobile from his face and, Thompson recalls, “almost had a heart attack” at the sight of the mincemeat below.

In a helicopter listening to an EMT and the pilot talking about this guy who was going to die, wondering who they were talking about and too dazed to realize it was ... him.

In an hospital emergency room, just a melange of tubes, bandages and crushed bones, staring into the face of the orderly who had had the temerity to ask him if he was an organ donor.

No, he said.

Do you want to be, the orderly asked.

Hell no, he said, I’m gonna need ’em.

He was right, mostly. “They took my spleen,” says Thompson. “So I guess I didn’t need that one.”

That spleen was one of the few body parts Thompson didn’t need six years ago after a collision on Interstate 90 near North Bend slammed his pickup into a rock wall. Both ankles, both knees, both shoulders, both elbows and his left leg were all but destroyed. Thompson, who was conscious through most of the post-accident, pre-operative experience, knew it was serious. He found out just how serious a few months later from an EMT at the hospital who happened to be one of his former players.

This EMT had asked doctors involved with Thompson’s case how bad it was. Recalls Thompson, “He told me, ‘They said they were going to have to cover you up.’ He said he told them, ‘That old boy’s got a lot of basketball left in him. I don’t believe he’s going to die.’”

The ex-player was right. Thompson didn’t die, though he still can’t walk without assistance and he coaches in a makeshift wheelchair. But the amazing thing about Thompson’s presence is not so much that he’s coaching again — he was on the sidelines again less than two years after the accident — but that he’s coaching at Chimacum ...

... which is a couple of long fairway irons from Port Townsend ...

... which is a good two hours, by car and even sometimes including a ferry trip, from Carnation ...

... which is where Bob Thompson lives.

Huh?

Three years after the accident, while Thompson was in the process of turning Indian Heritage into a Class B contender, he got a call from Chimacum athletic director Dave Porter. The head job at Chimacum was coming open. Was he interested?

He wasn’t. Not just because it was so far away, but because he’d just applied for and been turned down for another job. “I didn’t know if I wanted to put myself through another interview and not get the job,” he says. “But my wife (Rozanne) convinced me to give it a try.”

Rozanne well knows the basketball life. Her first date with Bob, which came when she was a college student in Spokane, was to the Class B state tournament. “She’s been really good to me,” Thompson says. “She’s never balked at anything I wanted to do; she’s encouraged me to do the things that please me. And that was her comment: ‘You know, even if it is a long ways away, it’s better than just sitting there in your chair.’ ”

So Thompson took the job. Every practice or game day he would take off from Carnation in his Chevy pickup, crank up hits of the 1950s — from Elvis to the Everly Brothers — and make the two-hour, one-way commute. Sometimes around Tacoma and up the inner peninsula. Sometimes through Seattle and the ferry to Bremerton. Sometimes if a game ran late he’d stay in Port Townsend at the home
of a buddy, former Port Townsend coach Tim Black.

The Chimacum program he took over, he recalls, “was in kind of disarray — they lived and died by the 3-point shot.” But after winning eight games in Thompson’s first year, the Cowboys had a winning season the following year and have reached the district tournament three years in a row.

This year, they have been led to the promised land both by Thompson and by a stellar senior named Robbie Andrus, who averaged better than 26 points this season. And even after his team found itself in possibly the worst possible draw — opening against No. 2-ranked Nooksack Valley, in the same quarter-bracket with No. 1 Hoquiam — Thompson was unbowed.

“Yeah, it’s a tough draw,” he says. “But we’ve got tough kids.”

Of course Chimacum has tough kids; they play for Torpedo. He picked up the nickname years ago at George Raveling’s WSU basketball camps, where each player he coached invariably played with the toughness of a mob hitman. A
torpedo.

The Cowboys might be tough, but they weren’t good enough for Nooksack Valley on Wednesday, losing 70-42.
Bad day at the office, right?

Not even close.

“When people talk about bad days, I have to shake my head,” Thompson says. “Boy, I’ll tell you, those first eight or nine days I was in the hospital were nothing but intense pain. My face was kind of exploded on, my head ...
 
“Hey, there’s no such thing as bad days now. You have bad moments. That’s what I tell people: You have bad moments and you get through them.

“Every day’s a blessing.”

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Tourney Bracket
:: Boys tournament
 
Other Games
Saturday
:: Lynden Christian 60, Kiona-Benton 54
:: Hoquiam 64, Ilwaco 39
:: Chewelah 63, Cashmere 52
:: Nooksack Valley 56, Pullman 54
Friday
:: Lynden Christian 70, Steilacoom 63
:: Kiona-Benton 52, Othello 45
:: Ilwaco 45, Connell 39
:: Hoquiam 48, Lakeside 46
:: Pullman 57, Cashmere 40
:: Nooksack Valley 68, Chewelah 36
Thursday
:: Lynden Christian 58, Meridian 55
:: Steilacoom 70, Ridgefield 39
:: Othello 71, Chimacum 57
:: Kiona-Benton 66, La Center 47
:: Cashmere 48, Connell 44
:: Pullman 67, Ilwaco 37
:: Nooksack Valley 59, Hoquiam 40
:: Chewelah 66. Lakeside 51
Wednesday
:: Connell 57, Lynden Christian 45
:: Cashmere 52, Meridian 39
:: Pullman 70, Ridgefield 57
:: Ilwaco 50, Steilacoom 35
:: Nooksack Valley 70, Chimacum 42
:: Hoquiam 54, Othello 53
:: Chewelah 50, Kiona-Benton 28
:: Lakeside 66, La Center 51
 
Latest Statistics
:: Boys tournament
 
Team Capsules
:: Boys tournament

Record Books
:: Boys records
:: Boys champions
:: Boys all-time scoring leaders
 
District Results
:: Boys tournament
 
Girls Tourney
:: Girls tournament