Jeff Shelby - Thread of Hope

“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate it.”

She nodded, smiling, happy to oblige.

“Chuck was coaching swimming, right?” I asked.

She pursed her lips. “I’m sure Mr. Stricker will be able to answer your questions.”

Worth the shot, but I should’ve known better.

Five minutes later, a man the size of a garage door came walking down the hallway. Dressed in a golf shirt with the Coronado tiki emblem over the chest and khaki slacks with creases sharp enough to cut, he smiled at me from a distance. Square head, blond hair cut short and going gray, a neck as thick as my thigh. He looked vaguely familiar but I couldn’t place him.

He reached me and extended his big bear paw of a hand. “Robert Stricker.”

The name hit another bell and suddenly I saw him on my television on Sunday afternoons.

I shook his hand. “Joe Tyler. Linebacker for the Chargers, right?”

He smiled politely, indicating he’d heard it plenty of times before. “A long time ago.”

“I enjoyed watching you play.”

“Thank you,” he said, graciously taking a compliment he probably got once a week. “Why don’t you come down to my office?”

He was only an inch or two taller than me but his girth made it seem like the difference was a foot. It felt like he was looming over me as we walked.

“You’ve been here since Willis left?” I asked.

“Yes. Did you know him?”

“I graduated from here in ‘84.”

“I came in a year before he left,” Stricker said. “Got my feet wet, learned what I could. Just trying not to screw things up now.”

He guided me toward the entrance to the gymnasium. He held open one of the large doors so I could pass. As soon as I got inside, I stopped.

The gymnasium had always been the one piece of the campus that linked to its earlier days, remaining unchanged for decades. The seats were up above, suspended above the court. The playing floor had gone from tan to dark brown, dead spots hiding everywhere. There had been no scoreboard, just a flip rack on a table on the opposite side of the bleachers.

But it had undergone significant changes since I’d last set foot in it.

The seats were still suspended above, but a bank of bleachers had been put in below them, doubling the seating capacity. The seemingly brand new floor gleamed with polish, the smell of varnish heavy in the air. A massive scoreboard was mounted on the far wall.

I looked at Stricker. “This is all new.”

Stricker led me around the baseline, behind the cushioned chairs that the teams sat in. “Thing was falling down around us. Parents stepped up and got us some money. It’s still small compared to some of the other gyms we play in, but at least we aren’t taping it together to hold it up.” He pointed across the gym floor to a bank of windows. “My office is there now and we’ve got office space for all of the coaches on campus. Makes a big difference.”

I remembered Mr. Willis’ office as being a table set up outside the locker room. I imagined it did indeed make a big difference.

Stricker’s office was a perfect square with a big window looking back toward the gym. Nothing in the office indicated he’d been a star professional athlete. A couple of certificates, a degree from UNLV and pictures of Coronado’s teams adorned the walls.

He gestured at the chair across from his desk as he lowered himself into an oversized leather desk chair. It squawked beneath his weight. He folded his hands across his chest and stared at me, his look having subtly changed from when he came out to get me. He’d gone from friendly officer of the school to linebacker looking to smash a quarterback in the face.

“Two ways we can go about this,” he said. “We can dance around or we can cut to the chase. I’ll leave it to you to choose.”

“I prefer cutting.”

“Good. Saves us both time.” He paused. “I can’t tell you shit.”

“About what?”

“Thought we weren’t going to dance.”

I didn’t say anything.

Stricker sighed. “Lana told me you were here looking for info on the Jordan and Winslow thing. And I can’t tell you shit.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Doesn’t matter. Same result either way.”

“I’m not looking for info on Meredith Jordan,” I said.

“Yeah, you are,” he said, smiling. “But let’s pretend that’s true and we skip to the next item on your list.”

If he’d taken shots to the head during his career, it didn’t show. He was sharp and all business.

“Whatever she says Chuck Winslow did to her isn’t true,” I said.

“You know that for a fact?”

“I do.”

“How?”

“Think about whoever your closest teammate was,” I said. “The one single guy you would’ve picked every week to go to battle with because you trusted him so completely.”

Something shifted through his eyes, then he nodded.

“Chuck’s like that times ten in my life,” I said. “I know what he’s capable of and this isn’t it.”

Stricker let that settle in his thoughts for a moment. Then he leaned forward, placing his elbows on his desk. “I can appreciate that. But as a school administrator, I’m going to come down on the side of the student. Every time, until I hear otherwise.”

“Then why are you even talking to me?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re the A.D. Why not pawn me off on the principal or some other administrator?” I asked. “If you aren’t going to talk to me and you aren’t interested in what I have to say about Chuck, why see me? What do you care?”

He grunted, the corners of his mouth twitching like small electrical currents. Finally he said, “Because I’m the one who okay’d hiring Winslow.”

“Hired him?” I asked.

Stricker leaned back in his chair, like he was trying to create more distance between us. “Technically, we didn’t hire him. But I signed off on his involvement with the girls basketball program. He was a volunteer coach for the last month.”

The whole concept of Chuck as coach just didn’t sit right in my head. He’d never showed any inclination to coach and seemed to have had as much use for high school kids as he did used cigarette butts. Maybe it was a secret ambition he’d kept hidden from me. Or maybe things had changed more than I knew since I’d last seen him.

“He was straight with me from the day I met him,” Stricker said. “He told me he didn’t have a degree, that he hadn’t worked in a school before, that he hadn’t coached before. He'd played basketball in high school here and that was about the only qualification he had.”

That sounded right to me. We’d played together at Coronado, in the older version of the gym directly behind me. Chuck was a brute, using his size to make himself into a player. He was athletic enough to use finesse to score, but he preferred banging into people. And he was talented enough to attract some college interest but he blew it off, despising the thought of spending any more time in school, even if it meant a free ride and playing ball.

“So he was here for a month?” I asked.

“About a month, month-and-a-half,” he said. “I watched him in the gym with the team. He was pretty good. He knew how to explain things. Footwork, body position, nuances that can be tough to teach kids. He could do it. During games, he stayed in his seat and kept his mouth shut, working with the girls. He was a model assistant coach.”

“Who’s the head coach?” I asked.

“Kelly Rundles,” he said. “She’s been here three years. She was my first hire. She’s very good.”

“She and Chuck got along alright?”

“Yes. Kelly’s not the type to let anyone step in front of her. She runs the ship. But her ego is manageable enough that if she finds someone who can help, she lets them do their thing. That’s what she did with Winslow.”