FRIDAY, March 3, 2017
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SPORTS: MARTY HASTINGS 778-471-7536 or email sports@kamloopsthisweek.com Twitter: @MarTheReporter, @KTWonBlazers ADAM WILLIAMS 778-471-7521 or email adam@kamloopsthisweek.com Twitter: @AdamWilliams87
INSIDE: Blazers post W; Gropp has ‘weird’ night | A16
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Lindsey Karpluk will join the Kamloops Sports Hall of Fame on April 8. The longtime Kamloops teacher plans to retire next year and has already coached his last game at the high-school level.
MARTY HASTINGS STAFF REPORTER sports@kamloopsthisweek.com
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ith the final seconds ticking away in the fourth quarter of his illustrious high school coaching career, his NorKam Saints destined to bow out of the Okanagan senior girls’ basketball championship, the only thing on Lindsey Karpluk’s mind was his students. The moment was about them, the defeated girls who might never again play competitive sports, the tight-knit family of teammates communing on the hardcourt one last time. That other-people-first attitude, rooted in seemingly perpetual positivity, will surely be talked about in speeches at the Kamloops Sports Hall of Fame banquet on April 8, when Karpluk takes his place among the class of 2017. “It’s one of the truly welldeserved inductions,” said 2013 KSHF inductee Brian Peters, a longtime athletics proponent in the city who has known Karpluk since the late 1970s. “I’d have a hard time naming a person who has done more for high school and youth sports in Kamloops than Lindsey. There’s no problem with him being called the godfather of coaching in this city. He probably has the largest coaching tree and you won’t find many players who played for his teams that didn’t love him.” Karpluk was congratulated by students playing badminton after school hours in the NorKam gym and a fellow teacher pulled him aside to shake his hand. Word of his Hall of Fame nod had spread that morning. As he walked upstairs and
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through the empty halls, Karpluk said the news was announced over the loudspeaker and mumbled something about being a little embarrassed. “It’s really humbling,” said Karpluk as he sat at a student’s desk in his classroom. “Right now, it’s pretty overwhelming. It’s something I never expected at all. As I said before, I’m not the championship, gotta-win kind of guy. Sometimes I wonder, ‘What were they thinking?’ But I’m starting to come around. I’ve had enough people tell me, ‘No, you are leaving a legacy.’ My brain is starting to come around to it.” After 35 years of coaching at the high school level, Karpluk is done. There were nine years at St. Ann’s Academy, three years at the University College of the Cariboo, another trio of years at Logan Lake secondary and 13 years at Brocklehurst secondary before he moved to NorKam seven years ago. Mr. Karpluk will teach one more year before retiring in 2018. He wants to spend more time with his aging mother. He wants to ski while he still has his health. There is also talk of an extended trip with his wife, Janice, to
some place where he can coach basketball on a volunteer basis, somewhere with a beach, where the only marking he will do is tracking cervezas in the sand. Janice is looking forward to seeing more of her husband — “By the end of the basketball season, I get a little testy,” she said with a laugh — but time away from her meant time for fledgling students, including the couple’s three children, and it was time well-spent. “It’s not the best athlete that he feels like he makes a difference with,” Janice said, noting she is over-the-moon proud of her husband. “It’s the ones who really work hard who are struggling with something in life. “It’s the special cases where people come back and go, ‘You know, I’m this because you got me
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through this’ or ‘I’m a teacher now because of your influence.’ That’s what really made a difference to him.” The number of teams Karpluk led to provincial titles as a head coach: Zero. “But the thing about Lindsey’s teams, they always, always got better as the year went on,” Peters said. “He’s probably the best clinician I’ve ever seen. His goal wasn’t to win as much as it was to develop skills. He was involved in many ways with his kids on an emotional and personal level.” Karpluk deflected compliments, redirecting praise in the direction of his mentors growing up in Kamloops, teachers and coaches who impacted his career. Bob Hearn told him teams should feel like family. Terry
Bangen showed him the value of systems. Rick Nykorak and Jack Buckham impressed on him the importance of commitment and going the extra mile. “They’re the ones that set the bar for how hard you should work,” said Karpluk, a multi-sport athlete in his day. “I’m where I am now because of them. As a Grade 11, your eyes stick out of your head like, ‘Wow. Somebody cares.’ I had really good support at home. I didn’t need that support, but that was an eye-opener.” The seeds they planted helped form Karpluk’s coaching methods, which have been transplanted into a new generation of teachers and bench bosses — the godfather’s coaching tree is an oldgrowth oak. See IT’S TIME, A17
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