Football

No matter where he went, Baker proved he could coach

Commentary

ROARING SPRING -- For the first time in 58 years, including 44 as a head coach, Dave Baker isn't doing advance planning for a high school football season.

And that's just fine with him.

Baker, who retired as Central High School's head coach last week after a highly-successful 13-year run, said over breakfast Friday morning, "I'm old enough (78) that I don't have to have something to do all the time."

Baker laughed. His sense of humor helped carry him through the majority of his career when he wasn't always winning with the regularity he did at Central.

"He'd say, 'Go out and throw it to a guy who has the same color uniform as you do," Christian Appleman, who quarterbacked Baker's 1984 unbeaten (10-0-1) team at Williamsburg, said. "He was simplistic, fundamental and very much a teacher. He didn't raise his voice."

Baker ended his career with a record of 245-211-11.

He has nearly as many victories (119) in 13 years with the Scarlet Dragons as he did (126) in his 31 seasons at Williamsburg, but he values both experiences deeply.

"I don't think of one being greater than the other," he said. "I was growing up at Williamsburg. I was getting my family started, and some of those kids I taught three different courses at school."

He coached his three boys (Jay, Matt and Andy) and many of their friends.

He was the varsity football coach, varsity baseball coach and jayvee basketball coach under Don Appleman, who called Baker "an assistant coach from heaven."

As numbers dwindled at Williamsburg, the football program struggled, and Baker became a caretaker, keeping it together while enduring nine straight losing seasons before stepping down in 2001.

Near what was headed toward a third-straight winless campaign (1994-96) before a couple of late-season victories, Baker was a little disillusioned and emotional when he said, "There are some kids that have never won a game. They were good kids who worked hard. I always admired those kids."

He also knew if he was going to add another chapter to his coaching life, he probably needed to move on from Williamsburg, difficult as that was.

He found a soft landing as an assistant coach at Chestnut Ridge under Dan Wilkins for seven seasons and a few more at Central -- his alma mater -- before the Dragons' head coaching position opened in 2011.

Baker and his wife, Nancy, had already moved to Roaring Spring to help care for their aging parents.

"At Central, I stepped into a situation that was great," he said. "There were a lot of good players, and they kept coming. That was not a situation of my making. That was sort of there.

If it was like the last 10 years of Williamsburg, I don't know that I could have done it. Here, you could see there was going to be a certain amount of success, and it felt good to be part of it."

Though he graduated from Central where his dad, Max, was a former football coach (at Roaring Spring, prior to the Morrison Cove-Roaring Spring jointure that became Central), Baker did not necessarily see his move as a calling.

"There was not a grand plan," he said. "Honestly, I never made many plans. Guys of my generation were happy to get through college and get a job. It just sort of happened, and you try to take advantage of where you are and live in the present."

Baker led the Dragons to seven District 6 championships, and his last four teams were 46-6.

"I feel like I've been lucky," he said. "I've been at the right place at the right time."

When locals ask him if these Central teams are the best in the school's history, he pauses. Certainly, they've made the deepest runs.

But his perspective offers that in the mid-1970s, Central was graduating 270. That number is now 120.

"I go back to when my dad was principal," he said. "You had (future West Virginia and professional player) Mark Raugh and guys like that."

Ditto in Williamsburg. Prior to the advent of the District 6 playoffs in the mid-1980s, Baker led the Blue Pirates on a three-year 21-8 stretch (1975-77) before the unbeaten team of 1984 and the 1989-90 teams that went a combined 20-3-1.

"The situation at Williamsburg was good," he said. "But then like a lot of schools around here -- Glendale, Claysburg, Juniata Valley, Southern Huntingdon ... (there was) declining enrollment."

Prior, though, Baker proudly points out -- and he's right -- "the ICC (Inter-County Conference) was a helluva conference. There were good players and good teams and good coaches."

Bellwood was coached by Jim Gardner and later John Hayes. Southern Huntingdon featured Ted Nypaver and the Schnarrs family. Juniata Valley was led by Bill Clouse, Glendale by John Lloyd, Claysburg by Ted Delozier, Northern Bedford by Chuck Gironda and Joe Nastasi, and Howie Camberg was improving Moshannon Valley.

"I valued coaching in that conference," Baker said.

But when opportunity knocked for Baker to ascend to a higher level, he proved more than capable, and that's the cool part of his story.

"It was always a struggle at Williamsburg because of the numbers," Christian Appleman, now a teaching tennis pro in Connecticut, said. "I knew his philosophy going from Williamsburg to Central would work, but to see him admired there like we admired him has been fulfilling. You have to root for a guy like that."

I know I did.

Rudel can be reached at nrudel@altoonamirror.com.