Ellensburg’s Fitterer smiling, but close to tears

Pat Fitterer’s 35th season as a prep basketball coach is his first without his wife, Kathy, who died last June ||

YAKIMA, Wash. — Pat Fitterer was caught off balance, if not off guard, when he recently walked up some gymnasium bleacher steps to renew an acquaintance.

“With these shoes I’m wearing now, I slipped,” he recalls. “Almost fell on my keister.”

Pat being Pat, he regained his footing. But as his 35th season as a basketball head coach continues, the coach struggles to stay on his feet in the most demanding of contexts. Because his second season as coach of his alma mater, Ellensburg High School, is his first without the companionship, support and love of Kathy Fitterer.

E-burg was her school, too. Pat Fitterer and Kathy Bender were 1971 EHS graduates before becoming man and wife — and to a great extent coach and assistant coach — in 1976.

“Usually,” Pat says, recalling her presence behind his team’s bench, “she told me to watch my language.”

Kathy was there during the first 11 years of Pat’s career, at Highland, which culminated with a Class 1A state championship in 1988. Their daughters, Karly and Mindy, were born during that tenure.

Ellensburg coach Pat Fitterer talks to his players during their game against Toppenish on Tues. Jan 10, 2012. In honor of his wife, who passed away since last season, Fitterer is wearing a pink shirt and his players are wearing pink shoes for the season. (Sara Gettys/Yakima Herald-Republic)

She was there during Pat’s two seasons at Kentwood, during his 13 years at Sehome in Bellingham, during his seven years at Eisenhower and last year, also, during their first season back home, so to speak, with the Bulldogs.

The best part of that experience was seeing familiar faces, of reconnecting with many old friends.

The worst part was that Kathy was dying, and they both knew it.

BLINDSIDED

In the spring of 2010, all was well with the Fitterers. Pat and Kathy were enthralled with their first grandchild, Kai, and knew two more were on the way.

But Pat noticed that Kathy was putting socks in the wrong drawers, among other things, and also was having severe headaches.

An ensuing examination revealed their worst fears: Kathy had cancer, not only in her brain and lungs but elsewhere in her system.

“From the initial diagnosis, we knew. We both did,” Pat says. “That’s why I initially quit (as head coach at Ike), was to make the most of the time we had. But she wanted basketball to be a part of that, and she didn’t want me changing my lifestyle.

“Looking back, I think basketball kept her alive a lot longer.”

AN ELLENSBURG VICTORY TOUR

Though Pat resigned from his job at Ike immediately after Kathy’s diagnosis, eight days later he accepted the coaching job at Ellensburg.

“My retirement,” Pat joked at the time, “has been shorter than any of Brett Favre’s.”

Kathy and their daughters had urged him to resume coaching, so he did. And Kathy, despite the ravages of treatment and of cancer itself, attended the overwhelming majority of Ellensburg’s games last season, taking her accustomed seat behind Pat’s bench.

“The first two games Kathy went in a wheelchair, but she was embarrassed by that,” Pat says. “So the third and fourth games she used a walker, then by game five she went in on her own. It gave her a reason to get out of the house, and it gave us as an outlet as a family.”

Ellensburg players sport pink shoes in honor of the wife of their coach, Pat Fitterer, who passed away before the beginning of the season. (Sara Gettys/Yakima Herald-Republic)

A highlight was a night in which Kathy was honored at a home game.

“The whole thing was huge,” Pat says. “Not only was the ceremony at the game awesome, we were all at a restaurant afterward and she was walking from table to table, talking to family and friends.”

Last April, during spring break, the family went to Hawaii.

“The nurses at North Star Lodge were not overly thrilled with me for putting Kathy on a plane with all the blood pressure issues and everything,” Pat says. “But we really wanted to go to Lahaina for 10 days, just to be together as a family.”

Then last June 24, with Pat and her family at her side, Kathy passed away.

NEW WAYS OF REMEMBERING

Kathy Jo Bender Fitterer’s favorite color was pink. Pat’s players knew that, and during a clinic last summer in Seattle they saw some Nike basketball shoes in that very color.

This season, the Ellensburg Bulldogs wear them with the initials KF on the back.

When the Bulldogs debuted on Dec. 3 in the SunDome against Eisenhower, Cadets head coach Colton Monti and assistants Humberto Perez and Drew Harris also wore pink.

“That,” Pat says, “was extremely classy on their part.”

As for Pat, the khaki slacks, polo shirts and sneakers that had almost exclusively comprised his game-night wardrobe have given way to much more formal attire.

He starts each game in a full suit, replete with pink shirt, matching tie and dress shoes.

“I’ve never been accused of overdressing,” Pat says. “The jacket usually comes off fairly early in the game, and I hang it on the back of my chair.”

FAMILIAR FACES, RECOLLECTIONS LINGER

The behind-the-bench presence of his daughters and grandsons — Kai was joined by Bode in September of 2010 and Kohen last March — is reassuring to Pat during this unique season.

If basketball has been an integral part of his life for more than three decades, Kathy had been an even bigger part for an even longer period of time.

“We were married for 35 years and had dated for another 10,” he says. “So basically, we were together for 45 years.”

Pat, 58, has won 690 games and is the state’s winningest active high school coach. He was a 2007 inductee into the Washington Interscholastic Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame.

And memories from even the early coaching days are still fresh.

“At Highland,” he says, “we had player cards and the girls would play with them and trade them just like kids do with baseball cards. They’d color pictures for the players, and of course Kathy would help them.”

As her parents had traveled full circle, back to their alma mater, Mindy Schultz has taken a similar journey. She is presently an assistant principal at Highland.

“Sometimes,” Pat says, “I’d go overboard about game stuff after we’d get home, and Kathy would tell me I needed to leave it at the gym. But also she was really good about noticing things like if a kid’s dad was pushing him too hard, that he essentially had nobody in the stands and maybe needed a little more love.”

THE ROAD FORWARD

So the Bulldogs and Fitterers press on.

It’s helpful that among the familiar faces at games is Brad Schultz, Mindy’s husband, who assisted Pat at Ike and is now assisting at Ellensburg.

“The girls are still here, which is nice, and having a son-in-law at every minute of every game, along with my three grandsons, is helpful,” Pat says. “And Kathy and I have members of both of our families that are still in Ellensburg and come to our games. My brother, Brad, even helped me with my wardrobe. He set me up with some power ties.”

Still, with all the Fitterers, Benders and friends and extended family in the seats at most E-burg games, home and away, Kathy isn’t.

And knowing she won’t be seems the hardest part.

The newness of each season — different players and different challenges — have always been much of the attraction for coaches like Pat. He just wishes that this season, his 35th as a head coach, wasn’t his first without Kathy.

“We’re smiling,” Pat says, “but we’re really close to tears.”

• Roger Underwood’s Under the Radar blog is at sportsyakima.com He can be reached at 509-577-7694 or runderwood@yakimaherald.com