maly, too: In Jeff Horner's 4 Seasons As Valley's Coach, the Tigers Continued a Trend Of Basketball Underachievement. Surely, There's a Coach Out There Who Can Pull Off Some Gary Swenson-Type Magic and Take the High School With All Of Those Students and All Of Those Superb Athletic Facilities To the First State Championship Since 1993

Friday, May 9, 2014

In Jeff Horner's 4 Seasons As Valley's Coach, the Tigers Continued a Trend Of Basketball Underachievement. Surely, There's a Coach Out There Who Can Pull Off Some Gary Swenson-Type Magic and Take the High School With All Of Those Students and All Of Those Superb Athletic Facilities To the First State Championship Since 1993

By RON MALY

So Jeff Horner is gone after four seasons and a 70-27 record as the boys' basketball coach at Valley High School.

So Valley, the huge West Des Moines high

school with all of best and latest facilities--of which so much is expected in athletics, music, drama and everything else--has still seized just one state boys' high school basketball championship, and that was way back in 1993 when Bill Harris was the coach.

My feeling about what Horner accomplished, or didn't accomplish, at Valley is no doubt somewhat different than that of others.

I think Horner's four seasons continued a trend of basketball underachievement at Valley.

Oh, sure, his teams were much better than those produced by Willie Thornton, who preceded him as the Tigers' coach.

But, in my opinion, Horner's four seasons were nothing special.

His best team should have been the one from two seasons ago, when Peter Jok was a senior.

But Horner let Jok run his own show.

Horner was content letting Jok [who knew he was headed to Iowa the following season on a basketball scholarship] take most of the shots, not play defense and not rebound.

Valley had no inside game, and Jok wasn't the only player who didn't play defense.

No one else did either.

Not surprisingly, the 2013-2014 season was better when Jok was gone.

The Tigers were unspectacular during the regular season, but caught fire in the tournament.

Throughout the regular season, Horner's boys' team played second-fiddle in its own Bill Coldiron Fieldhouse to Joe Sigrist's Tiger girls, who were consistently ranked among the state's top three class 5-A teams.

Valley's girls lost in the first round of the state 5-A tournament to Southeast Polk. The boys finished the season with a 17-9 record and tumbled to Iowa City West, 57-45, in the 4-A state championship game.

Valley was pretty much a no-show in that game after upsetting No. 1-ranked Dubuque Senior and No. 8 Sioux City North in the earlier rounds.

The state tournament [at least the first two games of it] clearly amounted to Horner's finest time as Valley's coach.

There were plenty of other games in his final season with the Tigers in which his team was outplayed by inferior opponents.

The bottom line is that Horner is certainly not a master of X's and O's.

Or of motivation.

Perhaps not discipline either.

For many years, I kept hearing that Valley's best athletes didn't play basketball, choosing instead to participate in Gary Swenson's superb Tiger football program.

Perhaps that's still somewhat the case.

Whatever, in my estimation,Valley High School remains a sleeping giant in basketball.

Athletic director Brad Rose now has a chance to hire someone who will get the most out of the talent available at the school.

Swenson has won five--count 'em, five--state class 4-A football championships at Valley.

Surely, there's someone out there who can coach the Tigers to their first state basketball championship since 1993.

There will be plenty of interest in the Valley job from outstanding basketball coaches.

I'm counting on Rose to hire the right guy.

As for Horner, I'm guessing he already has a new coaching gig.

He's smart enough to know that you don't quit at a place like Valley without having a different job.

I wish him well in whatever he does.

And I wish Valley High School well in the 2014-2015 season.

JOLTIN' JOE GOT IT STARTED

When Ron Maly was a kid in Cedar Rapids, he wanted to enter an essay contest, and he did. He wrote about Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees being his favorite baseball player. For finishing second in the contest, Ron won a Louisville Slugger baseball bat autographed by DiMaggio. Ron later wanted to be the first person in his family to attend college, and he was. He earned a degree in political science from the University of Iowa, and did what all political science majors do. He became a sportswriter. He had, after all, covered high school football, basketball and baseball games for the Cedar Rapids Gazette while he worked parttime during his university days. Ron wanted to sit in the press box and write about an Iowa-Minnesota football game, and he did. It happened while he was the sports editor at the Albert Lea [Minn.] Tribune, and the game was at Memorial Stadium in Minneapolis. Ron wanted to cover a World Series, and he did. Also when he was working for the Albert Lea newspaper. Ron wanted to cover Rose Bowls, Sugar Bowls, Orange Bowls, Cotton Bowls, Holiday Bowls, a Freedom Bowl, a Sun Bowl, a Super Bowl and NCAA basketball tournaments, and he did those things after he moved to Des Moines. Ron was a four-time sportswriter of the Year in the state of Iowa [the years were 1977, 1978, 1994 and 1996]. In 2006, he was named a charter member of the University of Iowa's media Wall of Fame in the Kinnick Stadium press box. A photo of the plaque that's displayed in the press box is displayed above this story. Following Ron's retirement from the newspaper business, a publisher asked him if he wanted to write a book about the rich football tradition at the University of Iowa, and he did. The hardback version of "Tales from the Iowa Sidelines" was a best-seller, and so was the revised, softback version. Now he's been asked by his publisher to update the book for a second time. He's in the process of doing that at the present time. Ron considers being asked to update a best-selling book for the second time to be the supreme compliment, considering the Hawkeyes won just four games in the 2012 season. When Ron isn't working on books, he's busy traveling and spending time with his family. Indeed, he attends the athletic, theatrical and musical [both vocal and instrumental] events in which his six grandchildren participate. He also writes about anything that interests him for his many websites. Every chance he gets, Ron proudly wears his America Needs Farmers T-shirt.

The Hawkeyes' Rich Football Tradition, Revisited

I mentioned a while back that I was in the process of updating my Tales from the Iowa Sidelines book. Updating it for the second time. The original hardback edition of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines [pictured at the right] was published in 2003, during the 10-3 season, when coach Kirk Ferentz and his Iowa football team had a 10-3 record that included a 37-17 victory over 15th-ranked Florida in the Outback Bowl and after the Hawkeyes went 11-2 in 2002. That book was a best-seller, so the publishers came to me again in 2005, a season that finished with a breathtaking 30-25 victory over No. 11 Louisiana State in the Capital One Bowl on New Year's Day, 2005. Because buyers had cleaned out the the shelves in the bookstores, the publishers wanted to know if I'd do an updated version of the book. I agreed, The revised, soft-cover edition [pictured at the left] was published in 2005. Warren Holloway, who teamed with quarterback Drew Tate on a miraculous 56-yard touchdown pass to win the Capital One Bowl, was featured on the cover. That book, too, turned into a best-seller, So I had reason to feel very good about my years as a published author. It's not every day that a the original version is a best-seller, and so is the updated version. Then, imagine my surprise when I received an e-mail from a senior editor at the publishing company last fall, wanting wanted to know if I was interested in doing a second updated version of the book. It came at a time when things weren't going well for the Hawkeyes in the 2012 season. They lost their last six games and finished with a 4-8 record. Frankly, the thought of doing a revised edition of the book during a 4-8 season seemed to be a stretch. "Maybe producing a revised edition in a year or two would be a better idea," I told the publishers. "We'd like to do it now," I was told. "Let me think about it," I said. After a few days of thought, I accepted the idea. I talked myself into the idea that this was the supreme compliment--being asked to do a second book update during a 4-8 season showed strong confidence by the publishers in me and in the Hawkeyes' football program. So I got back into the business of interviewing players and coaches again, going to postgame press conferences, weekly press conferences and a scrimmage in West Des Moines. After a press conference in Iowa City, I did a one-on-one interview with coach Kirk Ferentz, and mentioned to him that I was in the process of doing a revised edition of my two best-selling books. I congratulated him on the excellent things he had done for Iowa's football program--all of which contributed to the success of my books. "I think Coach Fry had more to do with it," he told me, bringing up the name of Hayden Fry, his one-time boss at Iowa and a man who brought Iowa's football program back from the dead in the 20th century. That's modest Kirk Ferentz for you. Even though the 2012 season wasn't something Hawkeye coaches, players and fans will recall with any special feeling, Ferentz has a 14-year record of 100-74 at Iowa that includes two 11-victory seasons [2002 smd 2009], two 10-victory seasons [2003 and 2004], plus he's been the Big Ten coach of year in 2002, 2004 and 2009, and national coach of the year in 2002. Indeed, Ferentz has done some wonderful things at Iowa City, and I fully expect his success to continue. I've concluded my writing for the second update of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines, and the senior editor has furnished me with an early look at the book. Not only are the Kirk Ferentz years included in the updated version, but so is the stuff I previously wrote about Howard Jones, Dr. Eddie Anderson, Heisman Trophy winner Nile Kinnick and the 1939 Hawkeye Ironmen, Ronald Reagan, Ozzie Simmons, Ossie Solem, Randy Duncan, Alex Karras and lots of other legends from Iowa's rich football history. I expect the book to be in stores soon. I hope you like it.