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Wednesday, January 19, 2011 Decades have passed since Earl Dieterich coached his last basketball game, yet all these years later he’s still

King of the court

By ALEX RILEY Mirror sports writer

Earl Dieterich sits on a chair at an island in his kitchen. Spread before him are green scoring books with black marker on the front identifying the season the book represents. Assorted photos that once hung in the high school showcase his teams throughout the years. Each photo has the year, record and last names of the players on that squad.

There are scrapbooks filled with box scores, small stories and photos from 14 years of coaching. Every loss, every win and every honor that ever ended up in print neatly put into book form. Some pages have his notes on them about a player doing something noteworthy or a happening that made the game special.

Dieterich diagrammed his last play in 1975. He hasn’t coached a game since that year’s bi-district game. That’s been nearly 36 years. All those seasons later and the former Midlothian coach knows exactly what season stat book to grab and what page to point to for a memorable game or moment. He knows which players have passed on and which are still in town.

Dieterich might have left the game but the game never really left him.

An inauspicious start

How Dieterich, a native of Reisel, Texas, landed in Midlothian is quite simple. He was a student teacher who landed a job teaching and coaching in the district. He started as a middle school football coach but eventually became the inaugural coach for the eighth-grade basketball program.

“We had a real good team. We went 14-2 and I think the only teams that beat us were Waxahachie and Duncanville,” Dieterich said. “From there, then the head basketball job (at the high school) came open and I took it. My first bad season.”

“Your only bad season,” Marthalu, his wife of 50-plus years, interjects.

If you count 16-11 as such, then yes it was Dieterich’s only “bad season.”

Of course basketball wasn’t his only concern in those early years. Along with heading the boys program, Dieterich was, at one time, the head varsity football coach and the school’s athletic director. He also taught classes and even coached girls basketball for part of a season.

All this for a guy who was a junior college baseball letterman.

See DIETERICH, Page 3C

Recognition worthy of man who put team on map

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Courtesy photo

Former Midlothian basketball coach Earl Dieterich will be honored Friday during the halftime of the Panthers’ home game against Mansfield.

Dieterich won eight district titles and 300 games in 14 years.

arl Dieterich side steps most compliments. Praise is not his style. Sure, he doesn’t mind reliving his coaching days.

His scrapbooks and scoring book collection are a reminder of his days roaming the bench. They are mementos of his past, no different than a yearbook. He doesn’t want any special treatment or recognition.

But on Friday, he’ll get it. Dieterich will be the center of attention as former players join up to honor his efforts at Midlothian during the Mansfield game.

And, without question, the recognition and respect are both things he has earned.

To understand why Dieterich deserves this day in the spotlight, you have to understand the Panther basketball program. For all intents and purposes, the program became a true established team in 1956, the first season it has on record as having a coach, classification and record at the same time. Over the next four years, there were three coaches, each of which posted a winning record or two before moving on.

Then came Dieterich. Then came stability.

Then came real winning.

In 14 years, the Panthers won more than 300 games, claimed eight district titles and posted 20-win season after 20win season. Without a question, Dieterich put Midlothian basketball on the map.

But that’s not where Alex Riley the story ends. In a sense, Mirror that’s almost where it Sports begins.

Dieterich doesn’t want writer to discuss exactly why he left the head coaching job. He stayed out of coaching as a conscience choice to be a family man, watching his daughters grow and succeed in their own endeavors. He never left the Midlothian community, living just a short walk See RILEY, Page 4C

Case’s defense, resurgent offense aid in big win Panthers dominate division-leading Martin for fourth straight victory

By ALEX RILEY Mirror sports writer

EULESS – Third time was the charm and Jimmy Case just happened to be the lucky rabbit’s foot.

Case spent all 45 minutes in net for Midlothian, recording 24 saves in 24 shot attempts to shut down the normally potent Arlington Martin offense in a 6-0 win for the Panthers. It was the team’s first win over the Warriors in three tries this season.

“There is no words that I can say about Case. Case played amazing, he played exactly like a championship goalie should play,” teammate Brent Jones said.

For much of the early portion of the game, Case was Midlothian’s strongest weapon. The Panther offense got off to a slow start as Martin came on strong. Late in the first

period, Midlothian was out shot 10-0 and doubled up early in the second period 16-8.

While his teammates were struggling to find a groove, Case was keeping everything the Warriors threw at the net in front of him. He made stop after stop, including a pair that looked like sure goals in which he had to dive back across his body in the second period.

Eventually, the offense relieved the pressure by going on the attack.

“I just knew that even though we started off with a slow start I had to get it going,” Case said. “I knew they’d come out on top of us and I knew once I got the momentum going they would get their momentum going. I think that’s where it started.”

With Case dominating on defense, the team’s offense settled

in and began taking control at the other end of the ice. Joseph Dancy scored the first goal of the night just :54 into the second period, sending Chris Green and Trent Newman assists in for a powerplay score. Exactly :20 later, Trent Williams followed that up with a goal off Jason Spencer and Blake Parker assists for a 2-0 lead.

The bunched scoring took a respite for about 10 minutes before Dancy, Jones and Parker scored three goals within two minutes of each other later in the second period. Dancy got his second of the game off assists from Jones and McClain Williamson, Jones scored on a powerplay with assists from Doss Allen and Parker while Parker

Photo by Alex Riley/The Mirror

Midlothian goalie Jimmy Case is congratulated by teammates after making one of his 24 saves in the team’s 6-0 win over See HOCKEY, Page 4C Arlington Martin last week.

Sports

Alex Riley, Sports Writer 469-517-1456 | alex.riley@wninews.com

Wednesday, January 19, 2011 Midlothian Mirror 3C

Earl Dieterich honoring on Friday Jan. 21 during halftime of the Midlothian boys game vs. Mansfield

Dieterich: ‘I had a goal to win 300 games’

his being at home, there were consequences.

Most parents firmly agreed with him but some would still try to cover for their children. In the end, most came around to his way of doing things.

Dieterich refuses to take the credit for making the Midlothian program as successful as it was. He attributes his view from the middle school level early on as a sneak peek into what was coming down the line. When he arrived at the high school, he knew the players were already there and they knew his system.

That put all the pieces in place.

“It’s not all the coaching. You have to have the talent, the athletes to win. Coaching’s not going to be the reason for winning,” Dieterich said.

Continued from Page 1C “The only thing that I didn’t coach in high school was baseball,” Dieterich says with a laugh.

“And during all this time, he was teaching biology. You know most coaches teach history. He was teaching biology,” Marthalu says.

“I didn’t teach biology all the time,” Dieterich retorts.

“No, you had a year of calculus,” she responds.

In 1968, all that changed when district superintendent Mickey Koontz came to Dieterich and the rest of the district’s coaches with the intention of making a change. Koontz wanted responsibilities more spread out, specifically that of the three premiere jobs at the high school. Dieterich was given a choice.

“When he came, I had my choice and I took basketball because it was a lot more successful,” Dieterich said.

Long before he narrowed his coaching priorities, Dieterich was building a winner at a school with an extremely short basketball history. The Panther program didn’t exist from 1939-50 after playing just 88 games from 1931-39. The team had just two winning seasons (9-8 in 1934-35 and 17-10 in 1935-36).

A big reason – the school didn’t have a gym until 1950.

“If you go back to the history of basketball in Midlothian, they didn’t even have a gym before 1950 and I could not imagine that,” Dieterich said. “The school I was from, everybody had a gym but in the records, Glenn (Hartson) might show you, it said ‘cold weather, rainy, no gym, no basketball.’”

When the school did get a building to play in, it was a used facility far behind the time, even by 1960s standards. The building sat just 800 and did not have modern scoreboards, utilizing a dial clock to keep time.

Records for the program are scattered at best from 1950-56. Kenneth Brashear’s 1956-57 squad went 11-9, marking the first official coach and record for a season known in the program’s history. After that, it was a two-year stint by Richard Allen, including a 20-5 season in 1957-58 that ended with the school’s first bi-district championship. Allen coached two years, followed by a 23-6 season from Derrill Nippert who coached just one year.

That’s when Dieterich took over.

“Nippert won district the year he was here.

We had some good athletes and they started getting some coaching then. When I took the basketball job they won the district the year before,” Dieterich said. “I knew it was going to get better. That’s the only year I coached that we finished below .500 in district.”

End of an era

Simply the best In 14 seasons as the head coach of the Midlothian boys basketball team, Earl Dieterich took a young, upstart team and turned it into a winning program.

1961-61: 16-11, 5-7 district 1962-63: 19-15, 8-0 district

District champions

Bi-district champions Regional qualifiers 1963-64: 23-9, 8-0 district

District champions

Bi-district champions Regional qualifiers 1964-65: 24-11, 7-1

District champions

Bi-district champions Regional qualifiers 1965-66: 21-12, 8-0 district

District champions

Bi-district qualifers 1966-67: 29-4, 12-0 district

District champions

Bi-district champions Regional qualifiers

1967-68: 22-8, 8-2 district

Co-district champions*

Bi-district qualifers 1968-69: 25-5, 5-3 district 1969-70: 19-9, 7-2 district

Co-district champions** 1970-71: 19-4, 6-4 district 1971-72: 22-9, 5-5 district 1972-73: 20-9, 8-4 district 1973-74: 22-9, 5-5 district 1974-75: 25-9, 12-4 district

District champions

Bi-district champions Regional qualifers *Won play-in game to make postseason **Did not win play-in game.

Something special

It all sounds too good to be true but Dieterich swears on it and doesn’t deviate from the story.

When he took over the basketball program, he set a goal, a personal goal, did the math and knew what it would take to get there. His own goals would coincide with the team goals, so essentially they were one and the same.

“I had a goal to win 300 games. I said, ‘Well, if I can win 20 games a year for 15 years, that’ll be 300 games,’” Dieterich said.

“And I did that in 14 years.”

Following that “bad season,” Dieterich and his Panther program found nothing but success. Each of the next 13 years, the team won 19 or more games, including 10 seasons of 20-plus wins. They claimed six outright district titles and a pair of co-championships.

They won the bi-district round five times, advancing to regionals.

Back in those days, a win in the bi-district automatically made you one of the 16 remaining teams in the state as only district champions got into the playoffs. That narrowed the initial field to 32 teams, which was cut in half to 16 after just one round of play.

Since the district champion was the only team to actually make the playoffs, the Panthers only earned a postseason trip seven times during Dieterich’s time as a coach.

The six outright titles and they won a play-in game. He’s quick to point out some of his best teams might not have been champions.

“In ‘63, ‘64, ‘65, all three of those years,

Courtesy photo

Earl Dieterich hangs up one of the team photos he kept near the locker room display the the players’ names and their record that season. The former Panther coach still has those photos as keepsakes.

Courtesy photos

Former Midlothian basketball coach Earl Dieterich receives a plaque commemorating his 300th victory at the school during the 1974-75 season.

Dieterich left with 306 wins and eight district titles. we went to regional, got beat in regional. Like I said, I had good players,” Dieterich said. “In ‘66 we won district and got beat in bi-district.

In ‘67, we went back, won district, won bidistrict and went back to Denton and probably that was the year we should’ve gone to state.

We finished 29-4 for the year. Doug Kuykendall scored 40-some odd points (in a loss to Wolfe City) and I thought, ‘How’d we get beat?’ But we got beat.”

“Believe it or not, the next year after ‘67, we had a heck of a basketball team. We won eight and lost two (district games). Italy, they went to state that year. Second place, you didn’t get anything.”

Games against powers like Fort Worth Kirkpatrick (which later meshed to become Fort Worth Dunbar) didn’t help either. The two teams were 20-plus win teams but Kirkpatrick was the postseason qualifier thanks to their district championship finish. Both seasons the two teams were in the same district, Kirkpatrick won the state title.

Along the way, Dieterich and his program faced everything imaginable. Eventually, the facilities were upgraded, most notably the once wooden backboards were finally replaced with glass. The Panthers also welcomed integration at a time some in the area didn’t. Dieterich can recall being booed out of a gym for having African-American players. There were also games that were moved and played in front of no crowds for fear that the two crowds that would gather could not be civil.

Still, the Panthers never lost focus. Their coach wouldn’t let them.

His athletes regarded him as a strict disciplinarian who tolerated no excuses. He had a curfew for players to be at home and would call to make sure they abided by it. If the player couldn’t come to the phone and attest to

Dieterich received a plaque commemorating his 300th victory in the 1974-75 season.

That same year, he won his eighth and final district championship while advancing to the regional round of the playoffs.

It would be his last stand.

Though he was a still young coach, Dieterich shy’s away from discussing the specifics about his reasons for leaving coaching. He has nothing to hide but there’s more to his career than just how or why he left. Ultimately, Dieterich made the decision to walk away for personal reasons. He’d won his 300 games. Now, there were more important things to worry about.

“He also realized his daughters were going to be grown before long and wanted to spend more time with them,” Marthalu said. “He thought it was good to quit while you’re on top.”

Dieterich left the program but he never left the school. For another 15 years he stayed as the head of the agriculture department. The program back then was more than just about crops and growing plants. Dieterich taught students everything from how to prepare fish to necessary survival swimming skills. Students even got the chance to become marksmen with skeet shooting, for which they brought their own guns to school.

Outside of school, he partnered with friends to run a pair of local car washes and a storage facility, both of which he still has today (D&H Car Wash in Midlothian and Alvarado and D&H Self Storage in Midlothian) Why, you might ask?

“I made a decision then I was going to get out. And believe me, when I started coaching you had to do something else in order to afford to teach. I made $3,600 and that’s with $400 for coaching,” Dieterich says with a smile.

“I figured it up yesterday – I’ve got 16 years of coaching, 40-something years of running a car wash, 30 something years of running a storage and 50 years of marriage.”

Officially, he retired from teaching at 53 years old after 31 years in the business. He might be retired but he has never slowed down.

All those years at the school, Dieterich never got any closer than arm’s length with the basketball program, saying he didn’t want to meddle in others business. Still, he always found himself in the gym for one reason or another. His daughter Dana was the starting point guard on the 1985 Lady Panther team that reached the state tournament. His other daughter Dee was a varsity cheerleader. Both girls kept their father involved in the sports world in one way or another.

Even to this day, Dieterich finds himself watching the game he once led, this time with his grandchildren. His grandson Hayden is already playing both basketball and soccer while Halle could be on her way to something similar soon.

There were chances to get back into coaching for Dieterich. He never took them. From his backdoor, he can see Midlothian High School, the school he helped put on the map.

There are days when the questions rise up about what might have been. But those days are far outnumbered by the good things that are.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that the years I left on the table I could have been a heck of a lot better basketball coach than I was the first years because I was green as a gourd,” Dieterich said. “You always wonder, what if you had done. … But I have no regrets.”

Contact Alex at alex.riley@wninews.com or at 469-517-1456.

Courtesy photo

After 31 years of teaching, Earl Dieterich retired in Midlothian with his wife Marthalu. Their children, Dee and Dana, are both graduates of Midlothian and currently live in the Austin area.