Watson busy in final days at NBC

by Nathan Arneal
published 5/13/09

Rick Watson still remembers his first impression of North Bend Central high school back when he drove in an interview in 1977. At the time the school building was less than 10 years old and bereft of the trees and vegetation that now surround it.

Rick Watson keeps an eye on his offense during his second stint as North Bend's head football coach.

“When I drove up, the first thing I noticed was that there was nothing here,” Watson said. “There were no trees or nothing out here. It was just wide open.”

This coming from a man native to western Nebraska.

He had applied to the school on the advice of Bill Kuester, whom Watson had played football with at Chadron State. Kuester had been serving as NBC’s football coach but was moving back to his hometown.

At the interview, Watson remembers answering about four questions, then the interviewers talking to his wife Pat for the next hour.

“This was the weirdest interview I’ve ever been on,” Watson recalls thinking. “I either got the job or they didn’t care for me.”

He got the job.

Now, 32 years later, he is ready to give that job up and head into retirement.

Watson has been teaching high school P.E. for that entire time and has been serving as the schools activities director for the past 25 years. He has also served on the track staff and football staff the entire time, twice serving as head football coach.

One of the staples of his P.E. classes over that time has been a dance unit, where Watson taught everything from the polka to the jitterbug, from square dancing to the waltz.

“When I was in school I loved to dance,” Watson said. “Bridgeport had a fair grounds where we’d have two dances a week.”

He learned his famous square dancing calls by following his parents to dances when he was young.

“They’d get a drummer, they’d get a fiddler and someone on the accordion, and Dad would call square dances,” Watson said.

Perhaps Watson’s greatest legacy will be the success of North Bend’s pole vaulters over the years. Under his tutelage for the past 32 years, NBC has produced 22 conference vault champions, 56 state qualifiers and nine state medalists.

Watson didn’t start the tradition of success in the pole vault at NBC, but he kept it going with a lot of help from his athletes in the early years.

“When I came here this school was loaded with vaulters,” he said. “I learned probably as much from them as they learned from me.”

Watson was an 11-foot vaulter in high school, but vaulting with the modern fiberglass poles bears little resemblance to what he did in high school. As he went to more clinics and learned more about the event, he became one area’s best vault coaches, often inviting vaulters from other schools down to vault in NBC’s indoor pit and get some advice.

“(Vaulting) has gotten to be a tradition thing here,” Watson said. “Everyone wants to follow in someone else’s footsteps. It’s kind of something that just passes from generation to generation.”

Watson is going to stick around for a while to see that tradition continue. While he is retiring from teaching and coaching football, he will continue to serve as NBC’s vault coach.

While a busy end-of-the-year schedule has kept Watson from getting to sentimental about his last few days in the halls of North Bend Central, he said he knows he is going to miss interacting with the kids.

“It’s just fun to be around them,” he said, “to see their faces when the light goes on.”

He’s also sure he’ll manage to keep busy in retirement. He’s going to paint as usual this summer and has had a few offers to help out on a farm or two. He and his wife are also planning a trip to Ireland in the fall.

“My wife likes vacations, which is something she’s had to teach me,” he said. “My mom and dad were workaholics and when they went on vacation we were going to see relatives for a day or two.”

As his last school year winds down, perhaps Watson will finally get a chance to look back on his time at NBC.

“When I came here I didn’t think I’d stay this long,” he said. “But great people, great community, great work ethic, great support for the school– that doesn’t happen everywhere. People come here and they stay.”

<<Back to the front page