Catching Up With ... 
        Gymnast Tammy Sutton Carney (June 20)
        Legendary basketball coach Les Habegger (June 27)
        Hoop star / Virginia associate coach Ritchie McKay (July 4)
        Women's soccer player Brittany Langdon Barkley (July 11)
        Distance running siblings Eddie and Suzie Strickler (July 18)
        '83 and '85 SPU Athletes of the Year Rob Marshall and Sandy Gabelein Marshall (July 25)


FERNDALE, Wash. – His 18.9-point career scoring average? No one has touched it.
 
His 54 points in a single game? No one has touched it.
 
His No. 5 on a Seattle Pacific men's basketball uniform? For more than half a century …
 
… no one has touched it.
 
Players have come and gone; eras have started and ended. Games have been won and lost. But through all those years, the distinction of a retired Falcons jersey number still belongs solely to Loren Anderson.
 
 "It's the highest honor someone can receive. I guess at first, you don't feel worthy," said Anderson, now 79 and and inducted as a charter member of the Falcon Legends Hall of Fame in 2003. "But on the other hand, it was a wonderful thing that happened to me.
 
"I was extraordinary in ways – but goofy in other ways. I had a gift in athletics, which really was a blessing to me," he added.
 
By his own acknowledgement "sort of an introvert," Anderson nevertheless went on to share that gift with thousands of athletes during a distinguished coaching career at Mount Rainier, Yelm, Anacortes, and Ferndale high schools, all of them along or near the Interstate 5 corridor in Western Washington.
 
"I was influenced by my wife at that time when she said, 'Loren, you have to go into coaching.' I was reluctant," he said. "But (Seattle Pacific legend) Les Habegger steered me into it.
 
"As it turned out, it was fortunate that I did go into it. I happened to be lucky to be successful at it for some reason."
 
Or maybe, it was much more than that.
 
LET'S PLAY TWO – SPORTS, THAT IS
While was growing up in the Seattle suburb of Auburn, no one was more at home on the baseball diamond than Loren Anderson.
 
As a star at Auburn High School, Anderson was a smooth-fielding shortstop who regularly hit in the .400 range. Following his senior year with the Trojans, he achieved his dream of playing in iconic and long-demolished Sicks Seattle Stadium in the Seattle vs. State doubleheader.

 

State swept, 8-4, and 4-1. Anderson, who singled, doubled, and hit an inside-the-park home run, was named the outstanding player of those games, thus earning a spot on the United States all-star team for what then was an annual game in the Big Apple against a team of New York City all-stars.
 
"I loved baseball. I planned to go on and play pro baseball," said Anderson, who caught the interest of the Chicago White Sox and St. Louis Cardinals, among others. "I could have signed several times, though not for any big huge bonus."
 
While he blossomed in baseball, Anderson actually was better known for his basketball talents. As a senior in 1953-54, he led the Puget Sound League (primarily King County schools south of Seattle) in scoring. He also filled the hoop regularly during postseason play, leading Auburn to fourth place at the state tournament.
 
Coupled with his baseball talent, colleges big and small wooed Anderson.
 
Seattle Pacific landed him.
 
"Dale Parker (the Falcons' legendary baseball coach) is the one who got me," he said. "I was getting all of these offers from different colleges. Dale came to my high school games when I was a senior.
 
"Plus, it was a Christian school."
 
DELIVERING AS EXPECTED
Anderson sparkled on the Falcons' diamond. As a junior, he hit .410, and had a .941 fielding percentage at second base. Playing both second and short as a senior, he hit .419 with a .933 fielding percentage.

 

As good as that was, he stood out even more on the basketball court. During his freshman year, he had a 39-point game; there was a 42-pointer as a junior. Both of those games, as well as all the others during his first three seasons, were under head coach Ken Foreman.
 
Les Habegger took over prior to Anderson's senior season.
 
It was in the penultimate game of that 1957-58 schedule – and of Anderson's college career – when he had the kind of night that no Falcon, in the 56 years since, has been able to match: 54 points, and just about every one of them necessary in an 87-83 Brougham Pavilion victory against Saint Martin's.
 
"I think I had 30 by halftime," he said. "I was a one-hand set shooter, but Les had me shooting two-hand set shots. I had the ball near midcourt in the last second of the first half and I just took a two-hander from 40 feet  -- swish.
 
"It was just unconscious," Anderson added of hitting 20 field goals and 14 straight free throws. "It was just one of those nights. And we didn't have a 3-point shot, or I would have had 60-some."
 
At 5-foot-8½, Anderson wasn't the kind of physical specimen who would command attention. But, he said, "I was a little guy with a big heart. I never thought of myself as small, I thought of myself as a giant – quicker and can shoot better."
 
PURSUING A DIFFERENT PATH
Much as Anderson would have loved to play pro baseball, those plans changed when he got married and started a family while still at Seattle Pacific. While student-teaching after graduation, he was hired as an assistant coach by Habegger.
 
"Les was special," Anderson said. "We all have someone in life who was special to us, who makes an impact. I never forgot his influence."
 
Anderson and coaching clicked. He spent five years as an assistant basketball coach and head baseball coach at Mount Rainier in Des Moines, southwest of Seattle. In 1964, it was even further south to Yelm, where Anderson took a team that had gone 2-17 the previous season, and went all the way to the state tournament.
 
"For the town, it was unbelievable," recalled Anderson, who also guided the Tornadoes to the conference baseball title in the spring of 1965. "But things didn't just happen. We had them working their tails off. The second year (I was there), we just came out and dominated. It was like a complete transformation."

 

He went on to a sterling dozen years at Anacortes, some two hours north and a bit west of Seattle. His teams there won nine Northwest Conference crowns (including eight in a row), six district titles, and made four trips to state.
 
"We had to play both tempos. We worked a lot on the fast break, but we were controlled," he said. "My philosophy was rebounding and defense. What I would do is I would get the tallest kids in the school and work with them and develop them – kids who probably never would have played basketball."
 
Anderson's teams were known not only for what they did, but how they did it, as evidenced by letters he received from some opposing schools.
 
"You're the first honest-playing, hard-working, talented basketball team we have seen all year, and we are proud to have had the honor of playing against you," read one such note from Mariner High School in 1975.
 
After a final coaching stop at Ferndale, Anderson, who still lives in that city about two hours north of Seattle and a stone's throw from the U.S.-Canada border, retired in 1991. It was then that he took up golf, a sport he previously thought was "ridiculous."
 
"Ray Frier, my assistant at Anacortes, was the golf coach, and he was excellent. I picked up the game, and I would go to him for lessons," Anderson said. "I went whole hog. I said, 'I'm an athlete; I can do this."

And he did, logging three holes-in-one in a short period of time, although "I haven't had once since.
 
"I can shoot in the 80s on good days," Anderson said. "No double bogeys, and no three-putts."

For Loren Anderson, it's the perfect way to keep moving along – and having fun while doing it.
 
"I never thought I would reach the stage in life where just being out here walking is wonderful," he said.

"It's either exercise or die. That's one of the things I write down in the morning."