They coached Bear River football together for about 3 decades. Now it’s family time
Earlier this spring, Scott Savoie noticed his old friend was a bit rushed for time.
“Why are you in such a hurry,” Savoie recalled asking his Bear River High School football coaching partner of nearly 30 years. “He said he had to get going to hide Easter eggs for the grandkids. Can you imagine Terry Logue hiding Easter eggs? What a visual!”
And what a coach, and what a legacy, beyond egg stashing and hugs for the the little ones.
Logue is a winner of 251 football games with the Bruins, a good many of those with Savoie as his running-mate co-coach. This coaching tandem, defined by class, kept Bear River competitive and relevant over the years amid declining enrollment at the Grass Valley/Lake of the Pines school, one of the most picturesque locales in all of California. Logue and Savoie were paramount in stuffing the trophy case with a string of league and Sac-Joaquin Section banners and game balls, and they now retire content, proud and spent.
Logue started at Bear River in 1988 and turned an 0-10 new-school program into a winner seemingly overnight with his sheer will, drive and snarl. Savoie joined him in 1994 and they won games in the searing Saturday heat, the driving cold Friday rain and in the mud and muck of a championship contest hours from home. They coached everyone’s son in town, including their own — five total — and now want to be full-bore grandfathers.
With Bear River cutting its spring season a game short this week due to low roster numbers, Logue and Savoie get a head start on life without 24/7 football. It’s now time for family, travel and reflection.
‘We’ve done this together for so long’
Savoie at 63 is retiring as a teacher, coach and athletic director. Wednesday was his 37th anniversary with wife Carreen. They just found out that they will be first-time grandparents. He can ask Logue for tricks on painting and hiding eggs.
“My wife has put up with 40 years of me doing this and I was coaching before we got married, so she got a taste of it and knew that it was important to me and that this is what I do,” Savoie said. “Now it’s time for her and the kids. It just felt right to step away with Terry. We’ve done this together for so long.”
Logue at 70 hasn’t lost an ounce of his fire and memory recall, but his body ails him. He aches and hurts from his high school football days at Paradise and in college at Long Beach State, and he struggles with Parkinson’s, diagnosed 12 years ago. The tremors used to embarrass the proud coach, but Logue soon found that he was so beloved by players, staff and community members that he learned to live with it without shame. Football kept him active. He is now simply worn out.
“Physically, I’m not doing as well as I was before and I knew it was time to stop coaching,” Logue said. “I’ve been saying to myself it’s time for a while, and this time, I finally believe myself. It’s hard to step away because it’s something we’ve done for so long, but I know it’s time. Physically at practice, it’s harder to do what I want to do. I feel like I was cheating the kids. I’ve always been a hands-on guy in drills. One thing I learned to do was delegate. I used to try and do it all on my own.”
Logue’s attitude about Parkinson’s is as refreshing and genuine as he is. This is an old-school guy, who says he’s a dinosaur, crusty and grizzled. He’s also about as nice and caring of a man as any of his players and coaches will ever meet. Logue can speak of his condition and also roll with the punches.
“Once in a while, I’ll have a thought of why this happened to me, why I have Parkinson’s,” Logue said. “Then I’ll see someone with ALS or something really terrible, and they’re worse off than me, and I don’t cry about it. It doesn’t do any good. We have some standing jokes on our staff. When I’m holding a dinner salad, the guys will have fun with it. If it’s a stranger, it’s not funny, but when it’s a great guy like Scott Savoie, I laugh.”
Said Savoie, “It’s not just a salad when Terry’s holding the plate. It’s a tossed salad, and we all laugh. Terry’s amazing like that. He never wanted anyone to feel sorry for him. We’re supposed to be role models for kids and what better role model is there for kids than someone like Terry, who has handled Parkinson’s so well? We’ve told our players over the years that you have to play the hand you’re dealt with and make the best of it, and that’s Terry. He’s made the best of it because he’s the best.”
From 0-10 to three decades of success
Logue told The Sacramento Bee on the eve of his 200th career victory in 2014 that his first Bear River team was everyone’s target on the schedule, punctuated with the classic quote of, “In 1988, we were someone’s homecoming opponent five times. We weren’t a very good football team, but we could sure judge a float.”
The Bear River turnaround was swift. The first winning season was 1989. By 1991, Bear River was ranked No. 1 in the state by Cal-Hi Sports in Division III. The Bruins were 13-0 and No. 1 in the state in 1994 in Division IV. The school had 1,200 students then. It has dipped to below 600 in recent years as schools in the foothills all lost students, but the success never stopped.
Bear River peeled off 28 non-losing seasons over a 30-year stretch, leading coaches such as Tony Martello of chief rival Colfax to say, “Those coaches made me a better coach. Great guys.”
Now it’s family time. Logue’s sons, Matt and Zach, played for him in the 1990s and now head programs of their own — Matt at Sanger High in the Central Section and Zach at Western Sierra Academy in Rocklin. Their mother, Andrea, has been Logue’s bride since 1978. They will travel and watch their sons coach.
A Southern California native who played at Cal Lutheran, Savoie’s three sons — John, Landon and Jake — all played for Bear River. The memories linger.
“I remember when our kids would play with each other or with Terry’s kids at practice, as little guys, and they’d throw blocking dummies at each other and just knock the heck out of each other, and then they all were ball boys,” Savoie said. “It was a great time. And our wives, Andrea and Careen, were our booster club before we had a booster club, running the snack bar, selling programs. And they were ready to square off with any guy in the stands who second-guessed the coaching. We’ll miss that.”