Former Hound coach Scott dies at 85

Eastern New Mexico University lost a member of its coaching fraternity early Wednesday morning, as former football coach Jack Scott died in Lubbock of renal failure at the age of 85.

Scott was the eighth coach in the history of the Greyhounds football program, Scott coached from 1970 to 1977. He inherited a 1-9 squad and went 40-41-2 over eight years with four consecutive winning seasons from 1973 to 1976. He remains fifth in the Greyhound program in career wins.

Jack Scott

“Jack Scott’s passing is obviously a great loss to his family. It is also a great loss to the ENMU community,” President Steve Gamble said in a release from the school. “As a long time football coach, Jack will always be a major part of our athletic heritage. I know of no other coach that has a more loyal following of former players than Coach Scott. He demonstrated a high level of integrity in all that he did, and I know that this influenced the lives of his players. Coach Jack Scott will be greatly missed, and Eastern New Mexico University and I extend our heartfelt condolences to Roberta and the family.”

Scott was hired by ENMU in 1970, following a 60-17-3 run over nine seasons at Westmar College in Le Mars, Iowa. He remained the school’s wins leader until the college shut down in 1997. Scott also coached football and basketball for two years at Willow Lake High School in South Dakota before moving up to the college ranks.

He was always known as a demanding teacher and coach. Lloyd Petersen, a retired coach and now part-time professor at Southwest Minnesota State, played for Scott at Westmar. He said Scott was a demanding coach who expected maximum efforts from his players and himself, on and off the field, and that he’d have never graduated college without his coach pushing him.

“I had skipped a class,” Petersen said. “Not his, I’d have never skipped his class. He called me in, gave me a little talking to. He told me I when it was time to deliver a report, I would be the first to volunteer, and that I would sit in the front of the class. On Monday, I sat in the front of the class, and he was there to make sure I was.”

Petersen’s brother-in-law, Vince Erdmann, never played for Scott, but knew the coach quite well because of the family connection. When Erdmann went to graduate school at the University of South Dakota, he had a pair of roommates who played for Scott. The two players were still in touch with the coach, and before too long the three convinced Erdmann to come down to ENMU for his final year of graduate school.

“He was a fireball without a doubt,” said Erdmann, who coached basketball at Portales. “He was a great person.”

He was the same force at home, where both of his daughters learned the value of work and education. Both Sheryl Jonsson and Jacquelyn Slay went to college and earned master’s degrees.

“We had a very nice, normal family,” Jonsson said. “Our father was very hard working and very dedicated to coaching and teaching. His great joy in life was his players, his former players and his students. He maintained a lot of contact with all of them, and that brought them great joy.”

Prior to coaching, Scott went to college at Graceland University in Iowa. He played on the football and track teams, also playing three seasons of professional baseball.

Scott, honored in 2008 by the Friends of Eastern Foundation as “Distinguished Faculty Emeriti,” was a presence at the university long after his coaching career ended. He taught until 1992, and was a supervisor for student teachers.

Volleyball coach Sia Poyer said he first met Scott while he was a student, and didn’t at first didn’t know the identity of the guy who would always make time to chat with him at Greyhound Arena. Poyer said Scott was one of the first people to congratulate him on receiving his master’s degree, and told him that he do great things and would always have a home in Portales after he received his first head coaching job at Valdosta State.

“When I came back to be the head coach at ENMU,” Poyer said, “I just happened to be walking by the Max-Pac and saw Coach Scott talking to students, encouraging, making them feel special and telling them that they are going to do great things.”

Media Relations Director Wendel Sloan said he met Scott on his first weekend at ENMU in 1982, when his first job was news services and sports information director and the job took him to a football game at Adams State. He traveled to Alamosa, Colorado, with Scott, the color commentator for Greyhound football radio broadcasts.

“Although I’d never met him before, and knew almost no one in New Mexico, he instantly made me feel at home. By the time we’d returned to Portales, he felt like an old friend. Our friendship only grew over the years. I often saw him when we were both working out at Greyhound Arena, or at local restaurants where he was always surrounded by friends. He always took time out to greet me with a cheerful laugh about some experience we’d shared together, while complimenting me about something no one else would even notice. He truly was one of the most positive, genuine, caring people I’ve ever met. My world will be a little emptier with his passing, but far richer for having known him.”

Scholarships bearing his name remain in both Iowa and at ENMU. The Iowa United Methodist Foundation awards the scholarship to students at United Methodist schools in the state, while ENMU’s scholarship primarily helps those serving as graduate assistants with the football program.

“Coach Scott will be truly missed,” said Greyhound football coach Josh Lynn, a former player and graduate assistant for the Hounds. “He was respected, honored and loved by his former Greyhound football players. There is not one of his past players that I have come across that didn’t love Coach Scott. I believe that is a true measure of what kind of person and coach he was.”

Last year, Petersen was part of about 20 former players who came down to Portales to visit him, even though many of them never spent a minute in Portales before the visit.

“I sent a text to my brother-in-law, ‘The skies are a little grayer today,’” Petersen said. “Guys won’t say they loved anybody, but we all loved Coach Scott.”