Ceremony held to honor longtime Valley mentor

PALMER — Longtime Colony Middle School coach and teacher Martin Hursh was planning to retire this spring, but he didn’t expect a school-wide assembly in his honor this winter.

“How did you manage to keep it a secret?” he asked his wife and fellow teacher, Tahnya, after the Thursday assembly.

She’d been planning it for months with people via email and text messages she said, compiling a slideshow with videos, photos and quotes from meaningful people. It wasn’t until Martin Hursh saw his name on the screen at the assembly that he understood the reason for the presence of his non-Colony friends and former students.

This year, Hursh will complete 26 years of teaching at CMS, the longest any teacher has been at the school. He was one of the teachers who opened the school in 1990, and the last of that group still there.

Before coming to the school, Hursh taught in his home state of Oklahoma for a year, and in Texas for three. He coached basketball, football and track in all three states.He and his wife will return to the Sooner State when after he retires.

“It took me 26 years to get out of Oklahoma — I thought I hated it that bad — and then the last 26 trying to get back,” Hursh said, after the assembly. “I spent half my life at Colony Middle School.”

Now he’s looking forward to moving back to his family’s farm with his wife (who is also retiring this year, after 22 years of teaching and coaching at Colony Middle) and their 7-year-old son, Bridger.

But he’s not likely to forget the life he’s had here, nor the people who benefitted from his coaching. Hursh coached the school’s boys varsity basketball team to 476 wins over the course of his career, indirectly contributing to many of the high school team’s wins.

While several references were made to the skills student and athletes gained over the years under Hursh’s tutelage at the Dec. 17 assembly, more were made to the students’ development of sportsmanship and positive thinking.

John Klapperich said Hursh has helped his daughters view life in a constructive way.

“There are very few people in this world that can teach people how to have a winning life. You've done it,” Klapperich told Hursh.

Carole Menard said the coach impacted her four children in many ways.

“For sure, you’ve done a good job of turning them into well-rounded champions,” she said.

Mat-Su Borough School Board member and parent Ray Michaelson added that students need more than one adult in their lives to be successful, and Hursh was a good example of that to his children.

Colony High School football coach Rhett Magner said he experienced Hursh’s mentorship firsthand. After playing basketball for him at the middle school, Magner kept in touch with Hursh throughout his athletic career, later consulting his former coach for occupational advice.

“He … helped me land my first real-world job,” Magner said, referencing his position at the MTA Sports Center, where Hursh also works as a league coordinator.

Hursh also steered Magner toward education, ultimately resulting in the younger man’s installment at Colony High.

“Now I get to do what he’s done for the past 30 years, and that's help young men and women in athletics,” Magner said. “It’s an honor, it’s a privilege … it’s a good feeling.”

Mark Dinkel, general manager of the MTA Sports Center, said he’d grown to view Hursh as “a little brother” with “lots of wisdom.” Senator Charlie Huggins, whose son and daughter played for Hursh, simply said, “he’s a good man.”

Klapperich went a step further.

“When God created Martin Hursh, he created a masterpiece,” he said. “We need more Martin Hurshes in this world.”

Hursh said after the ceremony that his only hope was for his son to become “half as good” as the students he’s coached in Alaska.

“Colony has had the best student-athletes that any coach could ever ask for,” he said.

Contact reporter Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.