Mission honors coach, friend

ST. IGNATIUS — Les Rice spent 33 years serving the Mission community as a coach.

Thursday night, that community took some time to honor him.

Mission High School held a service award ceremony for Rice prior to Thursday’s girls’ basketball game against Loyola Sacred Heart at which they remembered Rice’s tenure on the Mission sidelines, particularly his 22 years guiding the girls’ basketball team. Rice decided to hang up the clipboard in November due to his ongoing battle with lung cancer.

Even though Rice closed his coaching career, the hundreds of Bulldog faithful in the gymnasium echoed loud and clear that he’s as important a part of the community as ever.

“It was really neat,” Rice said after the ceremony. “You do this for long enough in one spot, you just make so many connections with people. I’ve just been blessed to coach some great young men and women.”

And it wasn’t just an eye-opener for Rice. His successor on the bench, Hayley Carr, said the ceremony brightened her outlook on what has been a tough season thus far for the Bulldog girls.

“It just reminded me how much of an impact you can have on kids as a coach,” Carr said. “For Coach Rice, it was an amazing impact on an amazing number of student-athletes.”

Assistant coach Terri Biggs, who spent most of Rice’s career as his assistant on the bench, asked all of those athletes—which ranged in age from eight to in their 40s—to stand at center-court facing Rice as they presented him with awards that included a mounted basketball and special recognition from Glen Welch and Russ Hansen of the Missoula Officials Association.

An emotional Biggs spoke about Rice as a coach and colleague, remembering his animated sideline demeanor early in his career.

“Some people said they would get a bigger kick out of watching him than the game,” she told the crowd.

She also gave special mention to his affection for his players—Rice was notorious for the nicknames he gave—and his storytelling ability.

The Mission coaching staff had also put together a slideshow documenting Rice’s service, ending with the sentence also featured on the t-shirts they had printed following his diagnosis last year: no one fights alone.

Rice said the outpouring of support he’s received over and over is just evidence again of the strength of the St. Ignatius community.

“It’s just overwhelming every time. You don’t know what to say. You don’t know what to do,” he said. “After 34 years, there are so many people that have helped you.”

He gave a heartfelt thanks to those people, to his wife, Lou, and to everyone in the stands, and the lights came on for another Mission basketball game without the legend on the sideline.

On a more personal side, Rice said his treatment over the winter has shown significant progress beating back the cancer, but not without a toll on his energy.

“You sleep 12 hours, get up, take a shower and want to take a nap,” he said with a laugh. “But hopefully next year I’ll feel better.”

Better enough to get back on the bench? Ever the competitor, Rice didn’t rule that out.