Coach Newkirk, a varsity basketball coach and Social Studies teacher at Oregon City High School, was recently awarded “Coach of the Year” for his most recent season.

Newkirk was first influenced to become a basketball coach at a young age, when there was nothing else to do, so he played basketball. Although his family had no background in athletics, “It’s just something that I got into.” Newkirk said.

“Basketball was just part of my life,” Newkirk remarked.

His teaching style was greatly influenced by Brad Smith, a fellow coach, friend, and mentor. Newkirk would ask him questions like, “How do you deal with people? How do you deal with conflict? How do you manage a classroom? All those questions.” Newkirk, as a young teacher, would take Smith’s answers that would later help shape his teaching philosophy today.

“I followed him around, and I asked him questions, and I still do to this day.” Newkirk said, “He helped form the teacher and the coach that I am today with his style.”

Dealing with conflict within the team is one of the biggest challenges a coach faces. Newkirk deals with internal conflict by following the “conflict continuum” which simply means that there will always be conflict between people. But if you build a strong enough community by having an “open line of communication,” you can build strong relationships that withstand the conflict.

“One of the things that we say to our players and our coaches is that we want to have relationships that are so strong that they will bear the weight of truth,” Newkirk said.

Newkirk feels that he can hold players to a higher standard in athletics than in teaching. He gives the example of when he taught Global Studies; for example, if he expected the whole class to memorize the spelling and name of every country in the world, he would probably get fired. But in sports, you can still expect exemplariness.

“The expectations as far as what you can ask of students in the classroom today is not the same as it once was,” Newkirk said, “In my opinion, sports are a place you can still hold people to a really high standard.”

Newkirk not only expects his players to play at 100%, but he, too, will give back 100%. He does this by spending a couple of hours outside of coaching to scout the other teams his players are playing next, Connor Lemmon, a senior who has been playing on Varsity for Newkirk since his sophomore year in high school, said.

“He spends like more than a couple hours like studying the scout for the team that we’re going to play,” Conner said, “And I really appreciate that.”

Assistant coach to Newkirk, Jake Rondema said, “[Newkirk’s] teams are consistently among the most prepared teams in the State of Oregon.”

“Nobody prepares like Coach Newkirk does,” Rondema said, “that is one of the biggest reasons why he has had so much success.”

Newkirk has raised everyone on the team to play an improved game. “He elevated me to like a way higher level of how I played the game,” Connor said.

“There’s not one thing he made me really good at,” Connor said, “he made my entire game better, he elevated me to a way higher level. Everyone else on the team could say that.”

A lesson drilled into Connor from playing basketball that he applies to his playing in other sports including baseball is “playing till the final whistle.” This is not just applicable for losing, but for winning also.

“The game’s not over until the final play,” Conner said, “he knows not to take anything for granted in a game.”

A key life lesson Connor has learned from Coach Newkirk, outside of the game, is to put the team over the individual.

“He’s made me a way better person in how I treat my teammates,” Connor said, “To put my teammates at a higher priority than myself.”

“I will always be grateful to Coach Newkirk. He took a leap of faith in a struggling 20-year-old college student to be a part of his coaching staff,” Rondema said, “Without his support, I wouldn’t be the coach, teacher, or man that I am today. Coach Newkirk believes in people and does everything in his power to build them up to be the best that they can be.”