November 25, 2020 at 5:06 p.m.
Back from the brink
Bomholt excited about returning to Patriot sidelines after life-threatening bout with COVID-19
Back from the brink
A sudden death started Jerry Bomholt’s career as a coach.
His own mortality nearly ended it.
Bomholt, 67, was watching the Notre Dame football game against Louisville on Oct. 17 when he started getting a cold sensation.
No matter how many layers of clothes or blankets he put on himself in an effort to create any sort of warmth, the result was the same. He kept getting colder.
A short time later, he was on his way to IU Health Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie, where he was diagnosed with COVID-19 and put on a ventilator.
“I don’t remember much, but all I can remember was my family was crying,” he said. “They couldn’t come in to see me. I tried to FaceTime. I couldn’t talk. I thought I was dying.
“Come to find out that I was pretty close.”
••••••••••
An Elwood High School graduate, Bomholt became an assistant for Bob Macy at Peru during the 1975-76 season. Three years later, he moved closer to home for a position on Bob Fuller’s staff at Anderson Highland.
The Scots were on the road playing Lapel. During halftime, Fuller collapsed in the locker room. Word quickly spread, and the Lapel coach wanted to cancel the game, but the Scot players wouldn’t allow it.
The Scots won the game with Bomholt leading the second half. Upon the team returning to the high school after the game, they got the dreaded news.
Fuller died of a heart attack.
“Just an unbelievable scenario,” Bomholt said. “The No. 1 team in the state of Indiana, worked their tails off the last four years, and now we’re missing a coach.”
Administration at Highland wanted to bring back a pair of former assistants to take over in Fuller’s place, but the players, like they were when Lapel wanted to cancel the remainder of that game, weren’t going to have it.
They wanted Bomholt as their guy.
He took the reins, led the Scots past No. 5 Madison Heights in the sectional semifinal in three overtimes, then squeaked past No. 3 Anderson 76-75 to win the championship at The Wigwam.
“I could tell during the week that followed, we had all these things that happened and there was just a deflation,” he said. Highland lost the regional semifinal to Carmel, 47-43, and the Scots finished the year 23-1.
Following the loss, Highland’s principal commended Bomholt on a job well done, but also said the school was going to open up the coaching position.
“People knew all the circumstances through that whole stretch that we had to solve,” Bomholt said, noting that he fought pneumonia on top of Fuller’s death. “To go through that stretch and win all those games and win that doggone sectional … When they decided to open up, they said, ‘You can apply.’
“What a slap in the face that is.”
••••••••••
Bomholt was hired to lead Jay County ahead of the 1980-81 season, with the Patriots coming off an 11-11 record the previous year.
“When I got here, oh my gosh,” he said.
Only four of the 11 varsity players he had that season were 6 feet or taller.
Doug Arbuckle was one of those taller players.
“Right away, we knew things were going to change with discipline and intensity and structure,” said Arbuckle, a junior on Bomholt’s first JCHS squad. “He expected us to work hard and come together as a team, which we did. I felt like at any point in time there was four of us that had the capability of leading the team in scoring on any given night.
“Just a good, solid team effort on both ends of the floor.”
With little height, Bomholt knew he’d have to have a different style in order to win. His trademark Zorro 1-2-2 zone defense made its debut. In two seasons, the Patriots won 34 games — it was the No. 1 defensive team in the state the first year — with two sectional titles and advanced to the regional final each year.
In his third year, the Patriots won another sectional and once again fell in the regional final. His fourth season ended without a sectional crown.
“Even in the third and fourth years, we didn’t have great success, but our kids competed and people came to watch,” he said. “They liked watching kids play hard, play unselfishly, play together.”
Bomholt said he and then-athletics director Harold Schutz butted heads following the 1984 season. Being young and hard-headed, Bomholt stepped away.
“It is, without question. the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in coaching,” he said. “I always felt like this was home. This was where our family began.
“I was just stupid. Stubbornness. I felt like we could have been here as long as we wanted.”
••••••••••
Bomholt spent the next season at Northwestern.
“Then the parade started,” he said.
Two years at Shenandoah. Three at Columbia City. Six at Princeton. A year away from the game.
Then, ahead of the 1997-98 season, Bomholt landed at Southwestern in Hanover. The first year, he led the Rebels to the state championship game. He spent four more years there before going to Shawe Memorial for nine seasons, winning four sectional titles.
While leading the Hilltoppers, Bomholt was also the school’s principal. Following the 2011-12 season and his fourth sectional there, he stepped away from coaching to just be a principal.
“God, did I miss coaching,” he said of that short sabbatical. “Here’s one thing I found out about me: I’m not good at anything else. I can’t stay home and fix things. I feel like the one thing I can do is coach a little bit of basketball.”
With an itch to get back into coaching, Bomholt landed at Franklin leading the Grizzly Cubs.
But he was unable to sell his house. So when the Southwestern job opened back up — the Rebels were 6-38 while he was at Franklin — he returned to Hanover to guide the Rebels once again.
“Nobody in their right mind should have taken that job,” he said.
In his first year back, they won two games. In the second year, they won eight. And in the third, they won 13.
Southwestern had a 24-win season and a sectional title in 2018, then won 25 games and another sectional the next year.
A year ago, the Rebels faced a bit of adversity as they were without three starters before the season began. Heading into one of the final weekends before the postseason, Southwestern was 12-7.
The Rebels got two big wins, and then the following Monday two of his players wanted to meet with him.
They said they no longer wanted to play his style.
“This doesn’t happen,” he said. “Particularly after the success that we’ve had.”
In what he said was in the best interest for the program, he resigned Feb. 19.
That was it. He was ready to be done.
“I had written it off,” he said. “Let’s call it. I had a good career. It wasn’t a great career like I wanted it to be. We didn’t get to 600 (wins). We didn’t get back to the state final, which I wanted our kids to have a chance to experience.”
••••••••••
Bomholt credits developing the minutiae of coaching — teaching to make a left-handed pass from the top of the key so it doesn’t get deflected or how to conduct a practice — to his time working with Macy.
Everything else, he said, he’s developed throughout his four decades roaming the sidelines, watching other coaches and attending clinics.
As for the criticism he may receive for his style?
“I feel as a coach it is my job to push kids because there’s life skills here,” he said. “I’ll push them farther than they’ll ever push themselves. I feel that’s part of my job as a coach. If I’m not doing that then I’m cheating the people that hired me.
“I don’t get the satisfaction necessarily from all the wins. My satisfaction is when the finished product goes out in society and has success.”
Two former players agree one of the staples of Bomholt’s coaching style is in the form of his preparation, not just for a particular opponent but for anything that might happen during the course of a game.
“The fact that he had systems in place in his tool belt as a coach to prepare you for any situation, that’s why I felt like even though he came in as new coach he got us so prepared that we knew ahead of time what we were going to be facing,” said Vernon Piercey, a 1981 JCHS graduate who was a senior on Bomholt’s first Patriot team. “We were able to, most of the time, react and play out the situation because we had already been trained to do it.”
Another was the drive to work hard.
“I think the work ethic he instilled in all of us was a big thing,” said Arbuckle, a 1982 JCHS graduate who is now an assistant on Bomholt’s staff. “How we could achieve something if we put our hearts and our minds into it.
“We was able to hold our own because of the style of play he instilled in us. I think it made us all, at the time you didn’t realize it, now looking back I think we’re all realizing that that effort and ethic he instilled in us helped us in life.
“If you put your mind to it and (with) hard work, everything is possible.”
Piercey, who is alliance manager at Covance in Indianapolis, said his former leader can be intense in the way he coaches, but one thing he took away from the lone season he had as a player in the system is that discipline does not have to have a negative connotation.
“Especially self-discipline,” he said. “I think that’s one of the things I’ve carried over into my life is understanding discipline.
“When you use discipline in how you structure life … that’s the piece that’s carried over in my life more than anything, self-discipline and understanding it’s not a bad thing.”
••••••••••
Before Bomholt went to Shawe, Princeton and Columbia City, the administrations at those schools sought him out to lead their programs.
“That’s a great feeling,” he said. “When you do that, to show your appreciation, you want to just work your tail off to prove to them they made the right decision.
“Every place, every stop we’ve made we’ve been successful. But for me, the credit goes to the kids.”
Chris Krieg resigned as JCHS boys coach March 11 after six seasons.
A short time later, Jay County athletics director Steve Boozier and girls basketball coach Kirk Comer met with Bomholt to discuss the position.
“I said ‘Nope, not interested,’” Bomholt recalled. “I don’t think I could go through another situation like (Southwestern).”
Boozier and Comer assured him it wouldn’t happen, and that he’d have more support from the Jay County administration than anywhere else.
After he and his wife Dee Dee discussed a second chance in Jay County, he decided to give it a shot.
“We started there … we always wanted to stay there,” Bomholt said. “Called it home. Now’s a chance to go and do that.
“I screwed up the first time. This time I’m not going to do that.”
On April 13, Bomholt was back as Patriot coach.
••••••••••
“It’s been a whirlwind.”
That’s how Arbuckle described the last month regarding Bomholt’s well-documented health issues.
The sexagenarian is afflicted by diabetes and has been battling a wound on his lower left leg. He developed Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), and was given medication to help fight it.
Then came the Notre Dame game. His memory of the next two to three days is cloudy, but there is one thing that sticks out.
“I remember vaguely the ventilator because I was gagging,” he said. “They wouldn’t let me take it out.”
COVID-19 nearly cost him his life.
His health declined. While FaceTime allowed him to speak with his daughter, his mortality came into focus. Would he get to see his wife, his three children or his grandchildren again?
He was ready to give up.
“I just thought, ‘Hell, is this worth it?’” he said, emotions overtaking him. “Guys like (assistant coach Aaron Daniels) said ‘Coach, we need you.’
“They just kept me plugging away.”
Piercey drove to Muncie to see him. He did it out of respect for him not only as a coach, but as a person.
“Even though after I graduated I wasn’t really that close with him, I just touched base with him,” Piercey said. “I’ve always felt a bond with him. He was a surrogate mentor … a person that poured more into me than I have been able to extract and use in my life.
“I value that, people that were willing to take the time and pour into me more than I probably deserved.”
It’s one thing to not have the head coach around, but it’s an entirely different beast when that coach is in his first year with a program, trying to teach his assistants how to coach his way as well as instilling his system to the players.
Arbuckle and Daniels, the latter of whom is a 2008 JCHS graduate and was an assistant to longtime Patriot coach Craig Teagle as well as Krieg last year, kept the boys working in the weight room and conducted a few open gyms while Bomholt was away.
“It’s been tough,” Arbuckle said.
Jay County’s boys squad was supposed to open its season Tuesday but had to postpone three games and cancel another because of the coronavirus — not Bomholt’s case — and it is now slated to start Dec. 12.
Prior to the Nov. 19 announcement of the delay, Bomholt had been back on the sidelines during practice, but his intensity wasn’t quite at its normally high level.
He’d be forced to sit down while his team went through drills, occasionally rising out of his chair to emphasize a movement, a strategy or to critique a player’s decision making.
There were times after he got out of the hospital when he struggled to string four or five words together without gasping for air.
“He is one intense individual,” Piercey said. “If he’s signed up to do it he’s going to give it everything he’s got. It’s probably the reason why he’s taken a little bit to get over the sickness.
“He runs himself hard. He’s intense. He feels like he has a purpose.”
But Bomholt feels as if he’s finally on the mend.
“My energy level is day-to-day,” he said. “Some days it’s better than others.
“I’ve got two great assistants. If I didn’t have Doug or Aaron, I don’t know what I would have done.”
••••••••••
This is Bomholt’s 40th year coaching.
In that span, he’s amassed 12 sectional championships, one regional title and one semi-state crown.
He is 23rd all-time in the state of Indiana — ninth among active coaches — for career victories. His next will be a big one, No. 550.
Out of the previous 549, it was one during his first stint at Jay County that sticks out as his favorite.
It’s the 1981-82 season, Arbuckle’s senior year. Bomholt was two years removed from being interim head coach of the Highland Scots. The Patriots were 12-6, winners of seven of their last eight games and welcomed the No. 1 Scots to Portland.
Highland, which featured future Indiana All-Star Danny Zachary, was averaging more than 81 points per game.
Spreading out the offense, Jay County made 32 shots — all but one of them were layups — in upsetting the Scots 59-58 in front of 4,500 fans.
The previous season, however, is Arbuckle’s favorite memory of his old ball coach.
The Patriots battled the Yorktown Tigers into three overtimes, the first OT game in the history of the school that opened in 1975.
Bomholt had called a timeout in an attempt to ice a Yorktown shooter at the free-throw line.
“In the huddle he said, ‘This boy’s gonna miss this free throw. Let’s get the rebound and get it to Doug. Doug, take it down and let’s get a bucket,’” Arbuckle recalled.
Sure enough, the Yorktown player missed, and the Patriots got the ball and scored for a 36-35 victory.
“That there, that moment for coach to feel confident that I could do that at that point in time was something that I’ll never forget,” he said.
••••••••••
A man of Roman Catholic faith, Jerry Bomholt believes in fate.
Although he will curse every once in a while — “I’m not anywhere near perfect,” he said — he feels things happen for reasons beyond his control.
If his players at Southwestern would not have said they did not want to play his style anymore, he would have never gotten the chance to make up for his mistake — leaving Jay County nearly four decades ago.
And after battling the same disease that has afflicted nearly 60 million worldwide, Bomholt gained a new perspective on the transience of human life.
“My life is in God’s hands,” he said. “I’ve got to take whatever he gives me. Whether it’s something hard or something really positive and just remember that everything is done through him.
“I put my faith in him. That’s what it’s boiled down to.”
His own mortality nearly ended it.
Bomholt, 67, was watching the Notre Dame football game against Louisville on Oct. 17 when he started getting a cold sensation.
No matter how many layers of clothes or blankets he put on himself in an effort to create any sort of warmth, the result was the same. He kept getting colder.
A short time later, he was on his way to IU Health Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie, where he was diagnosed with COVID-19 and put on a ventilator.
“I don’t remember much, but all I can remember was my family was crying,” he said. “They couldn’t come in to see me. I tried to FaceTime. I couldn’t talk. I thought I was dying.
“Come to find out that I was pretty close.”
••••••••••
An Elwood High School graduate, Bomholt became an assistant for Bob Macy at Peru during the 1975-76 season. Three years later, he moved closer to home for a position on Bob Fuller’s staff at Anderson Highland.
The Scots were on the road playing Lapel. During halftime, Fuller collapsed in the locker room. Word quickly spread, and the Lapel coach wanted to cancel the game, but the Scot players wouldn’t allow it.
The Scots won the game with Bomholt leading the second half. Upon the team returning to the high school after the game, they got the dreaded news.
Fuller died of a heart attack.
“Just an unbelievable scenario,” Bomholt said. “The No. 1 team in the state of Indiana, worked their tails off the last four years, and now we’re missing a coach.”
Administration at Highland wanted to bring back a pair of former assistants to take over in Fuller’s place, but the players, like they were when Lapel wanted to cancel the remainder of that game, weren’t going to have it.
They wanted Bomholt as their guy.
He took the reins, led the Scots past No. 5 Madison Heights in the sectional semifinal in three overtimes, then squeaked past No. 3 Anderson 76-75 to win the championship at The Wigwam.
“I could tell during the week that followed, we had all these things that happened and there was just a deflation,” he said. Highland lost the regional semifinal to Carmel, 47-43, and the Scots finished the year 23-1.
Following the loss, Highland’s principal commended Bomholt on a job well done, but also said the school was going to open up the coaching position.
“People knew all the circumstances through that whole stretch that we had to solve,” Bomholt said, noting that he fought pneumonia on top of Fuller’s death. “To go through that stretch and win all those games and win that doggone sectional … When they decided to open up, they said, ‘You can apply.’
“What a slap in the face that is.”
••••••••••
Bomholt was hired to lead Jay County ahead of the 1980-81 season, with the Patriots coming off an 11-11 record the previous year.
“When I got here, oh my gosh,” he said.
Only four of the 11 varsity players he had that season were 6 feet or taller.
Doug Arbuckle was one of those taller players.
“Right away, we knew things were going to change with discipline and intensity and structure,” said Arbuckle, a junior on Bomholt’s first JCHS squad. “He expected us to work hard and come together as a team, which we did. I felt like at any point in time there was four of us that had the capability of leading the team in scoring on any given night.
“Just a good, solid team effort on both ends of the floor.”
With little height, Bomholt knew he’d have to have a different style in order to win. His trademark Zorro 1-2-2 zone defense made its debut. In two seasons, the Patriots won 34 games — it was the No. 1 defensive team in the state the first year — with two sectional titles and advanced to the regional final each year.
In his third year, the Patriots won another sectional and once again fell in the regional final. His fourth season ended without a sectional crown.
“Even in the third and fourth years, we didn’t have great success, but our kids competed and people came to watch,” he said. “They liked watching kids play hard, play unselfishly, play together.”
Bomholt said he and then-athletics director Harold Schutz butted heads following the 1984 season. Being young and hard-headed, Bomholt stepped away.
“It is, without question. the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in coaching,” he said. “I always felt like this was home. This was where our family began.
“I was just stupid. Stubbornness. I felt like we could have been here as long as we wanted.”
••••••••••
Bomholt spent the next season at Northwestern.
“Then the parade started,” he said.
Two years at Shenandoah. Three at Columbia City. Six at Princeton. A year away from the game.
Then, ahead of the 1997-98 season, Bomholt landed at Southwestern in Hanover. The first year, he led the Rebels to the state championship game. He spent four more years there before going to Shawe Memorial for nine seasons, winning four sectional titles.
While leading the Hilltoppers, Bomholt was also the school’s principal. Following the 2011-12 season and his fourth sectional there, he stepped away from coaching to just be a principal.
“God, did I miss coaching,” he said of that short sabbatical. “Here’s one thing I found out about me: I’m not good at anything else. I can’t stay home and fix things. I feel like the one thing I can do is coach a little bit of basketball.”
With an itch to get back into coaching, Bomholt landed at Franklin leading the Grizzly Cubs.
But he was unable to sell his house. So when the Southwestern job opened back up — the Rebels were 6-38 while he was at Franklin — he returned to Hanover to guide the Rebels once again.
“Nobody in their right mind should have taken that job,” he said.
In his first year back, they won two games. In the second year, they won eight. And in the third, they won 13.
Southwestern had a 24-win season and a sectional title in 2018, then won 25 games and another sectional the next year.
A year ago, the Rebels faced a bit of adversity as they were without three starters before the season began. Heading into one of the final weekends before the postseason, Southwestern was 12-7.
The Rebels got two big wins, and then the following Monday two of his players wanted to meet with him.
They said they no longer wanted to play his style.
“This doesn’t happen,” he said. “Particularly after the success that we’ve had.”
In what he said was in the best interest for the program, he resigned Feb. 19.
That was it. He was ready to be done.
“I had written it off,” he said. “Let’s call it. I had a good career. It wasn’t a great career like I wanted it to be. We didn’t get to 600 (wins). We didn’t get back to the state final, which I wanted our kids to have a chance to experience.”
••••••••••
Bomholt credits developing the minutiae of coaching — teaching to make a left-handed pass from the top of the key so it doesn’t get deflected or how to conduct a practice — to his time working with Macy.
Everything else, he said, he’s developed throughout his four decades roaming the sidelines, watching other coaches and attending clinics.
As for the criticism he may receive for his style?
“I feel as a coach it is my job to push kids because there’s life skills here,” he said. “I’ll push them farther than they’ll ever push themselves. I feel that’s part of my job as a coach. If I’m not doing that then I’m cheating the people that hired me.
“I don’t get the satisfaction necessarily from all the wins. My satisfaction is when the finished product goes out in society and has success.”
Two former players agree one of the staples of Bomholt’s coaching style is in the form of his preparation, not just for a particular opponent but for anything that might happen during the course of a game.
“The fact that he had systems in place in his tool belt as a coach to prepare you for any situation, that’s why I felt like even though he came in as new coach he got us so prepared that we knew ahead of time what we were going to be facing,” said Vernon Piercey, a 1981 JCHS graduate who was a senior on Bomholt’s first Patriot team. “We were able to, most of the time, react and play out the situation because we had already been trained to do it.”
Another was the drive to work hard.
“I think the work ethic he instilled in all of us was a big thing,” said Arbuckle, a 1982 JCHS graduate who is now an assistant on Bomholt’s staff. “How we could achieve something if we put our hearts and our minds into it.
“We was able to hold our own because of the style of play he instilled in us. I think it made us all, at the time you didn’t realize it, now looking back I think we’re all realizing that that effort and ethic he instilled in us helped us in life.
“If you put your mind to it and (with) hard work, everything is possible.”
Piercey, who is alliance manager at Covance in Indianapolis, said his former leader can be intense in the way he coaches, but one thing he took away from the lone season he had as a player in the system is that discipline does not have to have a negative connotation.
“Especially self-discipline,” he said. “I think that’s one of the things I’ve carried over into my life is understanding discipline.
“When you use discipline in how you structure life … that’s the piece that’s carried over in my life more than anything, self-discipline and understanding it’s not a bad thing.”
••••••••••
Before Bomholt went to Shawe, Princeton and Columbia City, the administrations at those schools sought him out to lead their programs.
“That’s a great feeling,” he said. “When you do that, to show your appreciation, you want to just work your tail off to prove to them they made the right decision.
“Every place, every stop we’ve made we’ve been successful. But for me, the credit goes to the kids.”
Chris Krieg resigned as JCHS boys coach March 11 after six seasons.
A short time later, Jay County athletics director Steve Boozier and girls basketball coach Kirk Comer met with Bomholt to discuss the position.
“I said ‘Nope, not interested,’” Bomholt recalled. “I don’t think I could go through another situation like (Southwestern).”
Boozier and Comer assured him it wouldn’t happen, and that he’d have more support from the Jay County administration than anywhere else.
After he and his wife Dee Dee discussed a second chance in Jay County, he decided to give it a shot.
“We started there … we always wanted to stay there,” Bomholt said. “Called it home. Now’s a chance to go and do that.
“I screwed up the first time. This time I’m not going to do that.”
On April 13, Bomholt was back as Patriot coach.
••••••••••
“It’s been a whirlwind.”
That’s how Arbuckle described the last month regarding Bomholt’s well-documented health issues.
The sexagenarian is afflicted by diabetes and has been battling a wound on his lower left leg. He developed Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), and was given medication to help fight it.
Then came the Notre Dame game. His memory of the next two to three days is cloudy, but there is one thing that sticks out.
“I remember vaguely the ventilator because I was gagging,” he said. “They wouldn’t let me take it out.”
COVID-19 nearly cost him his life.
His health declined. While FaceTime allowed him to speak with his daughter, his mortality came into focus. Would he get to see his wife, his three children or his grandchildren again?
He was ready to give up.
“I just thought, ‘Hell, is this worth it?’” he said, emotions overtaking him. “Guys like (assistant coach Aaron Daniels) said ‘Coach, we need you.’
“They just kept me plugging away.”
Piercey drove to Muncie to see him. He did it out of respect for him not only as a coach, but as a person.
“Even though after I graduated I wasn’t really that close with him, I just touched base with him,” Piercey said. “I’ve always felt a bond with him. He was a surrogate mentor … a person that poured more into me than I have been able to extract and use in my life.
“I value that, people that were willing to take the time and pour into me more than I probably deserved.”
It’s one thing to not have the head coach around, but it’s an entirely different beast when that coach is in his first year with a program, trying to teach his assistants how to coach his way as well as instilling his system to the players.
Arbuckle and Daniels, the latter of whom is a 2008 JCHS graduate and was an assistant to longtime Patriot coach Craig Teagle as well as Krieg last year, kept the boys working in the weight room and conducted a few open gyms while Bomholt was away.
“It’s been tough,” Arbuckle said.
Jay County’s boys squad was supposed to open its season Tuesday but had to postpone three games and cancel another because of the coronavirus — not Bomholt’s case — and it is now slated to start Dec. 12.
Prior to the Nov. 19 announcement of the delay, Bomholt had been back on the sidelines during practice, but his intensity wasn’t quite at its normally high level.
He’d be forced to sit down while his team went through drills, occasionally rising out of his chair to emphasize a movement, a strategy or to critique a player’s decision making.
There were times after he got out of the hospital when he struggled to string four or five words together without gasping for air.
“He is one intense individual,” Piercey said. “If he’s signed up to do it he’s going to give it everything he’s got. It’s probably the reason why he’s taken a little bit to get over the sickness.
“He runs himself hard. He’s intense. He feels like he has a purpose.”
But Bomholt feels as if he’s finally on the mend.
“My energy level is day-to-day,” he said. “Some days it’s better than others.
“I’ve got two great assistants. If I didn’t have Doug or Aaron, I don’t know what I would have done.”
••••••••••
This is Bomholt’s 40th year coaching.
In that span, he’s amassed 12 sectional championships, one regional title and one semi-state crown.
He is 23rd all-time in the state of Indiana — ninth among active coaches — for career victories. His next will be a big one, No. 550.
Out of the previous 549, it was one during his first stint at Jay County that sticks out as his favorite.
It’s the 1981-82 season, Arbuckle’s senior year. Bomholt was two years removed from being interim head coach of the Highland Scots. The Patriots were 12-6, winners of seven of their last eight games and welcomed the No. 1 Scots to Portland.
Highland, which featured future Indiana All-Star Danny Zachary, was averaging more than 81 points per game.
Spreading out the offense, Jay County made 32 shots — all but one of them were layups — in upsetting the Scots 59-58 in front of 4,500 fans.
The previous season, however, is Arbuckle’s favorite memory of his old ball coach.
The Patriots battled the Yorktown Tigers into three overtimes, the first OT game in the history of the school that opened in 1975.
Bomholt had called a timeout in an attempt to ice a Yorktown shooter at the free-throw line.
“In the huddle he said, ‘This boy’s gonna miss this free throw. Let’s get the rebound and get it to Doug. Doug, take it down and let’s get a bucket,’” Arbuckle recalled.
Sure enough, the Yorktown player missed, and the Patriots got the ball and scored for a 36-35 victory.
“That there, that moment for coach to feel confident that I could do that at that point in time was something that I’ll never forget,” he said.
••••••••••
A man of Roman Catholic faith, Jerry Bomholt believes in fate.
Although he will curse every once in a while — “I’m not anywhere near perfect,” he said — he feels things happen for reasons beyond his control.
If his players at Southwestern would not have said they did not want to play his style anymore, he would have never gotten the chance to make up for his mistake — leaving Jay County nearly four decades ago.
And after battling the same disease that has afflicted nearly 60 million worldwide, Bomholt gained a new perspective on the transience of human life.
“My life is in God’s hands,” he said. “I’ve got to take whatever he gives me. Whether it’s something hard or something really positive and just remember that everything is done through him.
“I put my faith in him. That’s what it’s boiled down to.”
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