Celebrating Coach Jim Ingram

Article from the insidebayarea.com/fremont  March 6, 2013

FREMONT  -- Legendary Washington High football coach Jim Ingram, whose varsity  teams won 230 games and 12 Mission Valley Athletic League titles after he succeeded Bill Walsh at the school, has died. He was 80.                                                                                                                 
Ingram, known as "Coach I," led more than 1,000 players during 39 years as the Huskies' head coach, between 1960 and 2002.                                 
He  was in the intensive care unit at Kaiser Hospital in Fremont for about  three weeks before he passed on Tuesday with family members nearby. He'd  suffered scratch on his leg while working out at a gym, which led to  complications, according to his grandson, Aaron Ingram.                           
A bronze bust  of Ingram's likeness was erected about a week and a half ago at  Washington's Tak Fudenna Stadium. The bust was placed in front of the  Jim Ingram Fieldhouse.                                                                           
His family is hurrying to schedule a memorial service and a tribute at the stadium within the next week.                                                                            
Ingram is survived by his wife, Pat, and their three grown children,            Michael, Dana and Phil, and five grandchildren.                                           
"I  can't really fathom this day has come. I never thought I'd see the  day," said Aaron Ingram, an assistant football coach at Sacramento  State.
Ingram's death comes less than a month after longtime Newark            Memorial coach Rich Swift, another MVAL legend, succumbed to an  inoperable brain tumor. He was 60.                                                                
Ingram, Swift and retired  Kennedy-Fremont coach Pete Michaletos, who visited Ingram regularly  during his hospital stay, were all player-first,       community-first head  coaches for prolonged runs in the MVAL.              
"Jim Ingram was the MVAL,"  Michaletos said on Tuesday evening. "If you analyze and look at any  program in the MVAL and even in the greater Bay Area, you'll see a touch  of Ingram there someplace, either in the weight training program, the  conditioning program, his off-season program,       practice organization. ...  There's Ingram there."                                           
Michaletos described Ingram as a perfectionist, a great competitor and a nice person, who loved to talk football.  "He was a gentle giant,"                                                          
Michaletos said.                                                                                                   
On  Tuesday morning former Washington star Lyle West, who went on to play  for the New York Giants and Kansas City Chiefs over a four year    NFL career, and another ex-Huskies standout Jason Adams drove from the  Sacramento area to say goodbye to "Coach I," who had such a           profound  affect on their lives.   "There's a level of peace that comes                                                                        
over me  about Coach and the level of service that he's provided to the    community," West said. "When someone passes, it does make you feel  better when you know they did it the right way.                                             
"That's what I shared  with coach. He was on the machines, and I know that he heard me. We  just got in his ear, and I just continued to tell him that, 'You did it  the right way, coach. You did it the right way.' I started to name  players that either I played with or my brothers have played with, and  just told him how much he meant to those people and myself. "I        
told him that each and every person loved him. I know that he heard us."
Despite  his seemingly gruff exterior as a former Humboldt State football  player, coach Ingram showed his players "affection and love," said West,  a 1995 Washington graduate who played at Chabot College and San Jose  State.                                                                                                                       
"When we get together as old players very rarely does anyone  say,           'Remember that championship game or this or that?" West said. "We     always tell a story about Coach and about us working hard together ...  How cool is that? I mean that's ultimately what sports are all about:  It's about bringing a group of people together and camaraderie and               teamwork. That's really what it was."                                                              
Coach Michaletos said one of  Ingram's family members took pictures of his bronze bust and showed them  to him about a week ago."He kind of   looked at it and smiled and stuff,  so he got to see it," Michaletos said.