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This one was a real mind Bender
The meteoric rise and fall of Bob Bender, Washington’s once promising, young college basketball coach. With apologies to soccer star David Beckham, no one could bend it like Bob Bender. He had it all. Good looks. Infectious personality. Energetic recruiter. A son of a successful high-school basketball coach. A standout player at Indiana and Duke, two of college basketball’s blueblood programs. A coaching disciple of legendary Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski. Arriving at the University of Washington in 1993 as its 17th basketball coach, Bender had his work cut out for him. The program he inherited from Lynn Nance was in…
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It’s your turn, Isaac. Run with it!
My third hike to spectacular Spider Meadow in the central Cascades, which turned out to be a passing of the baton to my grandson, Isaac Richardson It was supposed to be a story about backpacking in the era of COVID-19. At least that’s how I originally pitched it to an editor at The Seattle Times in the summer of 2020. There was only one problem: No official at the Wenatchee Ranger Station, which oversees the trail to Spider Meadow, wanted to talk to me. And that was a bit unusual, because PR folks at the U.S. Forest Service have always…
