‘Every day at school was fun’

After a record-setting career as a Creston three-sport athlete, Larry Goodrich devoted three decades to inspiring kids in the classroom and on the athletic field.

Today, the 1962 Creston High School graduate comes home to be inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame as a Distinguished Alumnus. The induction and homecoming queen coronation takes place at 11 a.m in the school auditorium before Goodrich and fellow inductees Leslie (Lovell) Tyler and Deb (Oxenreider) Powers ride in the annual homecoming parade.

For Goodrich, 80, the email from Creston Community High School Principal Bill Messerole after the committee’s selection last summer came as a surprise.

“I saw the header that said ‘Hall of Fame in Creston’ and I thought, oh my gosh!” said Goodrich, who retired in 2002 as a teacher and coach in Cherokee. “I don’t know if I belong in that group, but I was really happy.”

Messerole and Goodrich have history together. Messerole was a social studies teacher and head football coach in Cherokee from 1996 to 2001 when Goodrich taught science and coached middle school football, basketball and track.

“He was a heck of a coach and a kid magnet,” Messerole recalls. “You knew if Larry was coaching he was going to get 30 kids out for football in middle school and 30 kids out for basketball. He’s just the type of teacher that kids just gravitated towards because of how he treated them. The kids had a tremendous amount of respect for him.”

Goodrich said he tried to treat every student with respect and show genuine interest in them.

“I tried to go out of my way to treat them all fairly,” Goodrich said. “I welcomed the kids that maybe didn’t always get along with some people. One day I asked a kid who had been in some trouble with the law how it was going. ‘OK Mr. Goodrich,’ he said. ‘You’re the only reason I go to school.’ I just related to them somehow, always tried to talk to them when I had a chance and be positive. Every day at school was fun. I never looked at it as a job.”

That fulfilling career might not have happened if not for high school teammate Ron Jessen, another Panther standout who graduated one year ahead of Goodrich. Jessen led the Hawkeye Eight Conference in scoring in basketball and set the school record in 1961 before Goodrich also led the conference and broke Jessen’s school record a year later as the school’s first 1,000-point scorer.

Jessen was recruited to play basketball at the State Teachers College of Iowa (now the University of Northern Iowa) in Cedar Falls and persuaded Goodrich to join him there a year later. They played together on the 20-2 team that a long run in the NCAA tournament in 1963-64. That team was inducted into the UNI Athletic Hall of Fame in 2022. Jessen, now deceased, was a starting guard on the team and Goodrich was a reserve forward.

“My dad was a railroader and part of six generations of Goodriches working for the railroad,” Goodrich said. “I just always figured I would do that after high school. If not for Ron Jessen I probably would not have gone to college. In my junior year he was talking to me and I said I probably wasn’t going to college. ‘Yes you are,’ he told me. ‘You’ll come with me.’ Then I started studying harder and taking school more seriously. Ron’s dad was Roy F. Jessen and was the principal of the high school. They had moved from Council Bluffs when Ron was a junior.”

Dynamic duo

The two formed a dynamic duo in Panther uniforms in the early 1960s on some outstanding teams. In 1960-61, when Jessen was a 6-1 senior center and Goodrich a 6-3 junior forward when Creston was 13-1 as the Hawkeye Eight champion and 21-2 overall. Jessen was the leading scorer in the conference for the second straight year with 334 points and named first-team all-state. Goodrich set a new conference single-game scoring record with a 43-point night. That team lost to Manning in the substate final when only eight teams — all in one class — advanced to state.

“Goody was a tremendous athlete, everything you would want as a player,” said Jack Davis, fellow Creston High School Hall of Famer and one of four senior starters on that team along with Goodrich, the lone junior. The other starters were Dave Hayes, Roger McCay and Jessen.

They would ride to games in a two-door Buick hardtop car driven by head coach Maury Geist, with reserves riding in other vehicles. Geist, who had coached in Mount Ayr, retired after Goodrich’s senior year after seven outstanding seasons. He compiled a record of 104-38 and placed third in the conference twice, tied for second once, tied for first once and outright Hawkeye Eight champs three times. All-staters were Jessen, Goodrich and the legendary Tom Hertz from the class of 1959, who went on to become an All-American football player at the University of Missouri.

When Goodrich was a senior he was the lone returning starter, yet the Panthers won another league title at 12-2 while going 15-3 overall. Goodrich was selected to the all-state second team (all one class) and other starters were Gary Matson (all-conference), Joe Wilson, Wade Motsinger and Robert Kenny.

Goodrich averaged 28.5 points per game that year, including a 46-point effort against Clarinda. In postseason tournament play the Panthers defeated Clearfield and were upset in the second game by Red Oak, which had lost to Creston twice during the regular season.

At the time, Goodrich held the Creston school career record of 1,085 points, including 464 as a senior. He set a new conference scoring mark of 399 points. He still ranks seventh on Creston’s all-time scoring list.

Goodrich was truly a chairman of the board in his era, hauling in 20 or more rebounds in seven different games including a school-record 28 rebounds against Glenwood during his senior year. He totaled 732 career rebounds, ranking second in school history.

Goodrich also played football as an all-state end and competed in track and field, both for coach Rollin Dyer. He was a three-event state track qualifier in the 120-yard high hurdles, high jump and mile relay and competed in the Drake Relays in the high jump and hurdles. At the time, he set school records in the 120-yard high hurdles (15.6 seconds) and high jump (5 feet, 10 inches).

Teaching career

Goodrich met his wife Joyce in college and they have been married 58 years. They have three children: daughter Stacey, deceased; daughter Kelsey, a teacher in Council Bluffs; and son Garth, deputy recorder for Blackhawk County.

After graduating from college, Goodrich began his teaching and coaching career at Titonka, now part of the Algona school district. He was head basketball coach, head boys track coach and assistant football coach at the high school level.

Career change

It was a challenging schedule, and Larry and Joyce were dealing with health problems of their daughter Stacey, who required several surgeries for spina bifida.

“One day I came home and said maybe I should get out this (varsity) head coaching for awhile,” Goodrich said. “So, we moved to Cherokee in 1976 for a position teaching junior high science.”

With his background in athletics and coaching, Goodrich was soon asked to help with seventh grade track. With fewer hours involved at that level, he took the job.

“Then the principal asked if I could do junior high football,” Goodrich said. “Then it was also junor high boys basketball. I coached a total of 31 years, but I found that I really enjoyed it at that level. I got excited and pumped up just for practice. I felt like I had the greatest job in the world.”

Goodrich said Geist had a big influence on his career.

“At the time, I thought he rode me pretty hard,” Goodrich said. “The older I got, I realized how much he was looking after me. When it came time to go to college, he came over to my house to talk about life and what I would be doing in school. He cared about us as people, and that’s something I always tried to do at school.”

Receiving Hall of Fame recognition from his high school is icing on the cake of that long association with athletics and education, Goodrich said.

“There is great tradition at Creston,” Goodrich said in speaking at a special basketball history event a year ago at Anson’s Bar and Grill. “There’s something about wearing that jersey with the word Creston imprinted on it. It meant something far bigger than you. It represented the community, and the pride in our town. It represented the people before you, and after you. I LOVED playing for Creston, and being a small part of that atmosphere, or the culture as it’s referred to now. There have been so many great players in that tradition.”