Column: Anderson: small frame, big name
There are big names among the Legends Stadium Wall of Fame, and it’s with a large dose of gratitude the powers that be made room for Jeff Anderson.
Anderson is a Flathead High graduate who has been back teaching and coaching at his school since 1991. He also may be the smallest in physical stature of all the Legends, but no less amazing for his accomplishments.
“There’s a lot of stuff in there,” the 56-year-old admitted, referring to a profile compiled ahead of last week’s ceremony, at the cross-town wrestling dual. “That’s from a full career of coaching and competing.”
It’s hard to find what’s most impressive, but let’s start here: In 1982 he followed up his runner-up finish at the State AA tournament with an unbeaten season and state title.
That had the Grizzlies and Bobcats interested in having Anderson compete, but there was a problem: At maybe 105 pounds, he was 13 below the lowest NCAA weight class of 118. So he instead headed to Northwest College in Powell, Wyoming.
“A lot of teammates at Northwest were cutting from 132 to get to 118,” he remembered. “That’s when my first coach really worked with me, to get me to the weight room and use nutrition to put the weight on, and put it on the right way.”
Spoiler alert: He didn’t quite get there weight-wise. But he still made it back to Montana on a wrestling scholarship, from 1984-87.
“I think the highest weight I ever achieved was 115,” Anderson said last week. “In fact when I went to the University of Montana, my second year there, I was so tired of trying to put weight on that I just stopped worrying about it. And my weight dropped.”
This is no crime. Anderson estimated he was working out 6-8 hours a day. “A lot of that was in the weight room,” he said. “Long days.”
And yet — and this is most amazing to those of us with checkered academic careers — he managed to earn degrees in biology, geology and health enhancement.
After college Anderson began his teaching and coaching career at Frenchtown before heading to Great Falls High, where he coached, among others, Jeff Thompson.
Thompson became Flathead’s wrestling coach when Anderson stepped down after seven seasons, in 2000-01.
“I wouldn’t be in this position — the Legends Wall of Fame — without him,” Anderson said. “I coached him in high school and when I resigned here, he jumped into it. We’ve had a wonderful relationship since then. We are best friends.”
Combine friendships and relationships with accomplishments on and off the mat, and you have a Legend.
“I didn’t know it was coming,” Anderson said of the honor. “Certainly I feel incredibly honored and truly humbled to actually have my name put in with some of the legends in School District 5 and Flathead High School.”
In Anderson’s seven years the best Flathead did was a fourth-place finish at state. He says now, “My strongest asset has been as an assistant coach. As a head coach I was probably too intense.”
COVID aside, Anderson still gets on the mat. Six times he’s been named the wrestling assistant of the year by the Montana Coaches Association.
Wrestling has given Anderson much. He’s a world traveler in that he competed in international wrestling, and won a Junior Pan-American championship in Greco-Roman. The globe-trotting has only slowed down a little since his marriage.
He loves teaching. He and his wife Karen have no kids, but he feels his career filled that gap. “Every day I went to school I had 200 kids,” he said. “Then I was able to come home and relax a little bit.”
In 1991 wrestling helped him return to his high school. His coach Chris Tyree — who recently passed away in Mesa, Arizona — alerted him to an opening. The idea was Tyree would step aside in a few years and Anderson would take over. Which is what happened.
“There were a ton of applicants for the biology position,” Anderson remembered. “There were a lot of things that fell into place.”
They say luck is the byproduct of hard work. Anderson fell into place — one alongside 31 others on the Legends Wall of Fame.
Fritz Neighbor can be reached at 758-4463 or fneighbor@dailyinterlake.com