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After years of service, Palanuk to leave area By GREG STILES It was a gray October day in 1983. A three-way battle for the Southern Oregon Conference cross country meet loomed at Eagle Point. The starter was Denny Palanuk. An instant before Palanuk pulled the trigger, Medford's Damie Baldovino stepped across the starting line. Baldovino was the third runner through the finish chute, but Palanuk determined the Medford senior was disqualified for his false start. Instead of finishing second and going to the state meet, Medford dropped to third behind Roseburg and Ashland. Black Tornado coach Don Lacey, now the North Medford principal, was perplexed. "I want to point out it's unprecedented," Lacey protested as I eagerly scribbled notes. "We're the first team to have a runner, according to the director of the (Oregon School Activities Association), in any district any time to have a disqualification for a false start." The next Friday night, I covered a St. Mary's football playoff victory at La Pine. Because there was no looming deadline in those days, I followed St. Mary's to La Pine's only local pizza parlor. I sat with Crusader coach Larry Walker and his staff and chatted. After about 15 minutes, Palanuk got up from his seat and said: "I don't know what I'm doing here sitting at the same table after that article you wrote," boomed Palanuk, who was one of Walker's assistants. As I recall, Palanuk said something about it being a bad idea for officials' names to appear in print. In the ensuing years, Denny Palanuk's name has appeared in print now and then. That can happen to someone who has officiated as many as 300 basketball games in a year. After 21 years officiating basketball, softball, volleyball -- and a little baseball -- in the Rogue Valley, the 56-year-old Palanuk is moving to Salem in May to be closer to family. Anyone, who has played or coached basketball -- from junior high and high school to city league and college -- in these parts the past two decades can attest to the fact that Palanuk calls 'em like he sees 'em. They may not always have liked it, but they could count on Palanuk to call the game his way. Former girls basketball coach Mike Kay learned the hard way. Before moving to North Medford, Kay coached at Mazama. More than once he was ejected by Palanuk. It wasn't long after Kay moved to North that Palanuk was on the floor. "He kept saying Mr. Referee to this and Mr. Referee that," Palanuk recalls. "`What's this mister stuff, I asked,' and he said, `I've only been given 11 technicals and you've given me nine and thrown me out of three gyms."' Palanuk began officiating varsity basketball in Portland in the mid-1970s. While coaches and officials become quite familiar with one another in a short time here in Southern Oregon, in Portland a ref might go a year or two without seeing a given coach. Palanuk figured he could put coaches in their place and move on. "I was working a game at Madison and a player slammed the ball down and I T'd him," Palanuk says. "Then the coach started yelling and I T'd him, too. "I reported it to (Portland basketball commissioner) Howard Mayo, and he said, `I guess we'd better teach that coach a lesson, so he learns not to talk back. You're going back there Friday.' "My diplomacy has been my downfall for years." Palanuk recalls the time when he was dodging a cheerleader on the sidelines, only to have the ball fly out of bounds right behind him. A photographer caught the scene and it made for amusing comments at the officials' end-of-the-season banquet. He wanted to add football to his officiating repertoire, but the closest he got was flag football. "Every time I saw a penalty, I blew my whistle instead of throwing a flag," Palanuk says. "Stan Rosetta (a fellow Eagle Point teacher and official) would look at me and say, `Don't do that."' So why has Palanuk plugged away, up and down the court, behind the plate and over the net for all these years? Larry Binney, the North Medford softball coach, who used to lock up with Palanuk in late-night poker games while attending Southern Oregon University, has a theory. Some of the Raider baseball and football players would gather for a weekly poker game. Among the regulars were Danny Miles, Kent Wigle, Rod Rumrey and Palanuk. "Nobody had a lot of money back then," Binney says. "It seemed like a lot of IOUs were in the pot instead of real money. Most of the time, we called it the Palanuk Pot, because so many of the IOUs were Denny's. "I figure the reason Denny has called volleyball, basketball and softball all these years was because he was still paying off those college poker debts." Palanuk was born in Honolulu but moved to Eugene before his first birthday. He attended St. Francis High in Eugene, the predecessor of Marist. By the time he was a senior, he already showed a teacher's instincts. If his teacher was absent, another nun would sit in. But Palanuk taught the class. He attended Oregon State for a while but wound up near Portland. "I was going to be a business major and make millions," Palanuk says. "Instead, I became a teacher." Palanuk dabbled in officiating for the Eugene Boy's Athletic Association as a teenager and got hooked on umpiring in his mid-20s. He was playing in a slow-pitch softball tournament when he pulled a hamstring. "A fellow told me, `We need umpires and in a tournament like this, you could make over $100,' he says. "My eyes lit up when he said I could make over $100." But for all the games he whistled or called balls and strikes for, Palanuk spent nearly as much time drawing Xs and Os. After graduating from Southern Oregon, he taught physical education two years at St. Mary's before becoming head baseball and basketball coach at North Douglas in 1971. Three years later, he was off to Gaston, where he coached basketball, track and later football. "They didn't have a track program, but some of the kids wanted to have one," Palanuk says. Having picked up a few pointers from former St. Mary's track coach Brendan Mallon, Palanuk managed to get an 800-meter runner to state. Three years later, he was hired as a football assistant and head track coach at Tigard. But track's unchallenged spring superiority was coming to an end in Oregon. One season, his top javelin thrower decided she wanted to play center field for the softball team. The next spring, the top discus thrower defected. In the spring of 1979, Walker called Palanuk and told him Eagle Point's football job was open. "I remembered that Eagle Point had always had tough kids," Palanuk says. But the Eagles had been senior-dominated the year before and only one starter -- Abe Huntley -- returned. "He got into a car wreck during daily doubles and never played," Palanuk says. It was also the year Eagle Point moved up to the Southern Oregon Conference from what is now the Class 3A ranks. "We tried to play power football," he says "but that didn't work against Medford and Roseburg. We went to the run-and-shoot the next year and it got better." He lost his football job after the 1981 season. He remained as a math teacher at Eagle Point, but rejoined Walker at St. Mary's, helping the Crusaders to their eighth and ninth state championships. St. Mary's tied Colton (0-0) for the 1983 title at Spiegelberg Stadium. It was the sixth time in seven years that St. Mary's had earned a first-place trophy. But many of the dejected Crusaders were weeping. "C'mon, get your heads up," Palanuk barked. "You've just won a state championship." Like the majority of his calls, that one was hard to argue. (Greg Stiles is a Mail Tribune sports writer. He can be reached at 776-4483 or [email protected] ) Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA