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Eagles pinning hopes on new coach Photo by Drew Fleming Chet McBee, left, and his father Brad, right, discuss strategy during a recent match. Chet has a 21-4 record for the Eagles. Brad McBee and son Chet have EP on rise By DON HUNT It was dusk on a July afternoon when the McBee family pulled into Eagle Point for the first time. Chet McBee noticed a gas station, a couple of stores and some older homes. A couple of roads and a couple of turns advanced the family to the high school. Where in the world is the rest of the town, the high school wrestling standout wondered? "I had this picture in my mind that we were going to a city, a real city," McBee says. "It was more rural than I had expected, and at first I wasn't too impressed." Six months later, McBee has fallen in love with his new community, and Eagle Point in turn has adopted him as if he were a favorite native son. Mcbee and his father, Brad, have come to Eagle Point to help restore the school's championship wrestling reputation. It has been nearly 11 years since the Eagles have won a state championship, and while the three state titles from the '80s hang on the gym wall for all to see, the townsfolk have grown a bit restless. "This is a place where a guy can win," says Brad McBee, who pulled up stakes in Dodge City, Kan., after spending eight years in the Midwest. "There's a lot in place here. It's a challenge when your tradition is 10 years old, but there are a lot of good wrestling people in the community who are eager to help out in any way they can. "And there's some good kids here who want to succeed. It's just a matter of putting the pieces together." Most wrestling coaches are extremely animated as they instruct their grapplers during a match. They yell. They scream. They curse. They jump up and down as if attached to a pogo stick. The elder McBee isn't like that. He occasionally leaves his chair to get his point across more fully, but by and large he's calm and collected. And he's the same way at practice. "He's real up-beat and positive," says Rob Cowden, an assistant coach with the Eagles. "I wasn't used to that style and at first I wondered how it would work. But it's worked out great. "His practices are very structured and very organized. His practice plan goes up on the wall each day for everyone to see, including the wrestlers. "Brad brings a different approach to what we've seen here, but the kids respect him. The man knows what he's doing." Part of that different approach includes technique. Coach McBee brings a Midwestern style to the wrestling room, which is to say a little less brawling and a little more finesse. "I've coached long enough that I know I'm not going to reinvent the wheel," says McBee, who has coached for 15 years but is only 37 years old. "I've just taken what the kids have and tried to build on it a little. "Basically, I want the kids to be able to brawl you for a while and then slick you for awhile. Be able to do both, and in combination with each other." Brad Mcbee was born on Jan. 23, 1962 in Canadian, Texas, the son of an oil-field worker. His father grew weary of the back-breaking work, saved up some money and bought a lumber yard in Kansas during the 1970s. Brad's father made a killing in the lumber business, but he developed an irregular heart beat and died when he was only 38. Brad was a pretty fair wrestler in high school, good enough to earn a scholarship to Garden City Community College in Garden City, Kan. He went on to wrestle at the University of Northern Colorado in Greely, Colo., where he graduated in 1985 with a degree in physical education. Chet McBee, meanwhile, was born when Brad was a sophomore in college. The youngster was in diapers during his first journeys to the wrestling room. "He took a lot of naps on the edge of the mat," says Brad McBee, who has a smidgen of a drawl in his voice from his days in Texas. Chet McBee started to wrestle when he was 4, but Brad never force-fed him the sport and didn't allow him to wrestle an actual match for several more years. But by the time Chet reached Dodge City High a little more than two years ago, he was a veteran of the sport. The two McBees have a good working relationship in wrestling, although it hasn't always been that way. "It's gotten better as I've gotten older," says Chet, who turned 17 today. "My freshman year I was a tall, lanky, 112-pounder and that was the first time I ever had to cut weight. "I had to cut out my deserts, cut out my lunch on certain days and I didn't like it. "And whenever I'd be having a bad day at practice it seemed like Dad would have this tunnel vision, where he'd zone right in on me. I could be like Waldo out there, and Dad could see through 15 guys and spot Waldo -- me -- doing something wrong. "A lot of the time I felt like he was picking on me, but he always said, `Don't be worried if I'm yelling at you, be worried if I'm not yelling at you. Since then we've reached a happy medium. Now when he yells at me I just yell back." Chet McBee has posted a 21-3 record heading into today's match at Klamath Union, while the Eagles have registered an 11-1 dual meet record and are ranked No. 4 in the state. Chet's three losses have come against either state champions or state runners-up. The younger McBee charged to a 4-1 lead over defending state champion Justin Godley of Crater last Saturday in the 145-pound finals of the Rogue Valley Classic. Godley nailed McBee with a takedown and 3-point near fall in the second period and eventually walked off with a 9-7 victory, handing McBee one of his three setbacks. The match was extremely heated, partly because McBee had said beforehand that he thought he'd beat the Comet standout. "He needs to learn to keep his mouth shut," Godley said afterward. But if nothing else the fiery duel helped to rekindle the Crater-Eagle Point rivalry, which has lost some of its zest in recent years as the Comets became a state power while the Eagles slipped. The two schools square off in a dual match on Feb. 3 in Eagle Point. "One of our (assistant) coaches said my match against Godley was the best thing that could have happened to hype the dual meet,'' Chet says. "I can't wait." Eagle Point High athletic director Bob Bergen, who coached the Eagles to their three state titles in the '80s and took over the program for one last season in 1998-99, sent out letters to virtually every powerhouse college wrestling program in the country last year advertising the EP coaching job. Bergen wanted to get the word to the college coaches, who in turn would filter it down to high school coaches in their communities. But it was the head of the search committee -- Eagle Point wrestling parent Bob Bray -- who got the word to McBee by putting the letter on the Internet. When Brad McBee saw the letter, he wondered if the job was too good to be true. "I was on there (the Internet) looking for college openings when I came across this letter," McBee says. "It talked about what a great wrestling community Eagle Point was, how they had the Club West (youth) program going, how the whole school and community was proud of its wrestling. "Dodge City was supportive, but nothing like that. I thought, hey, we need to look into this some more." McBee called Bergen, and the two met at the NCAA wrestling tournament at Penn State University in State College last March. McBee then flew to Medford with his wife and they met with the search committee. "We were impressed with the whole Rogue Valley," Brad McBee says. "Of course, it doesn't take a heck of a lot to beat western Kansas. It's not the end of the world, but you sure as heck can see it from there." Today's Sports Index Mail Tribune Copyright� The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, OR U.S.A.