OKANOGAN - Just weeks after getting
married, Chris Ferenz and Michelle Spurr-Ferenz received a peek at
what life together would be like.
The two met as basketball coach and player at Eastern Montana College,
fell in love and decided to marry. Spurr-Ferenz spent last year as
girls' coach at Okanogan High while Ferenz finished earning his
master's degree in education.
Then he landed a job as math teacher and boys' coach at Okanogan. They
married in July.
``This summer, we were talking about presses and she pulled out her
eyeliner pencil,'' Ferenz said. ``She was trying to explain something
to me, then she started drawing on the mirror.''
``We have this big mirror outside the bathroom door,'' Spurr-Ferenz
said. ``I had my eyeliner pencil in my hand, so I started drawing my
ideas on the mirror.''
``We both looked at each other and laughed,'' he said. ``I said,
`Well, I guess this is what we're getting into.'^''
``I'm sure very few couples have this experience,'' she said. ``It's
unique.''
She's right. A listing of state coaches shows no other high school in
which a husband and wife are head coaches of boys' and girls'
basketball teams.
It's the kind of arrangement that can put strain on the home life of
any couple, not to mention one who wed just six months ago. Between
full days of teaching, practices and games two or three times a week _
mostly on opposite nights _ there is little time to be together.
``The most we see of each other is here at school, but we knew it
would be that way,'' Spurr-Ferenz said.
``On game nights, it's did you win, did you lose, it's time to go to
sleep,'' Ferenz said. ``We just try to maintain (the household) during
the week and then clean up on the weekend. Meals are the hardest part.
We try to fix things quickly.''
It takes effort to keep the personal sparks alive.
``It's our first year of being married and I want to remember what he
looks like,'' Spurr-Ferenz said.
You could almost say the couple was destined to meet, marry and get
jobs in the same school. There were too many strokes of fortune to
call it luck.
First of all, Ferenz bounced from college at California-Davis,
assistant coaching jobs at Cal-Davis and Swarthmore, Pa., and pro ball
in Australia before landing at Eastern Montana.
And his wife went from Auburn High to Highline College to Eastern
Montana to Western Washington and back to Eastern Montana. She was
playing on the women's team. He was a men's team assistant coach. The
two met after a college adviser suggested they talk.
``I think I noticed him first,'' Spurr-Ferenz said. ``I was looking
into being a graduate assistant and going for my master's. My adviser
was Chris's master's adviser.
``He told me I should really talk to Chris. So I called him and we
made a date for dinner. We never did talk about what we arranged to
talk about for about five months.''
``We were two people with the same interests,'' he said. ``It happened
and things took off from there.''
When the school year ended, she decided to start teaching and landed
the job in Okanogan. Meanwhile, Ferenz had a year of study left.
``We kept Ma Bell in business,'' he said. ``We had some huge phone
bills.''
Ferenz looked for jobs as a coach and teacher. Okanogan turned out to
be a perfect fit.
``It was luck more than anything else,'' Spurr-Ferenz said. ``He's a
math person and a math job opened up at Okanogan. He's a basketball
coach, and the basketball coaching job opened up.
``It kind of felt like it was meant to be.''