Hurt and healing: Bear River football coach inspired by mentors who laugh amid hardships

Tanner Mathias could see himself doing this when he was 15 years old: leading a football team, discussing life and worldly events as a teacher while parading around his old stomping grounds.

Some boys grow up with a football under their arm, day-dreaming of playing or coaching at Notre Dame or USC. Not Mathias. It was Bear River High School that captured his interest then and now — his roots, his school and his region, located in equal parts Grass Valley and Lake of the Pines.

But what the third-year coach for the Bruins did not project years ago was coming full circle and substituting in a dance class on campus. He did so last Friday. His body is still angry about it.

“The girls in class had me stretch, to get me loosened up for our game, and I wound up sitting in the back of the room trying to catch my breath,” Mathias said with a laugh. “I’ve been working out, cutting weight, feeling good, and they said, ‘All we’re going to do is stretch.’ OK, I can do that. I was sweating like a pig. I had to change my clothes.”

But the coach didn’t have to change his outlook. This is a man who booms of good cheer, and with the Bruins off to a 3-1 start, Mathias beams in the understanding that Bruins football remains a sure thing. He knows it because he has lived it, quarterbacking the Bruins to an 8-3 playoff season in 2008 and getting into coaching with the program a few years after that.

Home games are a social event here, like any small town that embraces its football heroes. On Sept. 14, a Thursday, the home side was a social hub of activity for a nonleague contest against Tamalpais of Mill Valley, the tree-lined stadium surrounding a real-grass field that housed kids who grew up wanting to do this. Tamalpais won 42-21, but Bear River won the night because this was football fun in the foothills at its finest.

In the end zone seats, scores of Junior Bruins youth football players sported their jerseys and soaked in the action when they weren’t creating it by racing around with a ball. There was also a group of Junior Bruins cheerleaders, the next generation. They looked up admiringly to the Bruins high school cheerleaders. In the home stands, the band belted out good tunes. Next to them was the student section — The Den. It was packed and it was spirited. Along the fence outside the track, people squeezed in to watch the action.

“I pinch myself often on a night like this,” said Bear River principal Chris Roberts, standing on the sideline near the scoreboard and looking at the stands. “There’s something special about Bear River and this community here. What school do you know of where kids open the doors for adults?”

Bear River’s staying power

And what football program has defined success quite like Bear River?

The Bruins have had remarkable staying power since 1989, three years after opening, with a run of 30 consecutive non-losing seasons. Bear River has already equaled its win total from last season. The program is back on track, and not bad for a school that had endured declining enrollment for decades. There is no housing growth here, unlike Placer County, Folsom, Elk Grove and El Dorado Hills. People move into homes in these parts and never leave.

But for the first time in 19 years, enrollment increased with an uptick to 650. The highest enrollment mark was in the early 1990s with 1,200 students, when the Bruins fielded 13-0 teams that were state ranked at Division III under famed coaches Terry Logue and Scott Savoie, who coached and mentored Mathias. Mathias grew up idolizing those men.

The Bruins have achieved this fall because of their commitment to the weight room and to each other, Mathias said. The coach told his team after the Tamalpais setback that these things happen, that you can’t win them all, that the effort was there and that it’s how a team responds that matters most.

“We feel like we’re playing like the Bear River teams of old,” Mathias said. “Football is still about blocking and tackling, and the weight room is more than getting physically stronger. People bond in a weight room. It’s not war, but it’s minor trauma — working the body. Guys dripping sweat, pushing it to the limit.”

Mathias married a Bear River graduate, Laurie. His parents, Sandra and Jim, are decades-long residents of the area. Sandra still cuts her son’s hair. He tips her with a hug and a kiss on the forehead. His father was a local battalion fire chief for 36 years. Now retired from that role, Jim Mathias is in his first season as a Bear River assistant football coach. Jim has taken in most every Bear River home game since 1986.

“I knew the life I wanted to live was to coach and teach here, because of Savoie and Logue,” Tanner Mathias said. “To still have my parents here at the games means everything. I showed up on campus once for a Senior Sunrise and sat by the football field and soaked it in, watching the sun come up. I’m living the dream.”

Humor and hurt

Logue and Savoie lived the dream, too, but both have endured crushing heartache. They have leaned on each other to cope. Between the tears, there is laughter.

Logue and Savie stepped down as coaches in 2021 after a string of league and CIF Sac-Joaquin Section championships to hide Easter Eggs for grandchildren. Both men took in their first Bear River game of the season against Tamalpais. They were treated like royalty with a stream of past players and members of the community approaching their golf cart on the track to appreciate and thank them.

“Wow,” Logue said. “It’s great to be remembered like this. I had no idea.”

Logue got out of coaching earlier than he wanted to because of his struggles with Parkinson’s disease. His tremors took away his ability to drive. He used to exchange film years ago by tooling his chopper down Highway 49.

“I miss football, but I’m so proud of Tanner for the job he’s doing,” Logue said. “I’m doing OK, but it’s not easy. I took a bad fall a year ago Christmas. I was alone at home, broke my leg and tore up my hip. I knew I could either wait for my wife Angela to come home in four hours or I could drag my ass over to the phone to call for help. You know that commercial — ‘Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!’? Well, that’s funny until you’re that guy who’s fallen and can’t get up.”

Logue said humor has helped him deal with his plight. He reminds that if he’s carrying a plate of greens, it’s not just salad.

“It’s a tossed salad,” Logue said with a hearty laugh. “You have to laugh in life, or life is too miserable. I can’t complain. I see kids who have cancer and that’s real sadness. Savoie has been so good to me. He takes me to the gym three times a week where I can grab those handle bars on the stationary bike and go. I can’t thank him enough.”

Said Savoie: “Terry has every reason to be the angry old man with what he’s going through. But he isn’t. I admire him for his great attitude.”

Football helps heal

Savoie has also suffered. He is fine health wise, but his heart hurts, having lost his wife, Carreen, to cancer a year ago this week. They were married 40 years. The Bear River snack shack, where she spent hundreds of hours, bears her name.

Communities like this are where people can come together, to share their celebrations and their grief. Roberts, the Bear River principal, can relate. He lost his wife, Angelique, to cancer last month, during the second week of school. She, too, was a Bear River graduate.

“This community came together and was there for me and my kids when we really needed them,” Roberts said. “It was a kick in the teeth to lose her. Married 26 years. I’ll never forget the support. They helped save me. This is what a community is all about.”

Savoie said several things have helped him cope with his loss.

“What pulled me through was support of family and friends and this community, Terry Logue and football,” Savoie said. “I spent 40 years telling players as a football coach that life is a winding road with lots of curves and ups and downs. You will be up and you will be down in this sport, devastated by loss. I was angry, sad that I lost Carreen, but I knew I had to back up what I used to say. You have to go on.”

Savoie moments later reminded that he revels at the chance to tease his old friend Logue, who connects better with a blocking sled or a bar bell more than a gadget called a cell phone.

“Terry would talk right into his phone for a voice text,” Savoie said. “He’d go, ‘Scott, Scott!’ and it came across as ‘God, God!’

“So I’d text back and ask him, ‘What would God do, Terry?’ Terry once wondered if we’d ever have statues put up of the both of us, and we laughed about that. I told him we may get a couple of porta-potties named after us. We’ll take it!”