2023 GoGriz.com Person of the Year

The elk have made their way to Mount Jumbo. It's where they congregate in the winter, where the food is more plentiful and accessible, where they huddle together to get through the harshest of Montana's seasons. It's not the carefree time of summer, more a season of just getting through, the next station in life. Kris Nord watches them from his window on the western side of Missoula's Rattlesnake neighborhood. He's seen them before but never really watched them, examined them, tracked them, not like he's doing these days. It's an opportunity and perspective that comes with retirement.

"I've made this mistake in life – and I'm trying to get better at it – of looking at stations, that things will be so much better when I get this raise, that there is a big reward when you get to a certain station in life, and it doesn't work that way," he says. "It just keeps going on, so you have to enjoy the day-by-day process. I'm not saying retirement is going to be glorious. It's going to take a couple years in my mind to get out of the schedule that I've had for the last 47 years of college athletics between coaching and playing." Wisdom, hard-earned wisdom. Nord is overflowing with it after four-plus decades of coaching, of shepherding his athletes through their own stations in life while he's been doing the same in his.

His wife, Robi, is in the room. She's watching him, already noticing how things have changed in the few weeks since he decided to step down from his coaching position at Montana, a career that spanned 42 years and had him, at different stations, coaching men's tennis, women's tennis and women's golf, a bulk of that time coaching multiple teams. "He's looking lighter. It's fun to watch him now. He's slowing down, noticing the elk more and talking about them, able to just relax. I'm really looking forward to seeing him have time to be. Just to be."

By "lighter," she doesn't mean physically, more that a great weight has been lifted off his shoulders. Indeed, the burden he carried over the years, over the decades, went mostly unnoticed, performed as it was in the shadow of Montana's more prominent, high-profile sports, the footballs, the basketballs. For three years in the mid-90s, he coached all three programs -- both tennis teams and golf -- at once. "I don't know that there has been any coach in the modern era who coached three Division I teams at the same time," said Tyler Thompson, who played for Nord and is now the associate head coach for women's tennis at North Carolina, which won the NCAA championship in the spring. Thompson is one of three coaches – head, associate, assistant – at North Carolina for the 10-player team.

He's a bit of a wreck these days, Nord is, the result of his own pursuits on the slopes and mountain bike trails, plus decades spent hitting a ball with a racket, either in competition himself or as a coach, drilling with player after player, hour after hour, day after day, all that time on the hard court working its way up his body, feet to shoulders, and breaking things down, piece by piece, a gradual wear and tear. "My wrist is fine as long as I don't play tennis," he says. His left wrist, his money wrist, has had two surgeries. He's had multiple knee surgeries. Both hips have been replaced. His shoulder has gone from fine to bad and every spot in between. Now his back is a mess, bulging disks and whatnot. He literally sacrificed his body to sport, to the Grizzlies. "I could tell when I couldn't do it anymore," he says. "I'd go home and hope I'd be able to do it again. That window kept getting narrower and narrower."

It's the price he's paid for putting that body through the wringer, for getting every ounce of fun and potential from it he could. Coming out of Sentinel High in Missoula, he had Division I scholarship offers to play football, basketball and tennis, and chose tennis. Once his collegiate career was complete, at UNLV, then at Boise State, he returned to Missoula and enjoyed it to the fullest, western Montana as playground. "He was almost a mythic figure in terms of his athletic prowess. Everybody on the team really put him on a pedestal athletically," said Thompson. "I remember him being the example for us what a broad-based athlete looked like. I don't know if any of us had been around anybody who had been that good of an athlete. He could pretty much whip our ass in anything we did. For guys particularly, that just commands respect. We wanted to soak up everything he had to share with us."

Thompson, on all those long van trips to another tennis tournament, to another dual, always tried to get the passenger seat, next to Nord, who would be driving, just to listen to his life stories. And when Nord asked Thompson and Ales Novak one day if they wanted to join him on a mountain bike ride, how could they possibly say no? Time with the man. Yes, please. "We just wanted to be around him. He was legendary. I went on a ride with him up the Rattlesnake, up to one of the peaks. We had heard what a behemoth he was. Kris shredded the whole way up, never took a stop and then when we got to the peak, he dropped down and did like 50 pushups. Meanwhile, Ales was almost needing medical attention and I was barely hanging on."

Robin Selvig, who won 865 games coaching the Montana women's basketball team but couldn't beat Nord on the trails, has his own story. "When I got into mountain biking, he was already hardcore. A fitness nut. We were going up Woods Gulch, which is a hard ride. I couldn't keep up with him, of course. I came up to a ridge and he was there doing pushups, waiting for me to catch up with him. I don't know if he did it to make me feel bad, but it inspired me to get in better shape."

Inspiration. It's what so many of his former players bring up when talking about Nord the coach, how he took a sport as individual as tennis and got 10 or more players, all fighting for six spots, for meaningful time in the lineup, to put their own interests aside for the betterment of team. "You can go too far, pit guys against each other because everyone is competing for scholarship money and spots in the lineup and traveling," said Ben DeMarois, who played for Nord from 2008 to '12. "He made it very familial. He did a really good job of creating a group that likes each other yet has to compete against each other every single day. It doesn't have to be about you or you. It can be about the team. That can be a really hard thing to do in such an individual sport. He was really good at it."

As Nord's tennis recruiting net got wider and wider over the years, as he brought in talent from Brazil, South Africa, Poland, from wherever he had contacts, he added to the complexity of the puzzle pieces he was laying out in front of him each fall. The farther his recruits got from home, the larger the role he needed to play in their lives. "He becomes a coach, dad, role model, he became all those things all at once," said Carl Kuschke, who came to Missoula from Johannesburg, South Africa, and became a three-time All-Big Sky Conference performer, one of the best players in program history. "It was like it was natural for him. I don't know if 'safe' is the word but I felt at home and felt like I could be myself. That was so cool to me. He became a father figure immediately. I trusted him without reservation because I saw how humble and honest he was. He was willing to admit mistakes. That kind of openness was big for me and taught me a lot of good life lessons."

Pre-dating Kuschke to the Grizzlies was another player from South Africa, Stuart Wing, who brought his fashion-forward closet with him to Missoula. And why wouldn't he go out on the town with some friends dressed up and dressed out in denim jeans, leather boots, a denim jacket and puffed-up shirt? "South Africa was known for being fashionable and denim was in," said Wing. Nord pulled him aside. Unless you want to get beat up, Nord told Wing, don't go downtown looking like that. Hearing that story, DeMarois just laughed and said, "There were a lot of ways he coached you in life."

The year-by-year results, the tournament outcomes, the championship trophies won and narrowly missed, are what provide the framework to Nord's career, the black and white, from his start in 1982, before the construction of Washington-Grizzly Stadium, to 2023, when the tennis and golf teams have the Champions Center to train in, their own strength and conditioning coaches. But it's the human stories that fill in the gaps and give it all the beautiful color, the memories, from Cut Bank's Kaye Ebelt on Nord's first team, the 1982-83 women's tennis squad, to Butte's Tricia Joyce on the coach's final team, the current women's golf squad.

As he watches the elk, you could play a fun game with Nord. Pull a name out of his history, give him a moment or two to collect the memories, then sit back and listen to his stories of someone, of matches played, of struggles endured, maybe athletically, maybe academically, maybe family-related. It's a coach's reward to have all that stored away, easily pulled out at the drop of a name. But what about his story? As he looks east, if geography allowed it, he could see all the way to Beartooth Pass, his family of seven westbound, his dad, Ron, roaring through the switchbacks, not here for sightseeing but to get to Missoula to start his job as Montana's new men's basketball coach after being hired away from Wisconsin. He's racing time. The coach has work to do. It's 1962 and Kris Nord, as the youngest of five kids, has the worst seat in the station wagon, the one in the very rear, facing backwards. It's fitting as he flies blind into a new life ahead, wondering where this journey might end up.

You might call it idyllic, growing up the son of Montana's men's basketball coach and all the access that station in life provided. He became besties with longtime Griz trainer Naseby Rhinehart, who looked after Nord at practice and on road trips to Idaho, to Gonzaga, to Montana State. You might call it idyllic but you'd be wrong. Unless you've grown up in the household of a coach, you can't know what it's like. "You lived and died by Grizzly basketball results," Nord said. "If we lost to the Cats, it was a crisis for a couple weeks. You hoped your dad kept his job. It was stressful." Since Grizzly basketball was the biggest thing in town – sorry football, you'll have to wait a few decades – the men's basketball coach and his performance was constantly the target of those most vocal. "There would be boosters calling for my dad's job. I remember hearing it at school. It was a rather tense household for a decade. It was a lot more fun if we won." The Grizzlies went 3-12 against the Bobcats in six seasons under Nord before he was let go, one of the young Nord's first experiences of the harsh realities of athletics, of life, that it may not always seem or be fair.

Of course, there was another side of Missoula, the golf course, where Nord could go to escape it all, where he wasn't an observer, where he wasn't reliant on the scores of the teams he cheered for, but in control of his own fate. And his mom was his passport, getting the job as manager of the Missoula Country Club after the family moved to town. And, oh my, did he have the Nord blood in him, which tended to run hot, fueled by a nonstop, almost unquenchable competitiveness, and if his scores weren't improving as quickly as he wanted on the course, then into the closet his clubs went in a fit of frustration when he was in eighth grade. And sitting there in the corner, almost begging for him to grab it and give the sport a try, was a tennis racket. "I asked my brother to go out to the Sentinel courts and I fell in love with it."

It's the 70s and tennis is taking over the country as the physical fitness boom has begun. Missoula had tennis leagues for juniors, for adults, for anyone who wanted to play, the courts in town booked solid from sunup to sundown. "It was a different atmosphere then. Tennis was very popular. Tournaments would be maxed out. I played as much as I could," said Nord, who used his lefty stroke to his advantage. "I had a good serve. I moved well. I did a good job grinding it out. I loved to volley at the net and play an all-court game. I loved serving and volleying, chipping and charging the net. It was a chess game, kind of like golf, trying to figure out how to break your opponent down. That was intriguing to me."

He was projected to be the starting quarterback at Sentinel High as a freshman before breaking his ankle. (Did we mention his longtime ankle issues yet? No? Add it to the list.) He skipped football as a sophomore and junior, the annual intermountain tennis tournament in Denver or Salt Lake City conflicting with the opening week of two-a-day football practices under a coach who said tennis or football, your choice. He stuck with tennis while playing basketball all winter long. As a senior, a new coach who said Nord could do both, so he played defensive back for the Spartans and was good enough that he earned a scholarship offer from Griz coach Jack Swarthout, the same coach who offered a professional lifeline to Ron Nord, allowing him to follow his six years coaching men's basketball with six more as an assistant football coach.

His older brothers were both Grizzlies, Jeff playing basketball before focusing solely on golf. Mark played basketball, was a starter as a junior when he sprained his ankle, an opening that paved the way for Micheal Ray Richardson. "Mark never saw the starting lineup again," said Nord, who was the starting point guard at Sentinel High at the same time Blaine Taylor was starring for Hellgate at the same position. He was offered a spot on the basketball team provided he accepted his offer with the football program, but there would be no basketball-only offer coming his way, not after the Grizzlies signed Taylor. Later, after Sentinel played a game in Bozeman, Bobcat basketball coach Rich Juarez, who had wanted Taylor just as badly as the Grizzlies did, boarded the team bus and offered Nord a scholarship on the spot. Kris Nord, Bobcat? "That was fine. It was an offer. I was just trying to get my school paid for.

"I was pretty set on staying here. If we had had Washington-Grizzly Stadium, I would have stayed here, I'll tell you that. Dornblaser wasn't appealing. I played there in high school. It wasn't as nice as Great Falls High's stadium or Billings Senior's stadium. My dad influenced me. He said, I think you should get out of state, do something different. It was good advice." He traveled to UNLV on a football visit, bumped into the school's tennis coach, who knew of Nord, and that was it. "I took the worst of my three offers and chose tennis at UNLV." He means worst financially but also could have meant school vibe as well. "I loved UNLV for the tennis but didn't feel like I was in college. It was a commuter school then, one dorm on campus, and you had to have a lot of money to fit in." And Nord didn't have a lot of it.

After two years in Vegas, he returned to Missoula, took an off-the-books job peeling logs at a sawmill outside of town to make money, later moved to Alaska, where his parents had relocated in 1974, after Ron Nord left coaching behind. Tennis was fun but there was still nothing quite like football. His final coach at Sentinel, Gary Ekegren, had joined the Grizzlies and new coach Gene Carlson's staff, giving him an in at a second chance. But he ultimately, after a long back and forth, weighing the pros and cons, chose Boise State, where he was given a two-week chance as a football walk-on. His ankle blew up, then he broke his wrist, then he dislocated his shoulder. It was a pretty clear sign. Football was done. His future with the Broncos was in tennis.

Robi Cameron, while all this was going on in her future husband's life, grew up in Rupert, in south-central Idaho, the youngest of three girls, the daughter of a hard-working farm implement dealer, in a place where farm implements were big business. One of her dad's rules for his three girls? "I wasn't allowed to ride on motorcycles," she said. So, imagine her conflicted feelings the day the Boise State student saw Kris Nord for the first time. "He was on a Kawasaki 900, he had a cast on his wrist and he wasn't wearing a helmet." The red flags were everywhere. She didn't see them. Or want to. "I elbowed my roommate and said, oh my god, look at that crazy guy riding a big motorcycle. Good lord, he's something." Uh-oh, forbidden fruit. They've been together ever since.

Let's introduce another character to the story: Larry Gianchetta, also from Idaho, who earned his master's degree from Wyoming and got a job as an instructor in the business school at Montana in 1969. He taught for two years, left for Texas A&M and returned to Missoula in 1975, now holding a doctorate, then becoming friends with Montana Director of Athletics Harley Lewis, the Lewises and Gianchettas, husbands and wives, one summer floating the Smith River, where Lewis told Gianchetta, who had played No. 1 singles at Idaho Falls High, he should be Lewis's men's tennis coach. Laughs all around. Later in the summer, Lewis called Gianchetta and said his office at the field house was all set, with a stringer and everything. All set for what? Gianchetta asked. You're my new tennis coach, he was told. No laughs this time.

"We did pretty well for a guy who wasn't a top-notch tennis player. But it was time for a real tennis coach," Gianchetta said of his time in the program in the early 80s. He knew the Nord family, knew Kris was down at Boise State wrapping up his collegiate playing career, winning a Big Sky Conference title at No. 3 singles in 1981. Gianchetta reached out, planting the seed. Nord told him, I'll come up and take a look at it.

The women's tennis team, which gotten its start at Montana as an intercollegiate sport in 1978-79, went to AIAW nationals in 1980 but also went through three coaches in four years prior to Nord taking over for the 1982-83 season. He didn't know Robin Selvig at the time, but he approached his first team like the Hall of Fame women's basketball coach did his. They are competitive athletes and want to be coached, they want to work hard, be held accountable, be challenged and pushed, be taken seriously, just like guys, Selvig could have told him. At the start of this new station in life, Nord was the head women's coach and ran the men's practices for Gianchetta. "I expected the same out of the women as I did the guys," Nord said.

Ebelt was on Nord's first women's tennis team. She sent him a note two weeks ago, after it was announced that he was retiring. She played for Nord more than four decades ago and writes as if the impact is still fresh, like she had just been under his influence last spring. It's a testament to the lasting power of a good coach. "Your unwavering commitment to excellence, coupled with your exceptional character, left an indelible mark on all of us who had the privilege of playing under your guidance. Your leadership style was nothing short of exemplary. What truly set you apart was your ability to make tennis fun while instilling a deep sense of camaraderie among the team. Win or lose, you cared about each player, fostering an environment where we felt supported and valued. Your passion for the sport and belief in our potential pushed us to exceed our own expectations. The lessons we learned under your guidance extended beyond the tennis court and undoubtedly shaped our character and work ethic for the years ahead." This was Nord in Year 1 of 42. He was a natural.

It was perfect, storybook, this return to Missoula, this entry to the world of coaching, and all he had to do was support himself and Robi, his new wife, on a contract that paid him $400 per month for eight months, the equivalent of $1,200 per month today. Good luck! "That was my first three to four years. I had to have other jobs, Robi had to work and I was required to complete my degree, which I hadn't finished at Boise. I was just trying to pay the rent," said Nord, who saw Robi from time to time in passing at their basement apartment by the old Kmart in town. He taught tennis lessons all day, went to class, coached his teams at night, the only time available at the old Missoula Athletic Club. He returned to the apartment, crashed hard, and did it all over again. "I'd come home and Robi would say, 'Why are we married? I never see you.' She was right. For the first 15 years, it was mayhem. It was just trying to make it work." Robi was cool with it. She loved Missoula, found work and friends. "When you're young and crazy, you do those things," she said.

The two men in Nord's life, his dad and Robi's father, both had their concerns. "My dad's main advice to me was, don't be a college coach," said Nord. "I guess I took that as a challenge." Robi's dad? He was cut from a certain bolt of cloth, from the Carhartt section, the kind reserved for men who know the value of a hard day's work, of punching the clock, of getting your hands dirty. He had a deal for his son-in-law. Bring his daughter back to Rupert and he would have a job for Nord, one that, even back then, would pay him more than he has ever made coaching the Grizzlies. Who would blame him? He wanted his daughter close and he wanted to set the couple up financially. "I loved the guy. He was trying to get his daughter back and help us. He was a worker. Athletics? That's what you do in your spare time. He didn't look at what I did as a valuable job. I kind of felt challenged that he didn't think I could do it on my own and I kind of embraced that."

Gianchetta turned the men's program over to Nord in the mid-80s, only for Nord to see the men's tennis program get cut along with wrestling. The Grizzlies did not have a men's tennis team in 1986-87, until the Big Sky Conference office sent a gentle reminder: Yeah, that's a required core sport. Get it back. Shortly after Nord had spent his time making sure his guys found landing spots in new programs, he had to rebuild the program from nothing. His reward? In 1988, his first salary with benefits. Finally, with Robi working as a surgical technician, there was extra money at the end of the month, finally they could start talking about home ownership, finally they could start talking about starting a family. "Kudos for Robi for surviving that."

One of Nord's first tennis students, when she was an eighth grader, was Gwen Watson, whose family lived in the Rattlesnake and had a tennis court in the backyard. It was part of Nord's side hustle, teaching the sport wherever he could find someone interested. "It sounds better than it was," Watson said of the family's court. "We made it ourselves. Kind of a disaster." Nord trained her through high school and she became the first Montana high school player to win four state titles, pairing with Erin Parks, who would go on to play for the Griz volleyball team, for doubles titles as a freshman, sophomore and junior. She won a singles title as a senior before joining Nord's program at Montana.

Her experience is exemplar of Montana tennis at the time. A fantastic coach doing yeoman's work in less-than-ideal conditions with whatever talent he could attract on a limited budget. For months at a time each winter, Nord's teams practiced at the Missoula Athletic Club, a fancy name for the bubble located at the single coldest spot in town, across from campus, hard against the Clark Fork River, at the mouth of Hellgate Canyon. The winds, particularly in winter, rattled the facility. The teams would either alternate nights of practice or one team would train from 9 to 10:30, the other from 10:30 to midnight. "We practiced with hats and gloves on because the bubble wasn't heated, then go back and try to get to sleep before getting up for classes in the morning," Watson said. "We'd travel to other places and see their indoor facilities and be like, ohhhhhhh, that's nice. They must not have to wear hats and gloves when they practice."

That those athletes had a positive experience tells you everything you need to know about Kris Nord. He was there for them then, he's been there for them ever since, no matter the situation. "He's a wonderful coach but he's quiet about it all, quietly going about who he is. He quietly met you where you were at," said Watson, today a physical therapist in Spokane. "He's dedicated his professional and personal time to guiding all these athletes, helping them be better athletes, better students, better people. He helped me in all parts of my growth. He defines what it is to be a great coach and a Grizzly. He's been a large presence in my life, my coach, my instructor, my mentor, my friend. He's been there for all the major events in my life."

Hmmm, that's nice. Heart-warming. Let's get around the campfire and sing type stuff. But let's not forget who we're dealing with here. This was Kris Nord. Dude is and was a cold-hearted competitor. Grew up in a household whose happiness, its very existence, depended on winning a basketball game or two. Grew up in an era when Bobby Knight was the model that most all other coaches chased after. Grew up in an era when it was coach as dictator and that's all anyone knew. He believed that in all competition there was a winner and to finish second was the same as finishing last. And when he went mountain biking with you – for fun, trust me! – he beat you to the top, then got down and did pushups just because.

He may have been lacking the budget at Montana, the full load of allowable scholarships, a facility, the staffing to help pull it all off, but that wasn't going to get in the way of his teams being tough and ready to compete. That's the way he learned it. That's the way he was going to coach it. "He was a task-master with physical fitness," said Thompson, who played for Montana in the early 90s. "He worked us so frickin' hard, almost like he might be jailed today. I went home after my freshman year and I had put on like 20 pounds of muscle and I was faster than I had ever been before. Not even weight room stuff, just stairs and suicides and crunches, early-morning workouts that were extremely hard on the legs and really toughened us up."

"I was very rigid," said Nord. "I always thought more was better. That was the old school. Work harder, work longer. That's what I did as an athlete, try to outwork people. We worked our tails off in conditioning in the 80s and 90s. We didn't have the Champions Center or conditioning coaches. They did theirs with me at 6 in the morning."

It's now 1993. Can someone please get Kris a new challenge? It's getting a bit stale here, only coaching two tennis teams. Robi's pregnant, gives birth to their first of two sons, Anders. That will change things. And then AD Bill Moos has an idea. What if we added women's golf? And what if we asked Kris to coach it? Do you think he would do it? Well, I know a bit about golf, Nord said. Haven't really played it since throwing my clubs in the closest as an eighth grader, but I might be up for it. And we could sure use the extra money with another mouth to feed. But Kris, what about the added time commitments? Is this what you really want? Sure, let's do it! Golf's championship season in the fall, tennis in the spring. It's a lot and that overflowing plate can do the reverse and eat at a coach. It wasn't the stress on his time as much as it was the thought that he was stretched so thin he might not be coaching any of his athletes very well.

"When you have two or three teams, it's hard to get them to believe you are really doing the very best for them. It's a bit of a diluted experience because you don't see them every day. That was a legit complaint at the time but that's where we were," Nord said.

He would take his new golf team to tournaments and send the girls out on the course. The coaches? They would play their own round once the last grouping had teed off, the on-site coaching kept to a minimum. It's golf. Let's keep it chill, okay? The coaching's been done. Time to enjoy ourselves. It was a different sport, a different time. Brandy Casey kept Montana competitive, tying for second at the 1993 Big Sky fall championship, tying for third in 1994, the year Montana won the eight-team Montana State Invitational in Year 2 of Grizzly golf. He did it for three years, ultimately passing the program off to Joanne Steele in 1996.

Nord's men's tennis team made the Big Sky semifinals in 1997, '98 and '99, his women's team in 1997 and '98, and that was probably the ceiling for either team unless something changed. It all did in the early 2000s, a package deal. The programs finally got fully funded on scholarships, six for the women, four and a half for the men. And the PEAK Racquet Club came to fruition, five courts inside a (heated!) facility, and Montana would have priority hours, no more practices that went past midnight. All of sudden, home matches before April were a reality. "Kind of came together at once," said Nord.

And Jan Steenekamp arrived, a transfer from Louisiana-Monroe, the type of player who would three times be voted first-team All-Big Sky, the type of player who signaled to others that you can go to Montana to play tennis and get the most out of your game, a South African who blazed the path for others from his country to follow, like Stuart Wing, the two of them playing No. 1 (Steenekamp) and No. 2 (Wing) for a team that would go 4-2 in league in 2006, one match out of first. All of a sudden Montana was competitive and relevant in a sport it which it had long held secondary status. The Grizzlies would go 7-1 in league in 2007, even after Steenekamp had departed. Montana was on the rise.

"I felt like when I arrived, it was a turning point. Not saying it was me. We had Jan and we started on this great run," said Wing, who now lives on Fox Island, Washington. "The team just started getting better and better. Kris was really good at selecting the right personalities. Tennis is an individual sport, but there is a team that goes around that. Kris was really good at picking people who were good fits for the team." Over the next 11 seasons, Montana would go 70-25 in Big Sky matches. "He was the king of finding those guys who were under-recruited but were maybe really competitive or hadn't committed enough time to tennis in the past, so their best tennis was ahead of them," said DeMarois. "Kris saw more in them than other coaches did. Then they really came into their own as really good tennis players."

And Kris Nord was a different coach by then, a different person. His mom passed away in 2002, which hit hard. The same year, his second son, Isak, born in 1998, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. That hit hard as well. "When your 3-year-old's pancreas stops working and you want it to be you and not your kid, that's a difficult time," said Robi. It could have made him harder, distanced him emotionally from his athletes, could have driven him even more, the fire raging hotter and hotter, all of it coming out in practice, on his team, on his players. Instead, it changed his perspective, about the tenuousness of life, how there needs to be some fun involved, even more personal connection, or why bother doing any of this? He spent extra time at Boise State, went to its practices, saw how the Broncos were doing it to create the kind of success they were having. Any coach of the 70s and 80s would have been aghast.

"The biggest thing that stood out to me was they worked hard but they had fun. They didn't dread practice but they still got things done. We started to work towards that. I knew what I was doing wasn't working. We shortened practices but asked them to work harder." Dinners at his home with his family, both sides benefitting from the interactions, poker night with the guys, the wall between coach and player, never a true barrier before but still there, coming down completely. "It had to happen. I needed to have more fun."

"It speaks to his intellect. You have to keep evolving and stretching the limits of conventional wisdom and challenge what you do," said Thompson. "He was hard on us, in a good way. Our practices were not intended to be the funnest time of our day. It was about working us hard and making us better, but that just doesn't fly anymore. It has to be something that is fulfilling for the kids. It's not surprising that he evolved because he is a really smart guy."

He was a father to Anders and Isak, and a father figure to the guys on his team. After his mom passed away in 2002, it gave him time with his dad to fix what had always been a complicated relationship. Over the years, he heard from football player after football player that Ron Nord had been the good cop on the Grizzly staff, balancing out the coaches who leaned the other way, that they loved the deep connection they had made with him, young men and mentor. "That was odd, because as a child I had a different relationship with my dad. He was pretty mean and harsh. He scared the death out of me growing up," said Nord.

Over the final decade of Ron Nord's life – he passed away in 2011 – father and son got busy making things right. "I saw a different side that I didn't know existed, different than my brothers and I had. We resolved a lot of things later in life after my mom passed and I got to spend a lot of time with him. We dealt with some stuff. I saw the part of him his athletes saw, that I didn't see growing up." If the Grizzlies were at home, the father was there from first serve to last. When the Grizzlies were on the road, there was always a post-match phone call to talk about it. "Our relationship changed. He was my biggest supporter. I love the fact he was involved. He was proud of what I was doing. Wish he could have been around when we had our championships."

Wait, Montana tennis and championships? Paired together? Do tell. The whole thing required one final notable change: Montana hired its first full-time women's tennis coach, Steve Ascher, in 2008. Nord had long had a lineup of assistants who took on the title of women's coach, but it was still Nord's program, it still took up his time and energy. Now he was all in on the men's program, and the team, already on an upward trajectory, took off even more, another South African providing the spark, Carl Kuschke. "Once word gets out that they love Missoula, love the program, they go back home and the word of mouth is huge. That started flourishing in the 2000s," said Nord.

International athletes tended to give the program a little something extra. The same month Kuschke arrived in town for the first time, he was at the UM courts hitting. Nord and Isak were there as well, playing on another court. Son asked father about the guy on the other court, the one with the beard and the muscles large enough to blot out the North Hills, the one crushing the ball. "That's my new freshman, Carl." Different times had arrived.

Montana finished one match out of first in 2010, alone in second in 2011. The 2012 team, with Kuschke and DeMarois as senior leaders? Loaded. Kuschke played No. 1, Mikolaj Caruk played 2, Andrew Warren, who would be the Big Sky MVP in 2014, played 3, Michael Facey played 4, Ethan Vaughn played 5 and Andreas Luczak -- did we mention Nord's recruiting now had him tapping Sweden, later Israel? -- played 6.

After a successful fall season, Kuschke and DeMarois made their way to Nord's office and told him, we think we have what it takes this year to get it done, to win a Big Sky championship. "He looked at us and said, okay, let's do it," recalled Kuschke. "It was such a simple statement. He allowed Ben and me to talk to the team. Everyone bought in and that was huge, Kris allowing us to take a little bit of a leadership role. It was probably his toughest year. We made him stay after practices and do a bunch of early-morning conditioning." Players as the engine, coach just guiding them down the right path, his hand light on the reins.

It was the new Nord. "He treated us like equals and not like a cog in the machine," said DeMarois. Atop Nord's list of rules every year was this: Life is not fair. Get used to it. The coach had lived it, had embraced it as a way of handling his own struggles. He made sure his guys did as well. He also trusted them to do the right thing. When they didn't, he expected them to make things right themselves, not rely on him to do the policing. He wanted a player-led team. This was no longer old school – coach barks the orders, players obediently respond, no questions asked – and it was working.

"Some of us had been seen out at the bars by someone he knew. Some of us may have been underage," recalled DeMarois. "When he met with us, he said, 'I'm going back to my office. If it was you, I expect you to run up to the M. I'm not going to keep track of it, but If you were part of it, do it yourself.' Then he left and of course the people who were part of it ran. He made it clear what he expected, but it was self-regulated. He wanted you to hold yourself accountable and responsible for letting others down if you did."

And he could be one of the guys when the moment begged for it. "On Josh (Smith's) first trip with us, he fell asleep on the plane next to Nord. We should have told him that was a mistake. Nord tied his shoes to the seat in front of him. We landed and he's trying to get out and his shoes were stuck. He started blaming everyone else. Nord was behind him snickering. That was the environment he built. We're here to be competitive and to win, but we're also here to enjoy ourselves and enjoy each other's company and be a team. In that way, he built a really cool culture. We had a good time, but, man, when it was time to work, we worked," said Kuschke, now living in Bozeman and working as the director of consulting for a software company. "He had such a good ability to keep it competitive but understanding where we were on our journey as men."

Montana's closest match in league that year was a 4-3 home win over Sacramento State as the Grizzlies went a perfect 8-0 in the Big Sky, 16-5 during the spring dual season, including an 11-match winning streak between March 24 and April 21. They had won their trophy, just like they believed they could. A 4-0 loss to the Hornets in the Big Sky championship match snapped their winning streak, and it hurt. It hurt bad. But Nord's words of wisdom came flooding in to sooth the post-match pain. Remember, it's about the path taken to get there more than it is the final stopping point.

"In the moment, it was incredibly disappointing but it doesn't cloud it too much for me," said DeMarois. "We had so much fun and Kris is big on it being about the journey more than it is the destination. The reality is that year was so fun." Kuschke added: "I remember Ben and me crying our eyes out. Nord was pretty emotional as well. He told us, just be proud of what you built. This one loss doesn't take that away. Those words I remember pretty clearly."

What they built, the returners took and ran with. The Grizzlies lost in the title match in 2013, then won the thing in 2014 with a straight-set victory over No. 1 seed Weber State, advancing to face mighty Oklahoma in the NCAA tournament. "We gave them a decent match. We were fighting. They didn't expect us to push them at any spot. You could feel that, you could see that when we started to put our teeth into a match and made them start to work at it. I was really proud of our effort," said Nord.

"He did an unbelievably good job. One thing you always want is to be on an even basis with all your opponents and I don't think they ever were because of the nature of facilities and funding," said Selvig. "He persevered through all of it and did really well. He was able to recruit and put together a championship team. It was a tremendous accomplishment. What a thrill that was." One could only hope that when Nord was presented the championship trophy in 2014, he got down on the ground and did 50 pushups. Just because. Probably didn't, you know, bad wrist and all.

That takes us to 2017. In the spring, Montana, the men's tennis team still competing under Nord, played in its fourth Big Sky championship match in five seasons. They had become a juggernaut. Late that summer, the Grizzlies' golf coach bolted less than a month before players were going to arrive on campus. Nord needed something different physically. His body wasn't going to be able to handle another season of tennis and he dreaded the idea of being a sideline coach. He wanted to be on the court, hitting with the guys, drilling them, the best way to get a feel for where they were, the best place to have one-on-one conversations. Would he consider turning his beloved tennis program over to assistant Jason Brown and filling in as interim women's golf coach? Just for the fall semester? He needed something different and the golf program needed him. It was the perfect match at the perfect time.

When his golf team opened with scores of 300, 299 and 296 in its first tournament under Nord, one of the best three-round totals in program history, Director of Athletics Kent Haslam jokingly sent Nord a text: Want the job permanently? He wasn't joking at all. Of course, it wasn't the same sport as it had been in the 90s, as Nord soon discovered. Coaches now spent the day on the course with their athletes, not playing a round of their own with their fellow coaches. On the tennis court, Nord always had his eyes on every player, knew how their matches were going, knew who needed his attention to get through a rough patch. On the golf course, his athletes were spread over a number of holes. "It was a new challenge for me. I was nervous about it. I had to learn a lot of things, particularly having five or six kids out on the course and being productive. You have to figure out how to get from here to there without interrupting play. A player might go nine holes without seeing her coach."

What he did was take his well-earned knowledge from a career spent coaching, of interacting with athletes, plus his new love of golf that he had rekindled in his own life, and apply it to a different sport. It worked. Treat the athletes as adults. Allow them to be involved, to make decisions, to feel part of where the program is going, where they are going. "I think it nurtures a culture of respect and trust. Knowing he trusted us makes you want to work harder for him," said Tricia Joyce, who got to spend four and a half of what will be five years as a Grizzly golfer playing under Nord. "One of the first things I noticed was his perspective and how he cared about you as a person as well as a golfer." Notice a trend here? Different sport, same Kris Nord. "I thought it would be a great experience to learn from him with all his experience and wisdom."

In December, he called it a career. The easy thing to do is focus on the big numbers, 42 years, x number of athletes coached, and use those to measure his reach, his influence. But it's the human stories, the lives touched and changed, that's the good stuff. "I call him Papa Bear," said Wing. "Being so far from home, there are people in life who will be stepping stones, people who really help you get to the next step. I was very fond of Kris. He treated his team like a papa bear. He took a very good interest in us. He'll always be special to me."

"Any student that had an opportunity to play for him, not only did he develop them to be better athletes, he set an example of how to develop personally outside of their tennis skills. What a special person," said Gianchetta, who was responsible for bringing Nord to campus so many years ago.

He'll never have a statue in front of the Adams Center, and that's fine with him. "He likes it that way," said DeMarois. "He loves it for the coaching, not the money or the fame. He's underappreciated from the general public, but people who played for him really appreciate what he did. We have nothing but thankfulness and admiration for what he did. I know people who have played at other places and it's 50-50 if they had a good experience or not. It's very rare to come across someone who didn't have a good experience with Kris. It was always so much fun, so much family."

His sons are in town. That includes Anders' daughter Marilyn, Nord's first grandchild. That will change a guy. "If you're lucky, you realize how much your parents loved you," said Robi. "I'll never forget our firstborn, maybe three weeks old, had him on the bed and the sun came in, oh my gosh, now I know how much my parents loved me. My father used to say, the sun rises and sets on you kids, meaning we were everything to him. I was lucky. My kids got the same great father. He was always there for his team and always there for us as a family."

Kris Nord now has the title and role of grandfather, and the time to do it right. He'll add his second grandchild soon. And he's digging it, relishing it, this new station in life. This one truly does match the anticipation. It lives up to the hype. "She thinks the sun rises and sets on him," said Robi, of Marilyn. "She goes crazy when she sees him. If I ever pull up without him, she's like, where's grandpa? She thinks he's cool and he think's she's cool, and oh my gosh."

He'll keep watching those elk, beating the computer at Scrabble, listening to music, going to his physical therapy sessions. He needs to get that back fixed or at least made serviceable. He's ready to mountain bike (without the daring-do and without the ridge-top pushups … we think?) and golf unfettered by work responsibilities for the first time in more than four decades. He's a competitor, a perfectionist, so he allows his mind to wander these days, to those who maybe didn't have the same experience as others while competing for him at Montana. It can eat at him if he lets it.

"The only regrets I have is not connecting with certain athletes for whom it didn't go well here," he said. "I always have to look in the mirror. I know there is a group of kids out there I didn't connect with. I wonder how I could have done it differently with them."

But that's looking at a glass that is 99.9 percent full and worrying about the 0.1 percent. No coach connects with every athlete. It's the nature of the profession. Some just slip away, not willing or able to be reached. We think the 2023 GoGriz.com Person of the Year is worthy of a pass on this one. Give yourself some grace, Kris Nord. You've more than earned it. There are hundreds and hundreds of former Grizzlies, an overwhelming chorus if you're willing to stop, sit still and listen to their voices, who owe their coach more than he'll ever know.

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Previous GoGriz.com Person of the Year winners:

2015: Emily Mendoza
2016: Jessica Bailey
2017: Colleen Driscoll
2018: Dante Olson
2019: Teigan Avery
2020: Karyn Ridgeway

University of Montana Athletics

Players Mentioned

Tricia Joyce

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