John Drager is so much of a legend in the Silver Valley that just looking at his biography on the North Idaho Athletic Hall of Fame website just blows your mind.

Drager attended Kellogg High for one year before transferring to Wallace, where he played football and basketball.

And he’s probably best known for his time as a coach in Mullan.

Who does that?

Drager does.

COACH DRAGER, now 81, impacted so many lives during his time as a coach over a span of four decades in Mullan.

“He was my coach when I was in junior high,” said Don “Pudge” Almquist, who is now in his second stint as Wallace High principal. “He coached us when I was a freshman and all the way through high school. I still have a great relationship with him.”

Almquist later went on to coach boys basketball in St. Regis, Mont., while serving as the school’s principal.

“When I coached, the last time I did it was over in St. Regis,” Almquist said. “I called John because I was frustrated because we didn’t have any talent on the team. We weren’t even scoring 20 points a game, so I called him and said ‘Hey coach, I’m really frustrated. We haven’t won a game and I don’t know what to do.’”

Drager knew.

“He asked me why I coach, and I told him that I love to share things with kids and help them grow as basketball players,” Almquist said. “He told me that sounds interesting, because it sounded like I was more worried about my record than I was teaching the game.”

That wasn’t the only thing that Almquist learned from Drager either.

“I moved in with him when I was a senior,” Almquist said. “He taught me a lot about being a man and being honest and truthful about things.”

As for playing on his teams, Almquist added it was all effort that Drager preached.

“He was the type of coach where you’d want to give 110%,” Almquist said. “We had to be a real, real short team in school. I was the tallest player on the team at 6-foot, and we still went to the state tournament and finished fifth. We had some great team players and he just stressed that team part of the game and the hustle, hustle, hustle. When I got into coaching, that was the exact same way I was.”

In 2003, the 1965 Mullan boys basketball team coached by Norm Walker and assisted by Drager was honored as a Legends of the Game by the Idaho High School Activities Association. When Walker left Mullan to coach at Wallace, Drager took over at Mullan.

Mullan won state 1A (then A-4) football titles in 1983 and 1984.

Walker and Drager remained close friends up until Walker’s passing in 2011, often times going to local restaurants in the Wallace area for coffee in the early morning.

They’d arrive so early that the owners gave them keys to unlock the door when they got there.

“When I was principal here before, I used to go up and have coffee with them,” Almquist said. “They’d be up there early and I’d be coming in from St. Regis. Because I was still working, I didn’t get to go every single day like they did. I wasn’t as full of as much B.S. as they were either, so I couldn’t go every day anyway. But you can tell a story about both him and Norm Walker every day and it would be new.”

In 2004, Wallace dropped into the 1A North Star League from the 2A Central Idaho League. It was the first year of the division split, with Wallace in Division I and Mullan in Division II. Naturally, in the first game as conference rivals, Drager and Walker represented their teams at the 50-yard line to flip the coin before kickoff of the game, both with smiles on their faces.

LIVING IN the Silver Valley, you run into people from time to time, and whenever I’d see John he’d always have that same smile on his face.

Didn’t matter if it was a good day, or a bad one. There he’d be, smiling and asking about how things were going.

While things aren’t going so well for him right now, my memories of him will always make me smile the same way as he did.

It was toward the end of his time coaching basketball when I began working as a sports reporter at the Shoshone News-Press.

Sure, he might have seemed a little intimidating to a young reporter coming out of college, with not much of a clue of how to do my job.

Drager called to report a score one night from a tournament in St. Regis.

“We’re playing tomorrow at 6 p.m.,” Drager said. “Mullan time.”

Hopefully that clock keeps going a bit longer for you, coach.

Jason Elliott is a sports writer for The Press. He can be reached by telephone at 208-664-8176, Ext. 2020 or via email at jelliott@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter @JECdAPress.