By MARK NELKE

Sports editor

John Drager coached just about everything there was to coach at Mullan High for decades — football, basketball, track and field — and also served as athletic director.

He drove his teams to games on a school bus, and he ran the local pool.

Drager, who died Saturday at age 81, was known as a master motivator — but he was also known to lose his lunch, as it were, before games.

"I remember him getting extremely nervous before games," said John Posnick, who played football and basketball for Drager at Mullan High, graduating in 1972. "He’d throw up in the locker room before games; he was so nervous.

"My senior year, we played Plummer in football, and he was so worried about how good they were going to be. We had a real good team … he was just in the locker room throwing up. He was so worried they were going to beat us. Hell, we were up 32-0 after one quarter, 50-0 at the half. I think we won 64-6, or something like that."

Drager attended Kellogg High for one year before transferring to Wallace, where he played football and basketball, and was all-league in football.

He went to Idaho on a football scholarship, and played basketball at North Idaho College before finishing up at the U of I.

Drager started his coaching career — a career that would span more than four decades — as an assistant to Norm Walker at Mullan. After they guided Mullan to a state boys basketball title in 1965, Walker left for Wallace and Drager took over coaching basically everything at Mullan.

As a football coach, he won 14 league titles, guided the Tigers to state titles in 1983 and ’84, and compiled a 229-51 overall record.

"Basically he could get kids to run through a wall. He was very good at motivating," Posnick said.

The football field at Mullan was renamed John Drager Field in 1996.

In basketball, he posted a career mark of 467-205 with the Tigers.

"He drove the bus every game we went to," Posnick said. "I don’t ever remember another bus driver."

Drager was inducted into the North Idaho Athletic Hall of Fame in 2003. He was inducted into the Wallace Athletic Hall of Fame in 1997.

Posnick went on to officiate basketball games for more than three decades. He got his (unofficial) start while on the junior varsity team at Mullan, when Drager would ask him to ref some varsity scrimmages, and scrimmages against the alumni.

"He basically got me started refereeing," Posnick said.

As if he wasn't busy enough, Drager managed the swimming pool at the Mullan Pavilion for more than 30 years.

"He coached everything, and he also managed the swimming pool at the pavilion," Posnick said. "He would come to school, 7, 7:30 in the morning; sometimes we’d have practice in the morning at 6. The pool hours were 7 to 9 (p.m.) so after practice he’d grab a bite to eat and then he’d manage the pool from 7 to 9, and he didn’t go home until 9 o’clock."

Services are pending.

"He was a character. He was one of a kind," Posnick said.