Kracher, Wildcat and Bobcat Hall of Famer, returns to help coach

A familiar face from days gone by is back on the sidelines at Columbia Falls sporting events. Steve Kracher, a Columbia Falls Hall of Fame athlete is helping coach Cary Finberg with the girls basketball team this season and helped coach the freshman football team this year as well.

Kracher moved back to Columbia Falls permanently in June after a long career in California coaching and being involved in sports programs in that state.

Kracher moved to Columbia Falls in 1969 when his father Cliff, came up from Anaconda to work at the aluminum plant here. His mother, Grace, worked at the Hungry Horse News and Kracher said he even helped out part-time at the newspaper. The family home was just down the street on South Nucleus and Grace would make Steve and his brother, Jim, lunch everyday during her own break.

Jim was the musician. Steve was the athlete. Under coach Harold Hughes, he became a star tailback for the Wildcats and in 1971, he helped lead the team to the state A championship against Havre.

The game didn’t go the Wildcats’ way — it was dubbed the “fog bowl,” because the fog was so thick “you couldn’t see the sidelines,” Kracher recalled during a recent interview.

The Cats relied on the running game.

“We were really old school,” he said. They played a double tight end, T formation, he said.

“We had about four plays,” he said. “But we ran them so well. We were flawless in running them.”

In his senior year, Kracher said the team missed a state championship berth by one point — they lost to Anaconda Central, 8-7. Kracher said they scored a touchdown that would have won, but it was called back on a penalty.

Back then, only three teams qualified for the playoffs. You had to either win the conference or be the in top two of the east or west. It alternated by year. The top team got a bye, the other two went to the playoffs, the winner of that game to the state championship game.

But that year, the east got two teams and the cats were second in the west and out of the playoffs.

Hughes also made Kracher play basketball.

One day he escorted the young athlete to coach Ralph Johnson’s office.

“Steve,” Hughes told Kracher. “You’re going to play basketball for coach Johnson.”

“But no, I ski,” Kracher pleaded.

But he relented and played hoops. It was one of the best things he ever did in high school, he said.

“I really enjoyed playing my junior and senior year,” he said. But Johnson quickly defined the role for his tailback, turned center. His role was defense, rebounding and playing the post.

“Kracher, don’t shoot anything but layups,” Johnson warned him.

One game he scored 12 points.

“Don’t think you’re a shooter now,” Johnson said with a smile.

In college Kracher was a gifted football player.

The 1975 graduate “will always be remembered as one of the greatest tailbacks from an era of Bobcat football when the program was known reverentially as ‘Tailback U.’ He won the 1974 and 1975 Big Sky rushing titles; was twice All-Big Sky, and was an All-American … He has the second-best single-season rushing total in school history, and three of the top 10 single-game rushing marks … His emergence as a consistent threat in Sonny Holland’s ground-oriented offense coincided with MSU’s return to the top of the Big Sky Conference,” the university notes in his 1996 Hall of Fame biography.

“I was fortunate to play at the time I did,” he said, noting that most programs focused on the run back in the ‘70s.

They also never lost to the Griz when Kracher was on the team.

He would be drafted by the Minnesota Vikings out of college. He recalled the Vikings had picked two other guys as well in case heralded running back Chuck Foreman did not sign a new contract.

Kracher went through about a month of training camp, but was cut when Foreman signed. His aspirations toward a pro career were over.

He would go onto coach at both the college and prep level in California and came back to Columbia Falls in 1995 where he was a coach, athletic director and assistant principal at one point. He coached Christopher Finberg in football, who is Cary’s nephew and the head coach of the boys basketball program today.

In the three years he was here he started the Wildcat Athletic Endowment Fund and he also hired Cary Finberg as the boys basketball coach.

He then moved back to California, where the last 10 years he was the equipment manager at California Polytechnic State University. The job also allowed him to coach prep high school football, as he had afternoons off.He retire din 2017, did some traveling and other things he hadn’t done before, like attend 17 big-name college football games.

All told, his coaching career spans 41 years.

Today, it’s good to be back home, where he’s now having fun helping coach the kids and grandkids of his friends and former teammates.

“It’s a cool thing to see,” he said. “It’s like watching a family tree.”

Kracher’s advice for budding athletes looking to have success at a higher level is a simple philosophy. It’s about hard work and self motivation to get your body where you can improve.

“Come early and stay late,” he said. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”