Posted: Monday, February 27, 2012 10:26 am | Updated: 12:28 pm, Mon Feb 27, 2012.

He’s seen his athletes run enough cross country miles that it would probably equal an excursion to El Paso and back. He’s observed approximately 960 quarters of football and he’s watched some 6,720 minutes of basketball.

Dan McFarlane never imagined he’d be posting such impressive numbers but then he never imagined a coaching career would encompass 30 years and touch four decades all at one school.

He’s short in stature but tall in respect at Jackson Intermediate School, his home away from home since 1982 when then Jackson Principal Ben Lenamon hired him and Steve Prusz his coaching sidekick for these last 30 years on the very same day.

But Jackson Intermediate’s iconic coaching team is about to go their separate ways. McFarlane, 64, is making the 2011-12 school year his last one, anxious to begin retirement and spending more time with his wife Mary of almost 40 years and their two grandchildren in Tomball.

“That’s one of the things I’ll probably miss when I retire is my close association with coach Prusz. All good things must come to an end sometime. Steve and I came to Jackson on the same day. Steve and I are on the same page. It’s a shared responsibility on what needs to be done. Obviously, something’s meshing when you’re working side-by-side with the same coach for 30 years,” McFarlane said.

McFarlane, who has 38 total years of coaching beginning with eight in Galena Park ISD, has been at Jackson so long that he’s seen five principals come and go. He’s been at Jackson so long McFarlane has coached at two Jackson Intermediate schools. Oh, and he’ll be the first to tell you he likes the air-conditioned gymnasiums and lockerroom version of Jackson far better.

And he’ll also be the first to tell you he wouldn’t trade all these past days, weeks, months and years for anything else. He knew coaching at a junior high and only a junior high was his calling in life. Not even the lure of two job offers at the high school level has been able to pull McFarlane away from Wildcat Country.

After all, he has leaned on the memories and lessons of a special junior high coach in the early 1960s when he attended HISD’s Hartman Middle School to guide him in his day-to-day dealings with his athletes.

“In junior high school, coach William Turney always encouraged everyone to give their best effort win, lose or draw," McFarlane said. "That left an impression on me all the way to today. He was the perfect mentor. He was low-key. He just treated kids with respect and got the most out of everyone. He never yelled. He was kind of like E.F. Hutton. When he spoke, everybody listened. That left a real big impression on me.

"The more I got into coaching, I realized in order for a school district to have a successful high school program, you have to have a solid junior high program where the kids are taught fundamentals. I’ve tried to model myself after him in the way you deal with students and the way you deal with your fellow faculty members and the public in general."

Pasadena High School varsity assistant football coach Cirilo Ojeda used a stop at Jackson to prepare him for the 5A job and he recalled the valuable input McFarlane provided him.

“As long as he’s been there, one of the things you want from someone like that is to soak everything up like a sponge," Ojeda said. "That was my first job so he showed me a lot of the ropes to the ins and outs of coaching the game. I really learned a lot to the point where I felt confident making that move from the intermediates to the high school.

"He wasn’t just a coach; he was a teacher-type at all times. Whether he was in the classroom, PE or athletics, he always had that teacher’s role.

Between the chalk lines, he and Prusz have become the symbol of Jackson sports.

“He was a well-respected coach within the district, always a very pleasant adversary,” Park View Intermediate coach Elton Blanchard said.

“There wasn’t a whole lot that he wouldn’t do to see his kids succeed,” said Thompson Intermediate’s John Fowler, who is also retiring at the end of this school year, ending decades of service to the school district.

McFarlane’s long-time presence at Jackson has undoubtedly meant so much to the student-athletes because in north Pasadena life has the potential to be harsh in more ways than one.

“We have a lot of single-parent families or grandma or grandpa taking care of the kids," McFarlane said. "The kids have a lot of baggage nowadays. It’s not just Pasadena, it’s all over. Athletics is another tool for kids to be successful.

"Here at Jackson, we encourage every kid to participate. At the same time, they’ve got to meet the standards of the school and the district. The value is the student learns about himself and with a little work, he can be successful.

“The junior high kids need all the mentoring they can get. That’s why I stayed where I’m at. One of the problems we have today is when I came to Pasadena we had a group of men who were basically the same age. We were all baby boomers. We all pretty much had the same idea that we were where we needed to be and provide that structure for the junior high kids.

"I don’t know if that would ever happen again. We see so much turn over now. I’m not sure we’ll ever see that point of stability."

As for athletic highlights, McFarlane says although Jackson rarely defeats Beverly Hills in football, perhaps his favorite memory is the 1998 season when both the eighth grade A and B teams won the district title and the A team had to go through Beverly Hills to do it. After a 15-14 win very early in the season over the Bears, the Wildcats came back in the title contest and won convincingly 38-14.

His second favorite memory occurred the year before when things weren’t going well.

“We didn’t win a football game, we didn’t win a basketball game and we weren’t very optimistic about our chances in track but that particular group could run long distances," McFarlane said. "We had a young man by the name of Kenneth Thornton. His nickname was Cooter. He took charge of that group. He dedicated that group to winning. They gave us everything they had in football and everything they had in basketball, they just didn’t have enough to get over the top. But they all had cross country bodies.

"That was back in the old Jackson and they got together in the neighborhood and ran every Saturday and Sunday. It was a very successful group of kids.”

His third were the two years that a future Summer Olympics gold medal winner walked the halls of Jackson Intermediate.

Kelly Willie attended Jackson from 1995 to 1997, before transferring to Houston Sterling High School where he was named Nike’s High School Athlete of the Year in 2002. From there, it was a scholarship to LSU where he was a four-time NCAA All-American in the 400-meters (indoors and out).

After his sophomore year at LSU, he anchored the United States’ 4 by 400 relay team at the Rome Summer Olympics that won the gold medal in 2004. By his senior year in 2006, he was ranked seventh in the world, fifth in the U.S.

“He had track potential all over him," McFarlane said. "He wasn’t too fond of football. I told him to just run fast and nobody would catch him. He set the 100-meter and the 200-meter record in the eighth-grade season. You don’t get a chance to coach a potential gold medal winner every day."

McFarlane recalled other names like Wes and Zach Berridge, Cedric Andrews, Armando Gonzalez, Rufus Bias and Edwin Flores, Jackson athletes who went on to feed Pasadena High School’s football program and fed it well with all-district accomplishments.

With anywhere from 130 to 150 seventh and eighth-grade students becoming Jackson athletes in any given year, it means that McFarlane has personally touched the lives of 4,500 youngsters over the 30 years. That’s the equivalent of every male and female student at two Class 5A high schools with a little left over. And not one has ever been allowed to throw in the towel.

“Quitting is not allowed here," McFarlane said. "My dad was a real big proponent that if you started it, you finished it. Quitting is the easy way. I’ve preached that to the kids. No matter how hard it is, give it your best effort. If you can look me in the eye and say you gave it your best, that’s all I can ask for. I don’t ask for anything more than that."

No doubt, McFarlane’s had his share of days and wondered if it’s all been worthwhile. But if as dedicated a junior high coach as this man has been, he’ll look back over his 30 years and answer with an emphatic yes.

“Building a relationship with a kid is the most important thing you can do," McFarlane said. "The kids have to feel you’re genuine. If they don’t feel you’re genuine, they won’t participate. They can read through it, pretty quick. I’ve told my athletes here at Jackson that my door is always open. If they need to come and talk, man-to-man, come on in. If I can’t help, I’ll find someone who can. That’s what I mean by genuine, that your concerned about them. Kids respect that. It stays with them forever."

Just like it stayed forever with McFarlane and his junior high coach so many years ago.

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Jackson coaching icon nearing end to decades-long career