Column: Oran's Larry Boshell played unsung assistant role for decades

Note: Oran hired Paul Bucher to replace Mitch Wood as the school's baseball coach on Tuesday. You can read Chris Pobst's story on the hiring here.

Larry Boshell was coaching an AAU basketball team in 1992 when he got a call from Oran superintendant Jack McIntosh, whose son Dustin played on his team.

McIntosh told him the school had just hired a coach named Mitch Wood, and he wanted an assistant.

"I thought of you," McIntosh said.

Boshell agreed to meet with Wood, and their first conversation, as best Boshell can remember it, included Wood saying the school administration wanted Boshell to work as a volunteer.

"But I knew I couldn't expect you to be here every day if you weren't getting paid," Wood said. "So I got you $160."

It's a story Boshell tells with a little bit of sarcasm mixed into his trademark dry humor and one he told when he delivered the speech at Wood's Missouri Baseball Hall of Fame introduction speech.

As he was for much of Wood's coaching career, Boshell was cast in a supporting but pivotal role that night when Wood chose him to speak.

"He's a good guy," Wood said. "That's the one thing that I feel like I'll always try to keep around our program. I think that's why we have success with some of our programs is that not just coaching and everything -- we have some good people. He's a good guy."

Wood and Boshell coached at least one Oran team, and often two, together for 21 years, including the last 20 years Boshell served as an assistant baseball coach for Wood.

"I said long ago that I would do it as long as he was doing it," said Boshell, who despite that declaration only recently made his decision offical to follow Wood into coaching retirement -- at least from the high school ranks for now.

Boshell also served as Oran's track and field coach, assistant boys basketball coach, boys basketball coach, girls basketball coach and softball coach during his career.

At one point he said he was told the head baseball coaching job would be his next year if he wanted it, but eventually a number of factors led him to walk away completely, including a desire to coach his 9-year-old daughter's softball and basketball teams in the future.

"Honestly, about six, seven years ago we said if we ever won a state tournament, we'd get out of it as well," Boshell said. "So it all worked out, and it was time to go."

Of course, Wood, Boshell and the Oran baseball program won it's first state championship last month in what was the Eagles' 10th trip to the final four in a 16-year span.

It is exceedingly rare for one coach to stay at a school for 21 years, but for two to work that long is almost unheard of.

"I think the most important thing I've even done was be a buffer between Mitch and the players," Boshell said. "He's going to get on your butt, and I just make sure they understand that's part of it. I would always tell players, 'When he stops yelling at you or stops wanting you to do something more, that's when you need to worry because then he doesn't care about you, so you're done.'"

Wood agreed that Boshell's personality was as important to Oran's success as his skills.

"He was a big part of the good-cop thing," Wood said before laughing. "You know, sitting in the dugout with kids and kind of patting them on the rear when they needed it probably more than I did. It just worked out well. I don't know why, but it did."

Oran's Kody Moore, who just finished his senior season, said Boshell is one of the funniest people he knows and that he always lightened the mood.

"That's always how he opened up, but then he'd be like, 'But really, though,' and then he'd tell you and he'd teach you something about it -- or he'd try to teach something about what you did wrong or whatever, but it always started as a joke."

What Boshell is best at teaching, according to Moore, is the details.

"All my coaches taught me a lot, but he's the one that's more of I guess you could call a textbook coach," Moore said. "He went to quite a few camps and just learned stuff. He's actually read books and bought videos on his own, just looking and just basically learning the perfect swing, the perfect throw and all that. He helped me so much in winter as far the last four years. He knows all the fundamentals. He's got the game down so well fundamentally.

"But he's also so good because he can teach one kid that's maybe at this level, 'All right, you're getting the fundamentals down,' but then you get a kid that's maybe a little more advanced, say a senior that's been there four years, and then Bo, he can break it down even more. He just knows every little thing there is to know about coaching."

Boshell and Wood discussed decisions throughout every game they coached, and Boshell was the one who most often communicated decisions to players.

"He's a very knowledgeable guy on X's and O's. He knows what he wants to do," Wood said. "He'll tell you, I think, I've always held my assistants very high and accountable on ideas of what I need or what we want to do. I go with some of them things. I don't just listen and say, 'OK, whatever, I'm going to do what I want to do.' We really talk about stuff. I really take their thought process highly."

Moore couldn't help but laugh a little as he spoke about all his memories of Boshell and how hilarious it was to have "no clue what was going to come out of his mouth." But he got serious when it came to describing Boshell's importance to himself and other Oran baseball players.

"In other people's eyes maybe they see assistant coach then they see coach Wood as head coach, he's the main show," Moore said. "In a way he is, but really, and even coach Wood will tell you that Bo has done so much. He's done all kinds of things just to help Oran get back to that final four a lot of years. He has put in so much time and effort that a lot of credit can be given to him.

"Even this year for that state championship, a lot of credit that isn't given to him -- I guess that's what I'm trying to say -- should be given to him because he's been there all the time, and he's taught us as much if not more than coach Wood actually has."