On Saturday, Dec. 15, Principal Scott Bacon was inducted into the Blue Valley Hall of Fame for his work as both a coach and an administrator at BV. Athletic council member Andy Unrein said Bacon’s induction was encouraged by both coaches and administrators on the committee.
“With Mr. Bacon, it was a fairly informal process,” Unrein said. “Everybody recognized it as something that needed to be done.”
Unrein said the criteria for nominating Hall of Fame inductees varies depending on the situation, but nominating coaches and administrators is decided by the committee.
“In Mr. Bacon’s case, he was inducted as much from the coaches’ point of view as from the administrators’ point of view,” he said. “Obviously, his role as a principal is the thing that everybody sees, but there was a time where he was a very, very good teacher and a very, very good coach here, too.”
Bacon was inducted during the Johnson County Classic wrestling tournament, an event that he helped launch when he was a wrestling coach.
“In ‘94 I had a dream,” Bacon said. “I wanted to develop a wrestling tournament at BV that would host all the Johnson County schools, and I wanted it to be called the Johnson County Classic. I just needed someone to run it. Dennis Ortman was a very smart guy. I shared my dream, and he said ‘I’ll run it. You design it, organize it, and I’ll run it.’”
Unrein said the event was the obvious choice because of its connection with Bacon’s coaching history.
“You want it to be memorable and worthwhile for the people that you present it to,” he said. “[The tournament] is something he always supervises every year, he’s very interested in it still, and it was a pretty natural decision to do that for him. It wasn’t an earth-shattering decision; it was just an obvious thing that we wanted to do.”
When Bacon began his coaching career in 1989, 16 boys made up the wrestling team. When he turned the program over to current wrestling coach Chris Paisley 13 years later, about 60 wrestlers participated.
“Wrestling is a very hard — physically and mentally — sport,” Bacon said. “It takes you to the edge a lot. You develop a bond that lasts a lifetime. I still get Christmas cards or emails asking to be a job reference. I think it’s a time they value.”
Administrators worked together with Bacon’s family to surprise him with the induction on the day of the tournament. Unrein said athletic director’s secretary Karen Kaman was instrumental in keeping the ceremony and the family’s attendance a secret.
“That was fun,” Kaman said. “The day of the tournament, I kind of snuck them in, and we had [Assistant Principal Bob] Whitehead keep Mr. Bacon busy. It went really well.”
Bacon said he felt both surprised and honored by the impromptu ceremony.
“I was totally shocked,” he said. “I like to think that I know what’s going on around here, but that’s certainly one instance where I had no clue. It was, needless to say, a very humbling and a very meaningful occasion.”
Kaman said that making Bacon’s induction a surprise made the ceremony much more enjoyable for the staff members present.
“Mr. Bacon always puts everyone else first,” she said. “He’s so humble he probably would’ve said, ‘Oh, let’s skip this whole thing.’ Our ability to do something for him and have it be a surprise made it special. It was finally our turn to do something for him after all he’s done for us.”
Bacon said he loves working at BV and hopes to continue working here for years to come.
“I’m a Tiger like crazy,” he said. “I’ve been at BV for 21 years, and there’s no place I’d rather be.”