By Dawn Bowen
dawn@geringcitizen.com
Junior Alvarez is being recognized and awarded for his outstanding service for many years in the Gering Public Schools.
The Nebraska State Inter-scholastic Athletic Administrators Association (NSIAAA) has selected him as the 2009-2010 Outstanding Service Award recipient, even though he retired from the school system in 2006.
Alvarez came to Gering in 1974 as a math teacher and coach at Gering Junior High School. In the early 1980s he became the athletics director for the junior high. Later, in November 2002, he was appointed as activities director at Gering High School. Many former students remember him as their freshman football coach, girls’ basketball coach, algebra instructor or respected game official, among other roles he has filled.
Coach Tom O’Boyle, the current activities director at GHS, said Alvarez is the ideal recipient for the outstanding service award.
“Junior exemplifies exactly what the award is for,” he said, adding that Alvarez is well respected and was an outstanding representative for the community during the time he served at both the junior high and high school levels. “He was quite an ambassador for Gering,” O’Boyle said.
O’Boyle serves on the NSIAAA executive board that includes athletic administrators from across the state. He said the board unanimously selected Alvarez for the award based on his longtime commitment to serving young people in Gering and the positive influence he has had while serving as a coach, teacher, sports official and an evaluator of sports officials at the state level.
Alvarez said he was initially very surprised by the award since he has been retired from the school system for more than three years. He said he is grateful for the recognition. “I think it’s a great honor. I really do,” he said.
Originally from Minatare, Alvarez has spent most of his life in Gering. Athletics have always been a part of his life, Alvarez says. In high school he ran track and played football and basketball. He has also played semi-pro baseball. “I was always involved with some kind of athletics,” he said.
Alvarez graduated from Chadron State College in 1972 and spent the first two years of his teaching career at the former St. Patrick’s school in Sidney. In 1974, he came to Gering as a math instructor and a coach at Gering Junior High School. He earned his master’s degree in mathematics in 1980 from the University of Nebraska at Kearney.
Alvarez has served many years as a sports official, officiating at basketball and football games at the high school and junior college level, and later overseeing and evaluating sports officials for the state. “I enjoyed officiating and I really treasure that time,” he said. “I look back at my career and I’ve done a lot of different things.”
In the early 1980s when Alvarez became the athletics director at the junior high school, he quickly found that the position kept him quite busy, sometimes working more than 60 hours per week. But he said he thoroughly enjoyed the position and found that it was very rewarding. Coaching freshman football – and being able to coach his own son as a freshman – was a highlight of Alvarez’s career. “I’m very proud of the fact that I never had a losing season when I coached freshman football,” he said.
After he accepted the position as activities director at the high school, Alvarez’s focus was expanded as he began overseeing many activities including cheerleading, speech, drama, yearbook and music. In his career he has seen first-hand the positive impact that sports and activities have on students.
“There’s a lot of things you can learn about life in athletics and a lot of things you can learn from activities,” he said. “I think they are an important part of school.”
Balancing activities and sports with academics can be difficult for some students and for their parents, Alvarez says. Drawing from his own experiences in school – he played sports and was named academic all-American during high school – Alvarez has always worked hard to help students keep things in perspective. “Through the years I knew there needed to be a good balance between athletics and academics,” he said.
Alvarez made the difficult decision to retire in 2006 after learning that his mother had been diagnosed with cancer. He said he is grateful for the time he was able to spend with her during the three years that followed.
Some time after his retirement, Alvarez began serving as an adjunct instructor at Western Nebraska Community College. In January he began a full-time position at the college, teaching introductory and intermediate algebra as well as a college algebra class at night. He said he is fortunate to have attentive students in his classes who respond well to his attention-getting style.
“I’m a high energy person,” he said. “I get the attention of the students and they can’t help but listen, and I have some great kids in there. They’re really super kids.”
Alvarez says it is good to be in the classroom again. He said interacting with students and coaching them has definitely been a high point in his career.
When asked about the low points during his career, Alvarez says he reached his lowest point in the 1990s when his wife, Carla Alvarez, was diagnosed with cancer.Carla is a cancer survivor and works as a licensed practical nurse at Chimney Rock Villa in Bayard. They have two adult children, Scott Alvarez of Los Angeles and Tracy Alvarez Fuchs who works as a graphic designer for a firm in San Francisco but lives in Zurich, Switzerland. Both children are GHS graduates and both graduated from Stanford University. The Alvarezs have four grandchildren.
The NSIAAA plans to honor Alvarez at an awards luncheon on March 10 in Lincoln. However, the very dedication for which he is being honored may prevent him from accepting the award in person. The date conflicts with his evening algebra class at WNCC. Alvarez says his commitment to his students comes first. A family member will likely accept the award on his behalf, he said.