Krause: Dick Lynch to receive well-deserved tribute from Swampscott Wednesday

I grew up in Lynn in an era where — very often to our consternation — the local high school athletic brand had the word “Swampscott” tattooed all over it.The Big Blue were a genuine sports franchise unto themselves. Their football team was unbeatable and their basketball team hardly ever lost. And while many will remember those days and think immediately of the name Stan Bondelevitch, there are just as many who will tip their caps to one of the main architects of that golden era in Swampscott sports: Dick Lynch.Wednesday, at 7 p.m., the gym and field house at Swampscott High will be dedicated in honor of Dick Lynch. He certainly deserves it.Stan Bondelevitch?s talents were given more toward motivation. He could talk a bulldog off a meat truck, and he could get football players to run through a brick wall for him.Dick Lynch taught them what to do and where to go once they ran through the wall.Lynch was one of Bondy?s loyal lieutenants for 19 years, and during that time the Big Blue football team was 125-34, with eight undefeated seasons, seven Class “B” championships, and it won the first-ever High School Super Bowl in 1972.Lynch also spent eight years as the head basketball coach, and his teams were 119-37, winning four Northeastern Conference championships and the 1968 State Class B title. The Big Blue also won 59 straight home games during his tenure and had a 23-game winning streak in 1967-68.To add proper perspective to this, it should be noted that for three years, Bondy, Lynch et al had the great fortune to coach one Dick Jauron, who, by anyone?s measure, is among the finest athletes ever to play on the North Shore, any era. But those glory days began well before Jauron, and continued long after he graduated. And I submit that, Jauron and a few others notwithstanding, athletes don?t come out of the factory ready-made, and that Swampscott didn?t corner the market on the prototype.There?s talent … and then there?s the complete product. And Dick Lynch was a vital part of the fabric that turned all these kids — including, by the way, his son, Mike — into finished products that not only won football/basketball/baseball games but became solid, productive citizens when it was time to put the ball down and turn the equipment in.You look at so many of the young men Bondy, Lynch, Frank DeFelice and Co. churned out in the sixties and seventies, and you see that they?ve made their marks. Jauron was a head coach in the NFL. Mike Lynch has become perhaps the preeminent sports reporter/anchor in Boston. Billy Adams is a well-respected teacher and athletic administrator. Tommy Toner played professionally (as did Adams). Sandy Tennant is a major figure in the Massachusetts Republican party.A lot of the Swampscott players from that era had sons who also became athletic stars in their own right. And the legacy men like Lynch endowed continued through the 1990s, where men like Peter Woodfork, Todd McShay, Bill Ryan, Todd Kline, Matt O?Neil and others have become movers and shakers in their respective fields.Lynch?s impact has been felt throughout the Swampscott athletic program, from baseball (three years as head coach, 41-7 record, two league titles) to track as well as football and basketball. He is in the Massachusetts Basketball Coaches Hall of Fame, the English Hall of Fame (graduated in 1945), and Swampscott Hall of Fame. A 1950 graduate of Boston University, he was a Terrier contemporary of the late Harry Agganis.When he coached, Lynch was not what you?d call a coddler. He was demanding … but if he could survive coaching a future rock star (yep, Fran Sheehan, a founding member of Boston), it?s also fair to say he was secure enough to be able to coach all kinds of personalities.More important than any of that, Dick Lynch was/is a good guy. And one of the nicest things about this dedication is that he will be there to see it.