“Tim Gordon gets a hug from Cheryl Thompson after coaching his last cross country meet Saturday.Matt Johnson / staff photoSaturday was a day of firsts and lasts for Tim Gordon.It was the first time the South Whidbey High School boys cross country coach had seen his team in a dogfight for the state championship. It was the first time that not one, but two of his runners — Braden Giswold and Bruce Hymas — were threats to win the individual championship on Pasco’s Sun Willows Golf Course.But it was also the last time he would be on the course as coach of the school’s boys cross country team. After nine years of building one of the best boys programs in the state, Gordon retired from coaching Saturday, closing the book on almost a decade of great running.Gordon, who was named the assistant principal and athletic director at Langley Middle School last spring, said he cannot both do his job and coach the team. He arranged to coach one final season, this season, in hopes of guiding what is seen as one of the best boys teams in Washington to a state title. He almost got that last week, when the Falcons tied East Valley Yakima for the team championship, but placed second by virtue of a tie breaker.That’s something he would not have missed, new responsibilities or no.I was lucky I got to do them both, Gordon said.As good as the present is, Gordon said he will always remember his first team of runners from 1992 with as much fondness as he has for the 2000 team. That first group, he said, was a rag-tag bunch that had talent, but was in need of good leadership.The program was not doing very well when I started, he said.Against the odds, the 1992 team almost made it to the 1A state meet. Then, as the team entered post-season championship play, Gordon’s number-five runner came down with chicken pox and could not run. Consequently, only one Falcon runner, Moses Tornga, qualified for the state meet. But that first trip to state was a good one for Gordon, as it directed him and his future teams down a winning path.Three years later, the Falcons achieved another first for their coach, qualifying as a team for the 1A state meet. The team of Ryan Morrisson, Jean Paul Carossi, Sean Mulcahy, Allen Sparks and Ryan Reed, qualified for the meet by just five points and wound up 13th as a team.Then things changed. South Whidbey High School became a 2A school. Then it became a 3A school. It took until 1997 for the Falcons to make it back to the state meet. That was the year Gordon received the biggest gift of running talent any coach could want, in the form of freshmen Braden Giswold, Brett Perkins and Bruce Hymas. The trio, who later became known as the Killer Bs, paced the Falcons into their first and only team 3A state race appearance.The Falcons managed 13th at state that season, the same as it did at the 1A meet in 1995. During the entire season it took to get there, Gordon knew his three Bs had potential. I knew they would keep developing, he said.He was not just a coach for the three boys or their teammates. At practice or at a pizza dinner before a big meet, Gordon was always part of the team’s fun. While staying at a hotel in Pasco for last week’s state meet, he could only stand helplessly by as his runners raided his hotel room for extra cushions and pillows to make enough sleeping room so no members of the team had to sleep in the same bed.What could I do? It was the the ‘Bs.’ he said.Bruce Hymas said Gordon’s easy going, one-of-the-guys attitude made running fun and probably kept many runners out for the sport who might have quit otherwise. Gordon also knows how to motivate runners.He says what we need to hear, Hymas said. It would not have been fun without Gordon as the coach. Brook Willeford, a 1998 South Whidbey graduate and a member of the 1997 state team, said Gordon was not just the coach, but a member of the team.He wasn’t so much the father figure that most coaches are. He was an older brother, playing along with our antics as long as they didn’t go too far.Both Willeford and Hymas agree that Gordon was a coach who could get the most out of his runners. Hymas said he would not have been able to place fourth at the state meet this season without Gordon’s coaching program.He knows what he’s doing, Hymas said.For Willeford, Gordon’s coaching went beyond just running.Tim Gordon was one of the biggest influences in my high school life at South Whidbey, he said.Gordon said he will not be a stranger to future cross country runners at the high school. He said he will continue to hang around the meets as the team’s most die-hard fan. Girls cross country coach Doug Fulton will take the helm for both teams next season. “