TERRELL LESTER
Sports Editor
For the Otts — with Rick and Denise at the head of the class — education is the family business.
Together, they have some 60 years in education.
Rick Ott is the high school girls basketball coach at Inola.
Denise Ott is the high school counselor at Inola.
And from these roots, the family tree is branching out.
Three children, plus two spouses, have either entered or are preparing to enter the field of education. All five are coaching or planning to coach.
And there is a common thread — namely, Northeastern State — woven into this family tapestry of letters.
Lee Ott, Rick's son by a previous marriage, recently graduated from Northeastern State and has accepted a coaching and teaching position at Oklahoma Union, the consolidated school system in Nowata County. His wife, Crissy, played for Rick Ott at Claremore Sequoyah and is the head volleyball coach and assistant basketball coach at Oklahoma Union. She, too, graduated from Northeastern State.
The daughter of Rick and Denise, Amanda, is the head girls basketball coach and softball coach at Woodland. Chris is an assistant football and wrestling coach at Woodland. Both are Northeastern State graduates.
Derick is the third of the Ott siblings. He is a junior at Northeastern State and is on schedule to obtain a degree in education and follow in his father's coaching footsteps.
Rick and Denise Ott hold master's degrees from Northeastern State.
When they met in 1979, Denise was preparing for her first teaching job, at Fox, in Carter County, west of Ardmore. Rick, after a couple of years in college, was working in the oil fields.
“She was doing something that I wanted to do,” he said.
They married, she taught, and he enrolled at Southeastern State, an 81-mile one-way commute from Fox.
When Rick obtained his bachelor's degree from Southeastern in 1981, the Otts moved to the most northeastern part of Oklahoma. Denise took a teaching position at Welch, Rick took a girls basketball coaching job at Quapaw — 335 miles from Fox, he said.
After a year, he moved to Vinita to coach girls basketball and to launch a softball program. Denise remained in the classroom at Welch.
Eight years later, he was on to Claremore Sequoyah.
Denise, who put in 10 years at Welch, did not follow Rick to Rogers County for another year.
But when she did, they never moved from Rogers County.
Denise took a counselor's position at Foyil. After eight years at Sequoyah, Rick, too, moved to Foyil.
It was the first time the Otts had worked in the same school system.
Rick was there only two years before he set out for Tahlequah Sequoyah to coach girls basketball.
The Otts maintained their home in the Sequoyah area of Rogers County and Denise remained at Foyil.
Within two years, Rick was on the move again, taking his game to Inola.
That was seven years ago. Denise made the move to Inola a year later.
“The stabilizer through all of this has been Denise,” Rick Ott says.
“She's always said that education is something they can't take away from you.”
Denise and Rick Ott have been such staunch proponents of education, such incandescent examples of the benefits of education, that it should not surprise that their children would follow in what the coach calls “the family business.”
“That's all they know,” he said with a smile. “That's all they've ever been around.
“Education's not made me rich, but it's afforded me an opportunity to watch my kids grow up,” he said.
And the fact that they have grown up, and have chosen his profession for their own, makes Rick Ott a proud man.
“You've got to take a lot of pride in that,” he says.
“I get a little bit choked up about them because I am proud of my kids.
“Lucky or blessed? Denise and I have been both.”
Rick Ott was reared in Checotah and played basketball for Hall of Fame coach Truman Dixon — “a father figure to me.”
Through 28 seasons, Ott has won 470 girls basketball games. He's coached softball, volleyball, track, football, boys basketball, and baseball.
He never gave a second thought to coaching girls sports, he said, until he went in search of his first job.
At Quapaw, he was told the only job available was the girls basketball position.
He's been recognized as primarily a girls coach ever since.
He picked up valuable suggestions from another Hall of Fame girls coach, Ken Sooter, while Denise was teaching at Welch.
“He is one of the best people I ever had in my house,” Ott says.
“He had a positive influence on me. Just as Truman Dixon did.”
It is that legacy that Rick Ott is presenting to his children, and their spouses.
Amanda and Derick have spent considerable time sitting on the bench with their father in the days following their high school playing careers.
Ott says that Crissy, now his daughter-in-law, was perhaps the finest shooter he has ever coached.
His son-in-law, Chris, has been in the Inola system the last couple of years and has seen up close the work of Rick Ott.
The oldest of the siblings, Lee, entered the coaching field after considering other options. He brings to the profession a fresh yet finely tuned sense of his father's coaching acumen.
Rick Ott has anticipated meeting his daughter on the field of competition, but does not embrace the idea with open arms.
“If I'm going to play, I'm going to win,” he says. “She's got that, too.”
At 54, Ott would like to coach for two more years, at least. That would give him 30 years on the sideline.
That would also allow time for Derick to graduate and, perhaps, join Rick on the bench at Inola.
“That would be a big deal,” Rick Ott says.
The biggest deal, though, has already taken place.
Rick Ott and Denise Ott have illuminated the path they have walked together.
Now, their children are following that same path, walking in some formidable footsteps.
