TREMONTON — The last 12 years have been filled with turmoil for Bear River High softball coach Calvin Bingham.

In 2005, he suffered a heart attack that required seven bypasses. In 2012, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer that he said was considered “extensive and aggressive” and required a radical prostatectomy. And then seven weeks ago (just a week and a half before the 3-A state playoffs started), his younger brother died of lung cancer.

Bingham, 69, has also had hip replacement surgery and back surgery over the last 12 years.

It would be hard to know any of that by just watching him. A mainstay at Bear River through all of it, Bingham won his eighth state championship last month.

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“I’ve always just been kind of an optimistic person,” said Bingham, who credits his wife of almost 47 years, Avon, and his assistant coaches. “I (have) never felt like I was picked on.”

Bingham could have really felt “picked on” this past spring when his brother James passed away from lung cancer. For the past 45 years, Bingham and his brother worked on a farm roughly 650-700 acres large.

“We had been together for so long that we knew what each person did (without thinking),” Bingham said. “He did all the combining and all the bailing, and I hauled the hay, and I drove the trucks when we were combining the grain. We knew what we were doing.”

Bingham’s responsibilities on the farm obviously increased with his brother’s passing, and it was right at the busiest time of the year.

“April and May, you’re really busy on a farm irrigating,” Bingham said.

Not to mention his softball team was primed for a run through the 3-A state tournament.

Bingham made it through.

“I’d get there about the time we were ready to leave (for a game) and (the assistant coaches would) have everything on the bus and ready to go,” Bingham said.

Bingham admits there were times he wondered how he was going to be able to finish out the softball season, but said stepping away was never an option.

“They had worked hard,” Bingham said of his players. “This was a tremendous group of young ladies, and I don’t know that I’ve ever had … a group of seniors that worked as hard as this group had. From the first (game) to the last, they worked really hard. (Quitting) was never a question. Never a consideration … I just knew that I was really busy.”

When it comes to getting things done, Bingham’s wife said he always finds a way.

“Anything he likes to do or wants to do, he just has the drive to do it,” Avon Bingham said.

The Binghams have six sons. Brad Bingham, the youngest, said he considers the value of hard work taught by his father to be his inheritance.

“The other night we were at my mom’s house, and they were talking about the farm … we said we don’t really care how this gets split,” Brad Bingham said. “(My mom’s) feedback was, ‘Well, I do because this is your inheritance.’ I told her, ‘Not really. Our inheritance is we learned how to work.’ Six sons, and every one has a master’s degree … I think every single one knows how to work.”

A LIFELONG PASSION

One thing Bingham has a drive for is softball.

Bingham recalls being 12 or 13 years old when he first started playing, and even then, he was determined. In order to guarantee himself a spot on any fastpitch team he may play on in the future, he taught himself how to pitch.

“I used to hoe beets and corn during the summer, and I would hurry home, and during lunch I’d hurry and eat and then go out and pitch against my grandfather’s garage,” Bingham said. “I drew a strike zone on the back of his garage, and I just practiced pitching for a half an hour every day while I was waiting for the rest to get done eating.”

Bingham went on to attend Utah State on a wrestling scholarship before going on a Latter-day Saint mission to West Germany. When he returned home, he transferred to Brigham Young University and got married. After graduating from BYU, Bingham taught at Bear River Middle School for 15 years before becoming an administrator for 23.

Through it all, the love for softball remained.

Bingham organized a men’s fastpitch league in Deweyville that he ran for 25 years with Roy Haramoto. Haramoto’s younger brother, Stan, has been an assistant coach for Bingham at Bear River ever since he started 17 years ago.

Bingham recalls playing against Roy High football and softball coach Fred Fernandes, Northridge High athletic director Dave Hoch and BYU assistant softball coach Kevin Jensen.

According to Bingham, one player, an orthopedic surgeon, would fly his helicopter from McKay-Dee Hospital up to Deweyville, land outside the outfield fence, play, then fly home to Cache Valley. Bingham watched another player, also from Cache Valley, throw a no-hitter. Bingham couldn’t remember if it was his 17th or 19th of the summer.

“They had leagues in Salt Lake. Larry Miller had a team … businesses used to sponsor teams and they traveled every weekend. They’d go to a different city and play ball,” Bingham said. “We used to go up to Twin Falls and play in the area tournament.”

Avon Bingham said that softball is her husband’s “time off.”

Bingham stopped playing fastpitch after his heart attack and has subsequently watched as overall interest has declined. He considers it a shame because when he saw young men play back when he helped run the Deweyville league, they enjoyed it.

“We had a lot of high school kids that would get on teams and play in that Deweyville league and they absolutely loved fastpitch softball,” Bingham said. “I think that’s one of the reasons (Bear River has) done well … is because fathers and grandfathers played fastpitch softball and know how exciting the sport is. They’ve encouraged their daughters to play.”

RETIREMENT

Bingham was originally planning on this being his final season coaching softball at Bear River. He actually informed the administration that it would be.

Then he became aware of plans to upgrade the Bear River softball facilities, including an announcer’s booth and a concession stand.

Bingham wants to see the project through and now plans on coaching for two more years.

“I don’t want to leave that burden to somebody else,” Bingham said. “They start it and I take off and somebody else has to finish it — I’m not going to do that.”

He doesn’t plan on being nearly so busy next year, though, because he hopes to rent out his farm.

“I’m old enough I want to slow down on the farm,” Bingham said. “We were just so far along this year to rent it out. We had everything planted. But my plan is to rent it out and do some things with my wife and coach softball.”

Contact Standard-Examiner sports reporter Ryan Comer by phone at 801-625-4267 or by email at rcomer@standard.net. Follow him on Twitter (@RyanComerSe) and on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/RyanComerSe/).