A Sunday Read: Remembering Prentice Lenz (1971-2024), a farmer for all seasons and a coach for the ages

By HOWARD TSUMURA, VarsityLetters.ca

ABBOTSFORD — In the parlance of his profession, Prentice Lenz tilled every inch of a basketball court with the same level of discipline, ingenuity and faith he practiced every time he’d crouch to put his hands in the earth.

Farmer. Family man. Father figure. 

He was all three of those in ways in which each bled its borders into the other.

And, of course, he was a basketball coach.

The kind who, for those who saw him as a player, could marvel at for the ways in which his seemingly-insatiable competitiveness and uncommon physical strength seemed never to coalesce into all of the usual coaching cliches.

Instead, he was even-keeled, with a vocal presence which while never straying from the straight line of the truth, was somehow always inflected with what could only have been a by-product of his own imbedded optimism.

Yet on the final Saturday of November, while spending recreational time out in nature as he so often loved to do, Lenz passed suddenly at the age of 53, survived by his wife Carla and their six children.

From the moment he first donned an MEI Eagles jersey in the mid-1980s, through a university career which began at Simon Fraser and extended to points beyond before finally coming full circle in the same cradle of his eastern Fraser Valley youth, he seemingly melded his careers as a farmer, P.E. teacher and basketball coach into one entirely holistic existence, with each of the three seemingly always enriching the other two.

When you ask some of those who knew him best what he ultimately stood for every time he set foot on the home ground of Abbotsford Secondary School — where even more than teaching P.E. and coaching Panthers’ basketball for parts of the past two decades, he made the gymnasium a safe haven for youth to gain an empowering life ballast — that answer comes without hesitation.

“Prentice was incredibly intentional with every conversation that he had… so he was present, he was there and he made time for every student, every kid,” said Mike Lee, the current MEI senior boys head coach and longtime next-door neighbour of the Lenz family in Greendale, one of the oldest farming communities in Chilliwack.

“He had a heart for Abbotsford (Secondary) being kind of an inner city school, he had a heart for every kid and all the people there,” continued Lee. “And what he exemplified with his own kids was such an encouragement to me as a father, and not only what he did, but to to see how much work he did on that farm every day.”

“My office looks directly out at their house, and my wife (Leigh) wrote a post about how our view is never going to be the same,” added Lee.

In part, it read: “…for over a decade we have been neighbours and shared the property line, one which has always felt like an open door blessing. We’ve shared with each other much:eggs, blueberries, veggies, machinery, some good conversations and laughs, our kids and the hoop.”

And it was on that farm that Prentice and Carla Lenz’s children first learned what teamwork paired with an industrious ethic meant both at home and out in the world at large.

“The kids would be up early every morning picking berries and taking care of the farm, and so that work ethic was second to none,” said Anthony Beyrouti, the head coach of North Vancouver’s Argyle Pipers who coached Lenz’s daughters Marin, Malia and Sorrell through his VK Basketball club program.

“It was about putting in time, the real nuts and bolts, and that is the farmer’s mentality,” he continued. “You have to work to produce the crops, and it was the same with your game.”

That sentiment is something so many of Lenz’s own teammates have, in reflection, also shared in the days since his passing.  

One of them was David Munro, who had come out west from Ontario and was his teammate at Simon Fraser for a brief amount of time during Lenz’s sophomore 1990-91 season, one which was ended prematurely after he suffered a serious knee injury early in the team’s preseason schedule.

“He had a powerful zest for life,” said Munro, these days the faculty programmer at the Douglas College Sports Institute. “We saw that in basketball, but we saw it in study hall, when we were training with our weight-lifting. I won’t say his personality was larger than life because he was a humble person. But if you were in his corner, you were in his corner. And I could see he would have been that and more as a husband and father.”

“…HE COULD WILL US TO VICTORY”

My first memory of the very first B.C. senior boys high school basketball championship tournament I ever covered as a journalist came in March of 1987 at the PNE Agrodome in Vancouver.

I was all of 23 years old, not only lacking knowledge of the game but anything that even resembled what I have now come to treasure as perspective, the gift you get for hanging around the courts with a notepad and voice recorder at age 61.

And it’s that gift of perspective which only serves to deepen the appreciation of what I saw over those four special days almost 38 years ago.

There were the incredible Richmond Colts, the Super Colts coached by Bill Disbrow with their Grade 11 stars Ron Putzi, Joey deWit and Brian Tait.

There were the Lord Byng Grey Ghosts of Vancouver with a kid named Jason Leslie who was named that year’s Best Defensive Player.

And there were the Centennial Centaurs from Coquitlam, with its big man Cam Aronetz patrolling the paint like some kind of cartoon super-hero, and its head coach Richie Chambers, a man who still puts on a suit and tie every time he coaches a high school game.

But I’ve never forgotten the first time I saw Prentice Lenz come off the bench for the Mennonite Educational Institute Eagles.

If you’ve got that season’s official program, you won’t find Lenz listed on the roster or pictured in the team photo.

And that’s because he spent the entire season with the Eagles’ junior varsity, helping them finish second at their provincial championships before being called up to join the seniors at the Big Dance.

None of that has ever been all too rare, yet back in the mid-to-late 1980s, with the internet not even a rumour to the general fan base, Lenz could not have arrived at the provincials as any more of an unknown if he had tried. That week at the ’87 provincials he felt, to me, like Clark Kent one second, then Superman the next.

Yet all along that was his charm.

Prentice Lenz was no giant in terms of his actual stand-against-the-wall height which was listed at an even six feet, yet when the youngest player on the team heard his name called to come off the bench in MEI’s opening round 88-62 win over the Steveston Packers, none of that mattered.

All that did was his presence.

He was country strong, or better yet, eye-test strong… broad shoulders with rippling muscles through the upper arms and torso, with pork chop sideburns to boot.

Lenz scored just six points in that game, but from that point moving forward, you might just as well have called him a veteran.

He’d would lend his able assistance to Eagles’ super-talented senior centre and tourney MVP-to-be Paul Chaffee, helping to lead MEI into the B.C. title game against the Richmond Colts.

And although the Eagles lost that game 75-70, history now shows it to be one of the best efforts any team turned in against a Richmond team which would go on to repeat the next season, its two-season run regarded by many as the most dominant such stretch in B.C. boys high school basketball history.

“Prentice had strength beyond the other players,” remembered Arnie Dick, the legendary MEI coach who at the age of 68 now has a grandson, Noah, playing on the Eagles’ Grade 8 team.

“He didn’t grow as much as the other players from Grade 8 to 12, but he had a will… a competitive will that nobody else I ever coached had. He could will us to victory. He could play through things, like an ankle sprain, you’d just tape him up and he’d get back out there and just, you know, dictate.”

Derek Welsh, who would go on to lead Pitt Meadows to the 1989 top-tiered B.C. senior boys title as the team’s point guard under the late, legendary head coach Rich Goulet, would later become a backcourt mate of Lenz’s at Simon Fraser after being a part of then-rookie head coach Jay Triano’s first-ever recruiting class atop Burnaby Mountain.

Yet when it comes time to recounting his favourite Lenz memory, Welsh steps back into the time machine for a trip back to the 1984-85 season.

“My first one, and it’s probably the most vivid, is back in Grade 8, because we are young Grade 8’s not long into basketball and I remember Rich Goulet was our coach and we travelled out to MEI,” related Welsh, now the Director of Finance for Mission Schools.

“There’s this guy on the other team who is just a man among boys and it was … we’re out there playing and not only was he twice as large as any of us, muscular and put together, but then all the skill,” Welsh said of a then-13-year-old Lenz. “I couldn’t believe it. We were just in awe, and that was for all of our team. Playing against him for the first time, I guess ‘scared’ is probably the word that comes to mind. I’d never seen such a great athlete before.

The two would eventually become teammates at the next level, but for the rest of their high school years, it was almost like Lenz was just waiting around the corner, even when the sport wasn’t basketball.

“A few of us played some soccer in Grade 12 and we put together a team and sure enough, who do we see in our senior year? We play against MEI and he’s out there on the soccer field and he’s dominating out there as well. Not only did we have to worry about him on the basketball court, we had to worry about him on the soccer field too.”

HOW A BASKETBALL DAD INSPIRES

Prentice Lenz and the former Carla Hooge were both star basketball players in their shared senior season at MEI in 1988-89.

Later married, their six children have all been brought up in the game from oldest daughter Sienna, 24, who spent one season at SFU before finishing her career stateside at NCAA Div. 2 West Texas A&M, to her sister Marin, 22, who originally signed with Calgary and currently plays at The Masters University, an NAIA school in Santa Clara, CA, to her brother Brandt, 21, who plays for Manitoba Bisons, to his sister Malia, 19, who suits up for NCAA Division 1 Vermont, to her sister Sorell, 15, currently injured but rehabbing while attending Langley Christian, to her brother Trask, 14, just getting started with the Sardis Falcons.

While coaching his children and working with a staff that included his longtime assistant Elmore Abraham, Lenz led the Abbotsford senior Panthers team to girls Triple-A titles in 2020 and 2023.

And boy, did two of his daughters play major roles in those championships.

Marin Lenz was the 2020 tourney MVP after scoring 44 points in the team’s 85-77 win over Kelowna’s Okanagan Mission Huskies.

Malia Lenz was the 2023 tourney MVP after scoring 41 points in the team’s 67-64 win over the St. Michaels University School Blue Jags of Victoria.

Malia was also a part of the 2020 title as a Grade 9 player.

There is no better way to sum up the dedication Lenz had for both girls and boys basketball than to read the story written by Varsity Letters reporter Gary Kingston who covered the Panthers 2023 B.C. final win, one which was the first ever played at our provincial girls tournament under the auspices of an entirely female officiating crew.

Afterwards, Kingston asked him about it.

“I think it’s phenomenal for women,” said Prentice Lenz. “I mean, I have four daughters so I’ve promoted the fact that women should be at the forefront of anything they want to be. The fact that there were three of them and it was the first time, it was a pretty special thing to be a part of.”

Sienna also left her mark on the tournament as a first-team all star in 2017 and 2018 for Abbotsford. In 2017 she helped lead the team to a third-place finish at provincials.

It is truly a basketball family, one that isn’t complete without mention of perhaps its strongest branch.

Lenz’s sister is Juanita Rowell, who alongside her husband Darren, coached their children Ty, Tavia and Tia at Walnut Grove Secondary School.

And coach Prentice Lenz’s dedication to girls high school basketball did not go unnoticed.

Simon Dykstra, the former North Surrey star who later coached the Kitsilano senior boys to back-to-back top-tiered Triple-A titles in 2001 and 2002, was an SFU senior in the fall of 1989 when Lenz joined the then-Clan atop Burnaby Mountain for his freshman season.

At around the time his oldest daughter Marah was beginning her high school career at Vancouver’s Sir Winston Churchill Secondary, Simon Dykstra happened to bump into his old teammate Lenz at the B.C. girls high school all-star game.

“He was with his oldest daughter, and so I was just talking to him and he just inspired me knowing that you could switch,” said Dykstra, who by that time was a seasoned high school and college coach, but only on the boys and mens side. 

“I was a little hesitant to switch over to the girls side but to see the success he built at Abby was definitely an inspiration that you could do it and you could navigate all of the other stuff that comes with coaching your daughters in school as you teach,” continued Dykstra, who coached both Marah, now a junior at D1 Montana State, and Louise, now a freshman at D1 Northern Colorado.

“It’s a balancing act but he definitely showed me that it was possible, and not only possible but you could turn it into a strength. And, you could have those conversations in the car (before and after games). You could have those moments together.”

HE GOT THE SNOWBALL ROLLING

Everyone who knew Prentice Lenz can point to the different legacies he left over his extended coaching career, one which began in began first at Langley Christian School, then opened a quarter-century plus run at three schools in the City of Abbotsford.

Lenz came to Rick Hansen Secondary in the fall of 1998, spent a few years at Yale Secondary beginning around 2002 and then settled at Abbotsford Secondary where the lengthy duration of his enduring tenure was equalled only by lengths with which he would go to insure the best possible experience for any and all of the school’s students.

In the eyes of Dan Kinvig, the talented wordsmith who spent 10 years (2005-14) reporting on the city’s local sports scene, including the Panthers, while working at The Abbotsford News, a big part of Lenz’s overall legacy was cemented by his indefatigable vision to restore what was the school’s tradition-laden but quietly fading annual senior boys basketball invitational tournament.

The Abbotsford Snowball, in its heyday, was the most organically nurtured outlier of a community gathering the city had ever produced.

“I think it’s fair to say that when Prentice arrived at Abby Senior, there wasn’t a whole lot going on for senior boys basketball,” said Kinvig, still an avid supporter from afar of the city’s high school basketball teams, as well as the Canada West’s Fraser Valley Cascades where he served a lengthy stint as that university’s sports information director.

“I think that their entire boys and girls basketball program was definitely far in the back seat to the Yales and Mouats and MEIs of the world in Abbotsford.”

Yet in the care of this hoops farmer, the Snowball’s figurative home soil was rejuvenated, producing what has proven to be a sustainable crop for the past 17 seasons and counting.

“I believe this is going to be their 63rd or 64th year,” continued Kinvig of the event, this season set to run Jan. 15-18, which will seem surreal without the presence of the man who consistently shied away from its centre stage, but whose name can’t help but in some way be forever embedded with both The Snowball and the gymnasium, the latter of which has returned to its status as the school’s key point of social gathering.

“The Snowball has existed since the 1960s, but they went through a bit of a lull with it,” continued Kinvig, whose own daughter is part of the Abbotsford-area high school hoops scene now as a Grade 8 player at MEI.

“What Prentice did is he brought it back to life,” continued Kinvig. “He had a vision for it, he said ‘Let’s make this thing a huge community event like it was in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.”

With Lenz spearheading an effort supported by other teachers and the school administration, he went out into his community and fund-raised enough sponsorship dollars to annually fly in, round-trip, an elite U.S. high school team.

“I know the very first year they did it, Prentice came to me and he said ‘Dan, can you help us? We want to make this a huge community event. Can you help us hype this up?’ I said ‘Absolutely.’”

Articles began appearing in The Abbotsford News, like the first one in 2008 on all of the NCAA Div. 1 prospects on the Williamson High team from Mobile, Alabama.

That season, the lifeblood had returned and the gym was once again chalk full of fans.

Another year, Lenz and the Panthers flew in the Fairfax team from Los Angeles, and when they were taken on a tour at Grouse Mountain, the visiting coach was floored by the experience and even said that for some of his players, it was the first time they had seen snow.

“It’s still packed houses, and Prentice created something that was almost like the United States,” Kinvig said of how rabid and passionate fan bases are for high school hoops south of the line. “It’s that rare window where you get that glimpse of how special it could be if we all got as excited about our local sports

“Prentice was trying to create something special and memorable for his student-athletes and to me, it’s my most special memory of him. Talk about humility. And he always encouraged me to a great degree. I felt very appreciated with what was a small role that I was able to play there.”

THE HARDCOURT BLUEPRINT OF PRENTICE LENZ

What kind of a basketball player was Prentice Lenz?

By talking with four men, all of whom either played alongside him or coached him, a focused snapshot emerges.

We will start by re-visiting the Final Four at the 1987 B.C. senior boys high school’s top-tiered championships (then called Double-A in what was a two-tiered province).

In the semifinals that season, just three games into his official senior varsity career as a 6-foot Grade 10 guard/forward, Lenz and the MEI Eagles clashed with the aforementioned Centennial Centaurs for a berth to the B.C. final.

“It’s one of the games I remember the most in that tournament,” recalled MEI’s Dick. “They had the post guy (Cam Aronetz) and they got the ball into him, and I said ‘We got to take that away’ and Prentice understood how to play. (Paul) Chaffee played behind (Aronetz) because we didn’t want to get him into foul trouble.

“Prentice understood how to drop down and when to (intercept) the pass, and he made so many interceptions from the wing down to the post, and we didn’t let them get the ball in to the block” said Dick of entrusting a kid still a month shy of his 16th birthday, who had virtually no senior varsity experience and was playing in an era in which club basketball did not exist, to accept a seminal role in a game where a B.C. finals berth hung in the balance.

It worked.

MEI beat Centennial 60-52, and almost 38 years later, you can tell how truly memorable that moment was for Dick, because it’s just as the newspaper reports read the following day.

Wrote The Vancouver Sun’s Harold Munro: “…grade 10 sensation Prentice Lenz came off the bench to intercept three passes in the last five minutes as Centennial tried desperately to get the ball inside to Aronetz.”

Added Lenz to Harold Munro in that same story: “I just try to be physical and get the job done. Their size scared me, we don’t see anything like that in junior.”

Additionally, Munro, these days the Editor-in-chief of The Vancouver Sun and The Province, wrote that Lenz bore an uncanny resemblance, in both playing style and facial appearance, to the young Edmonton Oilers superstar Mark Messier.

Lenz’s toughness, his coachability and his hardwood IQ were ready to take him to the next level at Simon Fraser under then-rookie head coach Jay Triano, who of course has gone on to pioneer coaching paths for Canadians through what is now a three decades-long career in the NBA. Triano is currently the associate head coach of the Sacramento Kings.

And although the record-keeping is a little dodgy, Lenz’s post-secondary career spanned a total of six seasons at three different schools from 1989-90 to 1994-95.

It started at Simon Fraser, for the program now known as the Red Leafs but back in his day, the Clan.

Lenz was part of a Triano recruiting class heavy on B.C. talent including point guard Welsh from Pitt Meadows and the late RCMP corporal Dean Adams, an off-guard from Maple Ridge Secondary. 

The returning members of the SFU roster Lenz joined in that fall of 1989 was also heavily home-province in background, all brought to the program by the late head coach Stan Stewardson, including forward Dale Dergousoff of Trail’s J.L. Crowe Hawks and the offensive rebounding machine Andrew Steinfeld of Langley’s R.E. Mountain Eagles.

That roster also included the smooth and ever-dangerous scorer Craig Preece of the North Delta Huskies.

And to Preece, there was so much to reflect on the way Lenz survived and thrived despite being undersized for his position as a swingman at the university level.

“You compare rookies coming in, myself and most guys  you know, physically, we are so far behind,” began Preece. “I know my freshman year, I was the youngest guy, physically. Strength-wise, I was just so far behind. And then you have this kid come in with a full beard as a rookie and he’s the strongest cat on the court. And he’s the smallest guy height wise. Just a bull.”

That is where the ingenuity and adaptability Lenz carried at every subsequent stop first began to manifest itself.

“For me, when I think of Prentice, I think of how basketball is played now where it’s bump, shoulder first, make contact on offence,” added Preece. “You want to make contact before the defence. Like, he was before his time with that. That’s what he did. That’s how he got to the rim.”

Lenz was also a shooter with range, but what Preece describes was often times followed or improvised upon in some fashion with a skill-set Dick specifically remembers from his high school days at MEI.

“He had these pump fakes where he could get down in the key… he would pump fake, pump fake, and then he had this kind of falling fadeaway shot after those pump fakes to get the ball over those taller guys down there. I mean, he had a repertoire.”

Many were unsure all of that would translate to the NAIA level, which back in the Lenz’s day was very easily comparable to NCAA Division 2 of today, but with a lot more physicality.

“But it did (translate),” Preece summed. “He competed so hard on defence that it didn’t matter if he gave away some size. He had success. It was just his will to compete. That and his strength… he was just a unique guy.”

In that 1989-90 season with the Clan, he played in 34 of the team’s 36 games (SFU went 10-8 in Dist. 1 play) as a rookie on a team filled with veterans, averaging 5.0 points and 2.5 rebounds per game.

“He came in and he looked like he was 23, already built, prepared by his farm work, and he loved the three-ball,” remembers Dykstra. “He was a bit ahead of his time. What I respected about him was that he had a poise and maturity coming in. I was an older guy at the time, but right away he showed he had the mental edge for hard work.”

Yet his teammates’ memories fade pretty quickly after that, because very early the next season, in 1990-91, Lenz blew out his knee, thought to be in a preseason game against Victoria, and wasn’t around the group much the rest of the campaign as he re-habbed and began to plan his return.

But that’s where the most unknown part of Prentice Lenz’s career takes place, one which so clearly illustrates how he leaned on those he knew to be in his corner.

In the summer of 1991, while Lenz was still re-habbing that knee, Stan Peters, known to many as the head coach of Langley’s Trinity Western Spartans men’s basketball team from 1999-2000 through 2007-08, was coming off a silver medal at the CCAA national championships where he coached the men’s team, at Briercrest College in Caronport, Saskatchewan.

Peters himself had spent time living in the eastern Fraser Valley in the 1980s after moving there with his wife Lori, a former Chilliwack high school hooper whom he had met during their playing days on the men’s and women’s teams at Briercrest.

Lori Peters had spent her high school days at both Chilliwack Junior and Senior secondary schools, being encouraged to pursue a basketball career by one of her teachers, a man named Frank Lenz, who was also her Sunday School teacher. It wasn’t long before Lori began to babysit Frank and his wife Lorraine’s youngster, a boy named Prentice.

Over a decade later, when Stan and Lori Peters moved to the eastern Fraser Valley area, Stan Peters had developed a passion to become a coach, and thus with Prentice growing into a star at MEI, often were the times when he would watch the now fully-grown child his wife had once babysat play the game with such passion and abandon.

And so through his wife Lori, Peters and Lenz became friends, and when Lenz began contemplating a change of scenery following his year of injury rehab at SFU, he imagined that while Briercrest was a place far from home, it could also be the perfect haven to get his health and his game back on track.

Right around that time, coming off his team’s silver medal at nationals, Peters had taken his team to the then-USSR on a five-week tour through Athletes in Action. It was during that trip that Peters met and became friends with one of the most connected people in all of Abby hoops, Dave Klassen, who had served as AIA’s trip leader.

“He mentioned to me that Prentice could be looking for a fresh start, so I told Dave to tell Prentice to give me a call,” said Peters of Klassen, the father of Marek Klassen, the basketball international who starred at Yale Secondary and later the Fraser Valley Bandits.

“(Lenz) phoned me in August (of 1991) and asked what I thought of him coming to Briercrest for a year to rehab and play for a year… I laughed and told him to stop messing with me,” said Peters.

But Lenz did show up, hungry for his health and eager to play.

“Prentice really took advantage of the opportunity and worked incredibly hard to come back from his injury,” remembers Peters. “He would come by the house to get a key to the gym to workout after hours. We had a really competitive team and a group of guys that liked to practice hard and that allowed Prentice to knock off the rust and regain his competitive form.”

The result: He was named a CCAA all-Canadian, and the next season, with his career back on track, decided to transfer to Winnipeg because that was where his new Briercrest teammate Thor Olesen was headed.

That pair both played from 1992-93 to 1994-95 with the Wesmen, where one of Lenz’s teammates was a guy named Kirby Schepp.

These days, Schepp is the veteran head coach of the Manitoba Bisons, and if you look at their roster, you’ll find listed a 6-foot, 185-pound third-year player named Brandt Lenz.

That is ‘full circle’ defined.

It starts with a girl named Lori being encouraged to the possibilities of the world by a teacher named Frank.

And as we eulogize the passing of the young child she once baby-sat, we think of connections in this game, and how those networks never fail to keep a pulse.

How Lori’s husband Stan coached Frank’s son Prentice, ultimately helping him become a teammate of Kirby, who is now coaching Prentice’s son.

Yes, full circle. It give us our sense of belonging even in the toughest of times.

FARMER, FAMILY MAN, FATHER FIGURE… AND COACH

Ask Jay Pankratz what it was like being the closest of friends with Prentice Lenz, and the assistant superintendent of the Abbotsford School Board called it “… super easy and super natural.”

With Pankratz four years older than Lenz, the pair just missed out on the opportunity to play with each other on the senior varsity team at MEI, and although they didn’t know each other well during their high school days, all of that changed in the fall of 1998.

Lenz had been teaching and coaching at Langley Christian, but that year he decided to move over to Rick Hansen Secondary in Abbotsford where Pankratz was coaching hoops.

“Our relationship as colleagues and friends was really solidified during those early years when we worked together at Hansen,” he continued. “We just seemed to have that rare connection from the start.”

There was always basketball to talk about.

Maybe it centred around Lenz and how he had played at Simon Fraser, the same school that Jay’s son JJ — now coaching the senior varsity at Abbotsford’s Robert Bateman — also played for over his university career.

But more than any of that, it was in all of the ways in which mutual respect had a way of bringing people closer together.

Ask Pankratz what he admired most about his late friend and while the words are easy to find, they are understandably hard to speak.

“His fierce commitment to people that mattered to him most, like his family, his friends, the kids that he coached,” Pankratz began.

 “You have probably been hearing this, and you can hear in my voice… this is tough, right,” he continued before taking pause. “People have lots of stories about how Prentice supported them, and that was a part of that piece. He showed up for people. If you were on his team or played with him, or were working with him on something, he was there. You weren’t going to get that half commitment. I think that resonated for people, his family and Carla, and he was such an amazing father and husband. So I think for me that is what it was. He really showed up for the people that mattered most to him and that needed him.”

In the end, can anybody do any more?

Farmer. Family man. Father figure. 

He was all three of those in ways in which each bled its borders into the other.

And, of course, he was a basketball coach.

(Apologies to the many others who were interviewed for this article. Even if you were not quoted, your stories and remembrances have helped to bring depth to my reporting — Howard Tsumura)

(A Celebration of Life for Prentice Lenz was held on Saturday. Details of the event mention that in lieu of flowers, donations to All is Bright, a program supporting families in Chilliwack with food and gifts during Christmas, can be made as a meaningful tribute to Prentice’s memory. If you want, you can click here to contribute)

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