Poet in motion: Spokane’s Shann Ferch adds Hooptown USA Hall of Fame to long list of accolades

Given the rhythm of the game, basketball lends itself to literary and poetic examination. Free verse, probably best, leaving room for the elegant expressionism at the heart of the game – at least until officiating kills the flow.

As with his distant jump shots, Shann Ferch has a deft touch writing about such topics.

Known also as Shann Ray Ferch, Dr. Shann Ferch (MFA, Ph.D), or Shann Ray, on his poetry and prose book covers. The multiple appellations reflect how hard this dimensional man is to fully pin down.

Ferch’s name, whichever they choose, will be added to the list of Hooptown USA Hall of Fame honorees this week.

He has won almost every category that Spokane’s annual Hoopfest 3-on-3 basketball tournament offers, perhaps not surprising given his successful college and high school careers, as well as his experiences in pro ball in Germany.

“The honors are kind of hilarious in a way, mostly because I’ve been there so long,” the 55-year-old Ferch said when asked of his Hoopfest accolades. “I think I’ve won almost everything, the elite division three times, the co-ed division, 50-and-over with my dad once, the dunk contest, the 3-point contest … and won the car one time (for a half-court shot).”

His bio, alone, might fill this column, but briefly: American Book Award-winning author and poet, Gonzaga University professor, clinical psychologist.

But first, basketball.

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Ferch and his older brother, Kral, played basketball for their father, Tom, who coached across Montana, including at reservation schools where the boys developed a passion for the reservation style of game, and an affinity for Native American culture.

“Growing up on the Cheyenne reservation (I) learned so much about family and love and humor and forgiveness and basketball,” he said. “The reservations I’ve played on and lived, there couldn’t be something that has more passion to it than basketball.

“My brother and I really benefited by living in a culture that is a pass-first mentality, with a passion for fast-breaking basketball, like rivers and streams, moving off each other – so much of that came from the reservation.”

Tom Ferch’s teams at Livingston’s Park High won state championships in the years each of his boys was a senior (1983 and 1985).

Ferch followed his brother to Montana State for two seasons (winning the Big Sky Conference tournament title and advancing to the NCAA Tournament in 1986). He transferred to Pepperdine and in his final two seasons and shot a team-leading 46 % from 3-point range.

Ferch still plays five times a week, often with and against current and former Gonzaga players.

Jess Walter, bestselling author, National Book Award finalist and dedicated basketball player long after competing at East Valley High, gets on the court with Ferch often.

“He’s such an interesting guy, at however old he is, he still runs with the Gonzaga guys,” Walter said, citing a time when walking past St. Aloysius gym seeing Ferch come out with (high NBA draft choice) Chet Holmgren. “It’s incredible that at that age he can still play with that level of player. He’s such a competitor and a dead-eye shooter. He can get on runs when he can hit from 30-35 feet.”

Walter said that all the Zag guys call Ferch “Doc.”

“It’s just for joy now,” Ferch said. “I don’t have any goals at this point, other than give everybody on my team a good experience.”

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Ferch hadn’t planned on becoming an educator.

“It was more that I fell in love with working on helping to heal families as a clinical psychologist, which my doctorate is in. Then teaching came up because I taught an adjunct course at Gonzaga on leadership and psychology. I was teaching Ph.D students and I loved that level, and now I’ve been at Gonzaga 27 years.”

Ferch’s GU bio adds that “Dr. Ferch’s research focus is on forgiveness, atonement and grace in everyday life.”

Forgiveness, atonement and grace? Ferch’s experience in those areas comes from a deep place.

“My personal family was pretty lost with alcoholism, infidelity, depression, anxiety, and then we came to forgiveness through some close friends, basically through understanding Christian ideas, that totally changed our way of being, and healed our family, that was completely fractured.”

His parents, he said, divorced and later remarried. “Their life of grace and love and forgiveness totally changed me as a young man.”

In a blurb for Ferch’s book “Forgiveness and Power in the Age of Atrocity,” Andrew Benton, president emeritus of Pepperdine, lauded Ferch: “In a world where hurt and hate dominate headlines, Shann Ray is a bold purveyor of peace and love.”

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Ferch’s book “American Masculine” is a collection of stories that reveal his literary cornerstones: Life in Montana, reservation culture, human psychology and basketball.

“These stories are powerful literary stunners,” claimed Booklist.

Did basketball lead to the writing of poetry and creative prose?

“If you’re an artist as a person, that’s probably a temperament,” he said. “I didn’t know I’d live life as a poet or artist, but my body was already living that, so the way I played basketball was always aimed at embodying the poetic and, of course, reservation basketball is very much like that.”

Poetry, psychology, basketball? Sure, he sees connections. “Devotion, discipline, modesty, love, those type of elements are what make those things transcendent, and a continuum of how people express themselves,” he said.

Ferch’s works have been called: incisive, riveting, with “language that spins you into a vortex of great and timeless themes (war, violence, gender, forgiveness).”

For instance, writing about a father in American Masculine: “He ruled primarily, and thoroughly, by the volume of his voice and the clarity of brutal intention.”

And, “Seven days after Devin graduated with honors from Montana State University his father stood over him and broke his nose.”

Of tribal basketball: “.. a form of controlled wildness … the rez ballers rise like something elemental … pressing and cutting in streamlike movements that converge to rivers … with no will but to create chaos and action and fury.”

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Walter sees Ferch occupying several spheres, with a powerful unifying trait: empathy.

“Every basketball player knows Shann and every writer knows Shann, and that Venn diagram doesn’t connect in any other place,” Walter said. “In both places, he is someone who has a generosity of spirit. He brings people together in this way. I think that makes him just one of a kind.”

Hoopfest, like Bloomsday, is a great example “of using sport to give other people care and joy and connection across all races and cultures,” Ferch said.

Basketball now shares his focus with trying to help fix broken families, or researching vague and beautiful concepts in a troubled world , all while blending words from the convergence of rich influences: the memories of Montana, the mountains and rivers, the beauty and cruelty of nature, and hardship and grace in all their forms.

These varied elements, in his writings and in his life, all merge into one. And a basketball bounces through it.