On Saturday morning, while making salsa at his Farmington home, WNMU Athletic Hall of Fame inductee Marvin Sanders said, “ have had server coaching honors: I was inducted into the New Mexico Athletics Hall of Fame, I was named the District 8 Coach of the year three times – but this is by far the nicest honor given to me. … I am very honored and very grateful.”
Sanders graduated from WNMU with a Bachelor of Arts in Science in 1960. In 1968, he graduated with a Master of Arts in Physical Education. While at WNMU, he was twice named to the all-conference basketball team.
“After graduation, I went back to Indiana for two years, but after going three weeks without seeing the sun, I made the decision to make my way back to New Mexico.”
Sanders has given a lot of time and effort to sports in New Mexico, coaching two sports a year and teaching for 41 years. He has coached basketball every year. He has coached golf, football, cross country, baseball, and track as well.
“I hope that what I coached is something they can use the rest of their lives,” Sanders said as he spoke of the benefits of sports. “Sports help build character.” Discipline, responsibility and respect are three of the characteristics that he hopes “rubbed off.”
Sanders said that as a result of his love for the New Mexico sun, coaching outdoors without a hat or sunscreen, he developed squamous skin cancer. He had to undergo radiation treatment two years ago and lost much of his hair. “I don’t look the same as I used to. I look meaner now,” joked Sanders. He said his health reports have been positive since the treatment. Now when he is coaching golf he always wears a hat and carries sunscreen for his players.
He coached at Silver High for nine years. Sanders spoke fondly of Silver City, calling it his “second home.” As a coach, Sanders has been through Silver many times since moving away and still has many good friends in the area. He said he is eager to come back and visit the man responsible for bringing him to New Mexico – Jim Smith. Smith was Sanders’ coach while he was at WNMU.
Looking back on his career as a coach, Sanders considers the 1975 Silver High basketball team to be “an extraordinary group of young men.” He reminisced about the team which consisted of Terry Pennington, Rock Vanderly, Shawn Aguirre, John Gull, Bill Kennibery, and Tommy Palanco with assistant coach Pete Shock. According to Sanders, that was the team that brought home Silvers’ first-ever State Basketball Championship. “They beat the number one-, two-, and fifth-rated teams to win the state tournament in overtime… that was a very exciting tournament, and when I think back, those guys really helped my career.
