Series again for CSN his goal

By Rob Miech

Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Mondays with McKenzie.

As usual, College of Southern Nevada baseball coach Tim Chambers picked up 13-year-old daughter McKenzie from St. Anne Catholic School to start the week.

They drove around in his black Ford F-150, which she picked out, bought some Valentine’s Day items for her classmates and dined at In-N-Out.

It was a break for Chambers in an already demanding season. The Coyotes are ranked first in two national polls and Chambers is taking CSN cross-country for the first time in its nine-year history to play in a marquee tournament in Florida this weekend.

Monday afternoons with his daughter, however, are special — quality time with someone who brought tears to his eyes when she was born.

Chambers had quite the opposite relationship with his father, who left Chambers’ mother, Rena, and their three children when Chambers was 4.

Twelve years ago, at the funeral for Tim’s dad, Connie, in Bartlesville, Okla., Tim threatened to make an embarrassing scene and forced the funeral director to open the silver casket.

The director emptied the parlor and opened the lid for Chambers. It’s him. Good.

“It was pretty dramatic,” says Kim Chambers, the coach’s wife of 19 years. “He wanted to make sure his body was in there so he could close that door to his life, so to speak.

“Until he saw his face, he wasn’t quite sure. Then he could let go of all those negative memories and just not look back.”

Rena Chambers rang her son two Sundays ago. Kim was in California with McKenzie, who was in a cheer competition, and 7-month-old Chase, who belongs in Gerber ads.

Tim was on his way to Morse Field for practice. Happy birthday, his mother said. He paused. He’d forgotten that he’d turned 43 that day.

He’s that driven to bring his team back to the NJCAA World Series in Grand Junction, Colo., which the Coyotes won in 2003.

“If I didn’t think we’d get back,” he says, “I’d quit right now.”

When the former Bishop Gorman coach started the CSN program in 2000, he predicted that it would win a national championship within five years. It took four.

In Grand Junction, he thought the Coyotes would become NJCAA World Series regulars. Hasn’t happened.

CSN was ousted from the Scenic West Athletic Conference tournament for a fourth consecutive year last spring. It played host to that tournament, as regular-season league champion, three of those seasons.

Chambers obsessed about the 2007 season for three months.

“What could I have done differently,” he says. “Did I make a mistake? Should we have started this guy and not that guy? I had a hard time with it. I wasn’t the same guy.”

His wife’s health also weighed heavily on him. Months earlier, Kim Chambers had discovered a growth on her jaw. Because she was pregnant, doctors opted to operate only after she had given birth to Chase.

Around Thanksgiving at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, surgeons removed the tumor. For 12 excruciating days, Tim Chambers pondered the worst. What if it’s something bad? Would he be able to raise two daughters on his own?

It was benign.

“So far, so good,” says Kim Chambers. “As long as it doesn’t come back, we’re in great shape.”

So is Tim Chambers, who is down to 188 pounds, his playing weight as an outfielder at Dixie College in Utah. He’s shed 30 over the past 18 months during intense early-morning workouts at the gym of well-known physical trainer Tim Soder.

Chambers even rises at 4 a.m. on most Sundays for the sessions.

But he doesn’t have time to ponder national polls or rankings that show several of his players among the best in the country at their positions.

“I care where we’re at in June,” he says.

Nor does he care about those who criticize the CSN program because it hasn’t been back to the World Series since 2003.

“Winning is very important,” Chambers says. “I want another national championship in the worst way. I love to win more than anybody, but it’s not the most important thing.

“The most important thing is to make sure that people you spend time with know you love them, that you’re on their side and you’ll push for them.”