Behind the mask: Richard Fisher

Richard Fisher, Fargo North High School’s resident Swim coach and Psychology teacher is coming up on his 28th year of teaching and his 35th year of coaching for a swim team. After doing some simple math you can see that Fish is around 22 years old. Fisher is a simple man, he has a color deficiency ( he can’t see certain colors), has ‘zero snap’, enjoys checking his caringbridge profile, and loves teaching about why your brain works the way it does. He has two kids who both graduated from North, Coghlan Fisher and Peyton Fisher, both of which Fisher himself coached on the swim team.
Many parents either love or hate coaching their kids, but for Fish he enjoyed all the years of coaching his two sons.
“It was fun. It was good to coach them because they worked hard,” said Fisher.
Fisher is also a graduate of North High. Just as he is now, Fish was a simple student. As Fisher stated himself, he was “Immature, harmless, I was a good kid with no idea…” Fisher was a student who enjoyed social studies, and wasn’t particularly smart. His gym teacher was also his swim coach Don Hulbert, the man who got an entire pool facility named after him.
“…never mind no idea of what I was gonna do, just no idea in general. I wasn’t bright enough to be worried about anything,” said Fisher about what his younger self thought he’d do after graduation.
When asked about what classes he would take right now if he were a student here at North, he initially noted that the question was loaded, then said,“…knowing what I know now, I would take as many classes as I can. But the social studies electives, I would take psychology, sociology. I like social studies.”
As a swimmer, I can tell how Fish is as a coach. As often as he can yell at me for being a tool and for ‘trashing the Grand Forks bathroom’ in seventh grade, Fish is someone I am able to reliably look up to as someone to emulate as I grow up. He is someone who knows how to make just about anyone laugh, and make people feel good when they make him laugh. He also gives 15 minutes of high self esteem as rewards for various chores. On top of winning countless Coach of the Year awards, fish has shone bright among a sea of coaches as someone who is able to build a personal relationship with each and every one of his swimmers, but still manages to remember all the little inside jokes he has with a lot of his swimmers. Throughout the seven years I have been part of the swim program, Richard Fisher has been one of the people I have increasingly admired as a person.
Fish is also a very well liked teacher, among his peers, and his students. “Fish is one of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met… His outlook on life is so different but so appropriate,” says Kristopher Dougherty. Something that goes to show how small of a world we live in, Dougherty used to get kicked out of his local summer swimming pool by lifeguard Fisher, his current coworker.
Some odd quirks about Fish are his few passions and passionate distastes. After a prank by a previous student, Fish has been scarred and hates glitter with an undying passion. Fish also hates ABBA and is an acclaimed Moana karaoke singer. On account of the fact that Fish knows too many people, he opts to go grocery shopping at the Moorhead Hornbachers in order to reduce the risk of social confrontation. Fish also happens to know how they got the North Dakotan flag and the American flag up in the rafters at the Hulbert Aquatic Center.
A simple man, a teacher, a swim coach, a father, and a peer. Fisher is someone to look up to no matter what viewpoint you are, whether a student, teacher, or swimmer. And remember, if you don’t know who to vote for during an election of any kind, you can always write in Richard Fisher.