Jeff Erdman
In the context of everything he has done for his former high school, the fact that one of Jeff Erdman’s daughter’s middle name is Madison may not be the most obvious sign of his affection for all things Senatorial.
But taken alone, there’s no denying it’s a pretty solid bit of evidence.
Still, if anyone who wants to see more, there’s plenty of it.
The 1977 graduate had plenty of accomplishments as a three-sport athlete at Madison, but that was just the beginning of his contributions to his school. After college and a two-year stint at Cleveland High, Erdman returned to Madison to teach and coach for 16 years, leading Senator baseball teams to multiple PIL titles and a state championship.
Even after moving on to other job opportunities, then retiring, Erdman has stayed involved in fundraising and other activities to benefit the school that he says, “I owe my lot in life to.”
Technically speaking, the beginning of Erdman’s allegiance to Madison predates the four years he starred there in football, basketball and baseball. He was bleeding blue and red long before he got to wear the colors.
Erdman grew up on Northeast 68th and Prescott with a city park for a front yard, where he was able to exercise his passion for sports.
“Wellington Park and Harvey Scott Elementary School were right across the street from our house,” Erdman says. “All I had to do was jump over a cyclone fence and I had access to a basketball court, football field and baseball diamond. I lived at that park.”
While he has two older brothers, Terry and Larry, Erdman says neither they nor his parents, Jake and Lillian, had much influence on his decision to hop that fence for the first time.
“My brothers didn’t participate much in sports, and my parents always supported me but sports really weren’t their thing either,” he says. “For some reason, I just caught the bug at a young age.”
Fields of Dreams
Erdman started attending Madison games and following Senators’ sports well before his brothers entered high school. He was 11 when the school’s summer baseball team, the Contractors, won the American Legion World Series in 1969.
“I’d watch games and hear about things like that championship and just dream of the day when I could play for Madison,” he says.
While he waited for that day, Erdman played Pop Warner football, Goldenball basketball and Little League and Babe Ruth baseball while attending Harvey Scott Elementary School. Along the way, he met several future Madison teammates, including fellow PIL Hall of Fame inductees, Bill Booth and Marty Pinz.
He was also meeting and playing for a series of coaches whose impact on him was so positive that he already knew he wanted to follow in their footsteps. Playing for an equally influential group of coaches at Madison only solidified his career choice.
“My coaches weren’t just great coaches. They were great men, husbands, fathers, mentors and role models, and I wanted to be like them,” he says.
While Erdman says he was “an OK athlete,” his high school stats indicate that’s just his modesty working a little overtime. He earned three letters each in football, basketball and baseball and might have earned a fourth in the latter had he more affinity for not playing much.
“I made the varsity team as a freshman, but I wasn’t quite good enough to start, so the coach had me on the bench for the first eight or nine games,” Erdman remembers. “So I asked him if I could go down to JV. He wasn’t very happy with me; he thought I was being disrespectful. But I just wanted to play. That experience had a real impact on me later after I became a coach.”
The next year, Erdman earned the first of three straight All-PIL honors, starting at third base for a Senators’ varsity squad that went 21-0 in the regular season and won the PIL East Division leading up to the city championship tournament.
“We were ranked number one in the state but lost to Wilson and then to Grant and didn’t make it to state,” Erdman remembers, ruefully. “We had great players and an unbelievable team but never won city. It kind of felt like we let our school down.”
In basketball, Erdman remembers with pride being a tenacious guard. He was the kind of defensive menace who could inspire an unfriendly elbowing to the face from a guy like future NBA player and PIL Hall of Famer Mark Radford “because I was in his jock strap the whole game,” Erdman says with a laugh. “I wasn’t quite as good in basketball as I had hoped to be, but I contributed to the team.”
His good enough was good enough to get him named to the All-PIL second team as a senior.
A First for Madison
However, Erdman earned most of his acclaim on the football field, where he helped the Madison football program reach new heights. As a junior quarterback, he was named All-PIL while leading the Senators to their first-ever PIL championship. They repeated the feat the next year with Erdman earning All-PIL honors at both quarterback and safety, where he also was named All-Metro, All-State and Metro Area Defensive Player of the Year.
“Winning the first city title in school history was just awesome,” says Erdman. “I had an unbelievable team around me and probably received way too much acclaim for handing off to really good running backs and an unbelievable line. But whatever the case, my Madison football experience was probably the greatest sports experience I ever had. Just the teamwork and sportsmanship and camaraderie. Having to trust each other and knowing you could. We were brothers as much as teammates.”
Erdman’s athletic exploits at Madison earned him an invitation to attend Lewis and Clark College, where he played football and baseball all four years while earning his teaching degree. Most of his success there came in baseball, where the Pioneers came within a game or two of making the NAIA World Series his senior year.
After graduating in 1981, Erdman returned to the school he left just four years earlier to teach and help coach all three sports he had played as a Senator. It gave him the opportunity to coach and learn alongside the likes of Larry Keck, Madison’s varsity football coach, and Dave Gasser, who would go on to become the all-time winningest baseball coach in Oregon history and earn spots in both the PIL and Oregon Sports halls of fame.
“I feel really fortunate that I was able to work with some great men and coaches at Madison,” Erdman says. “I never thought I was going to leave.”
His thoughts changed in 1988, when the head baseball coach job at Cleveland opened up and Erdman landed it. Just two years later, Gasser announced he was leaving Madison for Lakeridge.
“I had a big decision to make, to stay at Cleveland or go back to my alma mater,” Erdman says.
The pull was too strong to resist. Erdman proved a good fit for Gasser’s oversized shoes, leading the Senators’ baseball program to six PIL titles from 1991 to 1999, eight state tournament appearances and, in 1997, a state championship. He was named PIL Coach of the Year four times in that period and Baseball Coach of the Year in ’97. In 2006, he was inducted into the Oregon Baseball Coach Hall of Fame.
Erdman’s coaching record at Cleveland and Madison was 218-77, and while he admits his teams “had a lot of success,” in typical fashion he doesn’t claim much credit for it.
“I had great assistant coaches and unbelievable players who made me look good when I penciled their names into the lineup,” he says. “And I had learned from some of the best coaches, not just Dave Gasser, who taught me how to run a baseball program, but also coaches we played against – the Jack Dunns and Bill Rantas and Jerry Gattos.”
Erdman coached for 16 years at Madison, and he didn’t stop teaching after he left his day job. For several years, Erdman would leave school then go coach his daughters --Emily (husband, Adam), Kelsey (husband, Jimmy) and Shelby Madison -- in soccer, basketball or softball.
Time for a Change
“I was spending most of my time coaching, and at one point my wife Mary looked at me and asked how long I planned to keep it up, especially considering our three daughters wouldn’t be able to play for me,” he says. (The Erdmans were high school sweethearts who married in 1982, a year after both had graduated from college. Erdman lovingly credits his wife for “our amazing family.”)
Shortly after that conversation, Mary got her answer. In 1999, North Clackamas School District offered Erdman the opportunity to be an athletic director at Putnam High School. The Erdmans were living in Happy Valley at the time (and still do), and the short commute and administrative position helped make the tough decision to leave Madison a little easier.
The following year Erdman became the athletic director at Clackamas High School, a position he held for 15 years before retiring in 2015. He rejoined the workforce in 2016, serving as the part-time assistant athletic director overseeing baseball and softball for Portland Public Schools before retiring for good in 2024.
Since his retirement, Erdman has been spending as much time as he can with his four grandchildren (Edie, Celine, Jeffrey and Annalee) and honing his golf skills (he and several Madison pals have a standing Friday tee time atRose City Golf Course) while continuing to support both his alma mater and the PIL.
As president of the Madison Booster Club he’s been actively involved, with friends and fellow alums Bill Booth and Jim Sleeman, in the re-establishment of the Madison Alumni Association. That group raised $700,000 to construct the Bill Wiitala Fieldhouse, an all-purpose indoor athletic facility that opened in 2025 on the campus of what is now known as McDaniel High School. The group also was responsible for establishing the new Madison High School Hall of Fame.
While giving back to his alma mater all these years has taken a lot of time and effort, Erdman says it’s never felt like work.
“Mary used to say to me, ‘You probably whistle when you go to work,’ and I probably did,” says Erdman, who was inducted into the PIL Hall of Fame in 2002. “I’m just a Madison and PIL guy through and through, and I hope that's obvious.”
Anyone who hasn't picked up on that at this point just hasn’t been paying attention.
Do you know Jeff Erdman? If you’d like to reconnect, hecan be reached at jeff.erdman.bps@gmail.com
For profile comments or suggestions for future profilecandidates, contact ralanbaltus@gmail.com
Member Spotlight
In the context of everything he has done for his former high school, the fact that one of Jeff Erdman’s daughter’s middle name is Madison may not be the most obvious sign of his affection for all things Senatorial.
But taken alone, there’s no denying it’s a pretty solid bit of evidence.
Still, if anyone who wants to see more, there’s plenty of it.
The 1977 graduate had plenty of accomplishments as a three-sport athlete at Madison, but that was just the beginning of his contributions to his school. After college and a two-year stint at Cleveland High, Erdman returned to Madison to teach and coach for 16 years, leading Senator baseball teams to multiple PIL titles and a state championship.
Even after moving on to other job opportunities, then retiring, Erdman has stayed involved in fundraising and other activities to benefit the school that he says, “I owe my lot in life to.”
Technically speaking, the beginning of Erdman’s allegiance to Madison predates the four years he starred there in football, basketball and baseball. He was bleeding blue and red long before he got to wear the colors.
Erdman grew up on Northeast 68th and Prescott with a city park for a front yard, where he was able to exercise his passion for sports.
“Wellington Park and Harvey Scott Elementary School were right across the street from our house,” Erdman says. “All I had to do was jump over a cyclone fence and I had access to a basketball court, football field and baseball diamond. I lived at that park.”
While he has two older brothers, Terry and Larry, Erdman says neither they nor his parents, Jake and Lillian, had much influence on his decision to hop that fence for the first time.
“My brothers didn’t participate much in sports, and my parents always supported me but sports really weren’t their thing either,” he says. “For some reason, I just caught the bug at a young age.”
Fields of Dreams
Erdman started attending Madison games and following Senators’ sports well before his brothers entered high school. He was 11 when the school’s summer baseball team, the Contractors, won the American Legion World Series in 1969.
“I’d watch games and hear about things like that championship and just dream of the day when I could play for Madison,” he says.
While he waited for that day, Erdman played Pop Warner football, Goldenball basketball and Little League and Babe Ruth baseball while attending Harvey Scott Elementary School. Along the way, he met several future Madison teammates, including fellow PIL Hall of Fame inductees, Bill Booth and Marty Pinz.
He was also meeting and playing for a series of coaches whose impact on him was so positive that he already knew he wanted to follow in their footsteps. Playing for an equally influential group of coaches at Madison only solidified his career choice.
“My coaches weren’t just great coaches. They were great men, husbands, fathers, mentors and role models, and I wanted to be like them,” he says.
While Erdman says he was “an OK athlete,” his high school stats indicate that’s just his modesty working a little overtime. He earned three letters each in football, basketball and baseball and might have earned a fourth in the latter had he more affinity for not playing much.
“I made the varsity team as a freshman, but I wasn’t quite good enough to start, so the coach had me on the bench for the first eight or nine games,” Erdman remembers. “So I asked him if I could go down to JV. He wasn’t very happy with me; he thought I was being disrespectful. But I just wanted to play. That experience had a real impact on me later after I became a coach.”
The next year, Erdman earned the first of three straight All-PIL honors, starting at third base for a Senators’ varsity squad that went 21-0 in the regular season and won the PIL East Division leading up to the city championship tournament.
“We were ranked number one in the state but lost to Wilson and then to Grant and didn’t make it to state,” Erdman remembers, ruefully. “We had great players and an unbelievable team but never won city. It kind of felt like we let our school down.”
In basketball, Erdman remembers with pride being a tenacious guard. He was the kind of defensive menace who could inspire an unfriendly elbowing to the face from a guy like future NBA player and PIL Hall of Famer Mark Radford “because I was in his jock strap the whole game,” Erdman says with a laugh. “I wasn’t quite as good in basketball as I had hoped to be, but I contributed to the team.”
His good enough was good enough to get him named to the All-PIL second team as a senior.
A First for Madison
However, Erdman earned most of his acclaim on the football field, where he helped the Madison football program reach new heights. As a junior quarterback, he was named All-PIL while leading the Senators to their first-ever PIL championship. They repeated the feat the next year with Erdman earning All-PIL honors at both quarterback and safety, where he also was named All-Metro, All-State and Metro Area Defensive Player of the Year.
“Winning the first city title in school history was just awesome,” says Erdman. “I had an unbelievable team around me and probably received way too much acclaim for handing off to really good running backs and an unbelievable line. But whatever the case, my Madison football experience was probably the greatest sports experience I ever had. Just the teamwork and sportsmanship and camaraderie. Having to trust each other and knowing you could. We were brothers as much as teammates.”
Erdman’s athletic exploits at Madison earned him an invitation to attend Lewis and Clark College, where he played football and baseball all four years while earning his teaching degree. Most of his success there came in baseball, where the Pioneers came within a game or two of making the NAIA World Series his senior year.
After graduating in 1981, Erdman returned to the school he left just four years earlier to teach and help coach all three sports he had played as a Senator. It gave him the opportunity to coach and learn alongside the likes of Larry Keck, Madison’s varsity football coach, and Dave Gasser, who would go on to become the all-time winningest baseball coach in Oregon history and earn spots in both the PIL and Oregon Sports halls of fame.
“I feel really fortunate that I was able to work with some great men and coaches at Madison,” Erdman says. “I never thought I was going to leave.”
His thoughts changed in 1988, when the head baseball coach job at Cleveland opened up and Erdman landed it. Just two years later, Gasser announced he was leaving Madison for Lakeridge.
“I had a big decision to make, to stay at Cleveland or go back to my alma mater,” Erdman says.
The pull was too strong to resist. Erdman proved a good fit for Gasser’s oversized shoes, leading the Senators’ baseball program to six PIL titles from 1991 to 1999, eight state tournament appearances and, in 1997, a state championship. He was named PIL Coach of the Year four times in that period and Baseball Coach of the Year in ’97. In 2006, he was inducted into the Oregon Baseball Coach Hall of Fame.
Erdman’s coaching record at Cleveland and Madison was 218-77, and while he admits his teams “had a lot of success,” in typical fashion he doesn’t claim much credit for it.
“I had great assistant coaches and unbelievable players who made me look good when I penciled their names into the lineup,” he says. “And I had learned from some of the best coaches, not just Dave Gasser, who taught me how to run a baseball program, but also coaches we played against – the Jack Dunns and Bill Rantas and Jerry Gattos.”
Erdman coached for 16 years at Madison, and he didn’t stop teaching after he left his day job. For several years, Erdman would leave school then go coach his daughters --Emily (husband, Adam), Kelsey (husband, Jimmy) and Shelby Madison -- in soccer, basketball or softball.
Time for a Change
“I was spending most of my time coaching, and at one point my wife Mary looked at me and asked how long I planned to keep it up, especially considering our three daughters wouldn’t be able to play for me,” he says. (The Erdmans were high school sweethearts who married in 1982, a year after both had graduated from college. Erdman lovingly credits his wife for “our amazing family.”)
Shortly after that conversation, Mary got her answer. In 1999, North Clackamas School District offered Erdman the opportunity to be an athletic director at Putnam High School. The Erdmans were living in Happy Valley at the time (and still do), and the short commute and administrative position helped make the tough decision to leave Madison a little easier.
The following year Erdman became the athletic director at Clackamas High School, a position he held for 15 years before retiring in 2015. He rejoined the workforce in 2016, serving as the part-time assistant athletic director overseeing baseball and softball for Portland Public Schools before retiring for good in 2024.
Since his retirement, Erdman has been spending as much time as he can with his four grandchildren (Edie, Celine, Jeffrey and Annalee) and honing his golf skills (he and several Madison pals have a standing Friday tee time atRose City Golf Course) while continuing to support both his alma mater and the PIL.
As president of the Madison Booster Club he’s been actively involved, with friends and fellow alums Bill Booth and Jim Sleeman, in the re-establishment of the Madison Alumni Association. That group raised $700,000 to construct the Bill Wiitala Fieldhouse, an all-purpose indoor athletic facility that opened in 2025 on the campus of what is now known as McDaniel High School. The group also was responsible for establishing the new Madison High School Hall of Fame.
While giving back to his alma mater all these years has taken a lot of time and effort, Erdman says it’s never felt like work.
“Mary used to say to me, ‘You probably whistle when you go to work,’ and I probably did,” says Erdman, who was inducted into the PIL Hall of Fame in 2002. “I’m just a Madison and PIL guy through and through, and I hope that's obvious.”
Anyone who hasn't picked up on that at this point just hasn’t been paying attention.
Do you know Jeff Erdman? If you’d like to reconnect, hecan be reached at jeff.erdman.bps@gmail.com
For profile comments or suggestions for future profilecandidates, contact ralanbaltus@gmail.com
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