Nick Scarella was tired on the pitching mound last spring when coach Wayne Dietz ambled toward him from the dugout. It was only the third inning, but Scarella had allowed the only two runs in the high school baseball sectional championship.

"I thought he was gonna pull me out of the game. But he didn't," Scarella said. "He just patted me on the back, told me I was doing a good job and to start lifting my leg higher." The tall southpaw for Woodbury High School followed orders and all but shut down the opposing team over the next few innings.

Woodbury lost the game, ending its season, but Scarella says he came out a winner. "He taught me more than about baseball, but about life," said Scarella, now a senior.

It would be the last life lesson Dietz would give on the mound. He died Tuesday, after going into cardiac arrest while bicycling last Saturday.

Dietz, 55, coached a variety of sports at Woodbury for 29 years. He retired from coaching last spring but continued teaching math at the high school. Several students and co-workers spoke of Dietz's commitment to teaching and an unbridled optimism that seeped into every aspect of his school life.

His decision to stay with a tired pitcher with the season on the line -- because he apparently saw something in him and wanted the kid to see it in himself -- underscores the praise the Woodbury school community gave him this week.

Sports and coaching weren't everything for Dietz, said Courtney Stevens, a Woodbury senior who was a pupil in two of Dietz's math classes. "I was having trouble with Algebra 2, and I had a question. It was the last class of the day and it was just before baseball practice before a big game. He stayed after class and helped me and ended up being late for baseball practice," Stevens recalled.

On Wednesday, hundreds of other students paid tribute to Dietz by using text messaging and word of mouth to organize several minutes of silence between the school's third and fourth hours. Teachers and administrators had noticed a higher-than-normal amount of text messaging, which normally is forbidden. They let it go because they felt the students needed to communicate their grief in their medium of choice.

When third hour ended the usual banter was replaced by an eerie quiet for the full eight minutes between classes. "You could hear a pin drop," said John Soma, the high school's athletic director. "That's usually a loud, high energy moment. It was very moving to have that done by the high school students."

Dietz is survived by three children, Robert Dietz, Cottage Grove; Alissa Dietz, St. Paul, and Amberly Williams, Cedar Rapids, Iowa; his mother, Marion Pomplun; sister, Colleen Dietz; brother, Ronald Dietz, all of Gaylord, Minn.

A public ceremony celebrating Dietz's life will be held at 6:30 p.m. Monday in the Woodbury High School gymnasium. A funeral service is scheduled for today at 1 p.m. at St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Gaylord, Minn. Visitation will be two hours prior to the service. Interment will be at St. Paul's cemetery.

Gregory A. Patterson 651-298-1546