Love of the life drives golf coach

Nick Vavoudis is all about the details, and it might be from all the years he worked in high technology sales. These days, the details are all about the kids on the Wahkiakum High School golf teams, the kids he has worked with as a volunteer coach and now in his new role.

He just finished his first season as head coach.

Vavoudis and his wife, Martie-Lynn, moved to the northwest, finally settling in Cathlamet in 2008.

"The reason we came here?" he asked. "The weather and the price of housing. But I had to have a golf course not too far, within an hour, and I had to have fishing and a hospital not too far, within an hour."

"It was getting hotter all the time," Vavoudis said of their former home in Sacramento. "Martie couldn't stand the summers. She didn't like staying inside with the air conditioning. She's a big gardener and outdoor person."

Prior to their move, the couple decided to start a trucking business after so many years of success in technology started to dwindle away. In some ways, things were going well. They had three trucks and found work hauling tar mix for a road builder in Texas.

"They had been in business for 100 years," Vavoudis said of the road builder. "I thought it was a sure thing."

He paused.

"Nothing is sure in life."

Always an active man, Vavoudis knew something was wrong after too many 14 hour days behind the wheel.

"I didn't know I had sleep apnea," Vavoudis said. "It was causing carbon narcosis."

He found out he had deep vein thrombosis when he was in the hospital for a kidney stone.

"I didn't have a stroke, but I'm on blood thinners for life," Vavoudis said. "The DVT left me on my back for about six weeks. After that I had to learn how to walk again."

He also has bad arthritis in his back. He's had one knee replaced and he's waiting for the right time to replace the other one.

"I was always a heavy guy but I was always golfing or fishing," he said. "It really had an affect. I gained a lot of weight."

In his new home in Cathlamet, Vavoudis grew tired of spending so much time on the couch, so he approached Superintendent Bob Garrett at WHS.

"He made me a scorekeeper," Vavoudis said. "He let me run the clock. You kind of have to earn your wings when you come to a new place."

Scorekeeping and clock running were activities that Vavoudis could do in his sleep. As a young man, he went to New Mexico State University with plans to be a lawyer. It turned out he was a better "gym rat." He loved all kinds of sports and ended up as the intramural sports director for three years. He had keys to everything but the pool.

He was also the head of the volunteer officials association, which kept him busy assigning officials to 50 games a week.

"I was running those sports programs and I loved it," Vavoudis said.

When it warmed up, he and some friends decided they wanted to learn how to play golf and that's where his love for the game began.

In the summers, he ran the pool system in Roswell, NM.

"We would clean the pool in the morning and have a three hour break before we opened the pool at noon. Daylight hours were long. In the mornings I would play nine holes. In the evenings we would go to the tennis courts and play tennis until 11 at night. That was my cycle."

Vavoudis lost interest in school and ended up working for his dad as a computer operator. A few years later, he was working in technology sales and doing very well.

But like Vavoudis said, nothing is sure in life.

While scorekeeping at Mule games he met the coach for the boys basketball team and the golf team, Bill Olsen.

"We became friends and he found out about my background in golf," Vavoudis said. "He brought me in as his golf assistant and that's really how my career started at WHS with the 2009 spring golf team."

According to Vavoudis, he still couldn't be on his feet for more than 10 to 15 minutes at a time.

"There are pictures of me in a chair at the driving range," he said. "I would walk from player to player with a chair in one hand and golf club in the other. When you have arthritis pain in your back, it doesn't go away by sitting. It didn't hurt any more to go to the golf course and help kids with their golf game than it did to sit on the couch. I started walking a little more and a little more. Bill was gracious and made sure I was taken care of."

When pressed for more details about himself, Vavoudis preferred to talk about the golf team.

"Talking about these kids is talking about me," he said. "They're like my own children. I have different relationships with each of them. They're not all good, they're not all bad but they are all mine."

"This year we had an individual in Sarah Shi," Vavoudis said. "A foreign exchange student from China. They told her she was too old to be in their golf programs. They don't have that many teachers or programs. She taught herself to play with a little instruction at the driving range."

"She was rusty when I met her," he continued, "but she had a great move on the ball. She was very powerful for her size. She could chip and putt, she could hit the ball, but she needed to learn how to manage her game, get out of trouble and stay confident. This was the first year that they allowed coaches to coach the kid on the course. That was a big advantage for her."

Shi won the Quad District trophy this year and Vavoudis can tell you every stroke Shi took for that game.

"Most boys would resent being beat by a girl," he said. "Her genuine passion for their success made them really dig her. They respected her, they didn't mind when she scolded them. She was a mother goose in the clubhouse. She got mad at them a couple times. Boys have a tendency to stand around and let somebody else pull the clubs out of the truck. She literally loaded the truck at district and she was so mad at them. It was so funny."

"Other teams? The boys did not like her," Vavoudis continued. "She was beating them, and she was playing from the boys' tees. Only the top five guys could beat her."

Vavoudis spent a lot of years playing golf, even winning some tournaments. His experiences coaching in college helped when he began volunteering for the high school golf team.

"I had a knack for making people feel good about themselves," Vavoudis said. "A lot of anything is having confidence to keep trying it. Nobody is successful at anything when they first try it, especially not golf. I played a lot and I played with a lot of coaches."

"After coming here, coaching a team and running a summer golf program I think I've looked at 22,000 swings a year," he added. "You just learn a lot. I've learned to strike a ball from my kids."

His thoughts turned to Skyline golf course and the Rodahl family that owns it.

"This golf course is part of our community," he said. "Ralph Rodahl's dream brought me here. They got this coach because of Ralph Rodahl. And those people up there allow me to do anything I need to do with the kids. They don't charge us anything for the kids, ever. It wasn't like that when Mary was managing it. It wasn't that way when Kuldip was managing it. We're making no money up there, and they're still letting the kids play if I'm there. That is one of the most heartwarming things about those people. Juanita, Kim, Robin, Randy, Goldie and Shannon Moore. These people look in the paper every day to see how the kids do. They come down to help. This is a community golf course. The community needs to give back what they've given to us."

Vavoudis pointed out that golf was like life.

"You should get out of it what you put into it," he said. "But you don't always. Sometimes it comes up short. Sometimes you get what you really don't deserve."