A True Vandal For Life
By Bert Sahlberg, Lewiston Tribune

December 19, 1999

There are a few boxes off in the corners that seem out of place in this immaculately kept office.

The boxes are half-full, containing mementos, books and personal belongings being packed up. More will be needed to hold the plaques and pictures that are coming down off the walls.

The end of days sitting behind her desk and burying her nose in another thick NCAA manual is near. Less than two weeks in fact.

When University of Idaho senior associate athletic director/senior women's administrator Kathy Clark officially retires on Dec. 31, she'll end one of the longest associations ever with the Vandal athletic department.

Twenty-five years. That's seven football coaches, seven women's basketball coaches, six athletic directors and five volleyball coaches ago. Of course, she was the volleyball coach back then, the first at the school.

"It really is hard," she says of her retirement. "I'm excited half of the time and anxious a little bit of the time and plenty sad.

"But I haven't been able to pace myself quite as well as I should have, like most people in athletics who are going 150 percent all the time. It's time for me to take a little time for me."

She's promised herself two years of fun. She'll take a cruise or two, travel the Oregon and California coasts, spend more time at her cabin on Pend Oreille Lake and golf. Certainly, the more golf the better.

But whether she's on a cruise in the South Pacific, sitting on her deck reading a book, or dropping that birdie putt on the 18th green, Clark's thoughts of UI won't be far away. After all, she's a Vandal for life.

Clark grew up in Oregon as she went to elementary school in Salem before her dad was transferred to Lake Oswego, where she attended junior high and high school.

She graduated from Oregon State, where she was a three-sport letterwinner, and started teaching and coaching at a high school in Portland area before she decided she wanted to teach physical education at the college level.

She decided to pursue her master's degree at Massachusetts where two of her former OSU professors were located. She earned her master's while teaching and coaching and stayed there a couple of additional years.

And while she liked the area, she had a desire to return to the Pacific Northwest. Wyoming wasn't quite home, but it was close and she spent two years in Laramie at the University of Wyoming.

"I'd probably still be in Wyoming if the wind didn't blow quite so hard," she says. "Coaching outside in that wind is really something. So I went against the wind and came out this direction to Idaho."

When she arrived in 1974 as both volleyball coach and head of the women's athletic department, Idaho wasn't exactly setting the sports world on fire. This was the pre-Don Monson basketball and pre-Dennis Erickson football eras. Women's sports still went widely unnoticed.

Clark, however, led Idaho to a 22-6 volleyball record in her first season and finished her three-year career with 56 victories.

"I was excited about the opportunity to really help develop a women's program," she says. "They certainly had women's sports at that time but it was in its infancy stage. So with the passage of Title IX, I had the opportunity to be the first designated person to be head of women's athletics and be paid to do that. Before that, somebody did it almost gratis on top of everything else. I did that as well as coaching volleyball and track my first year."

She soon realized that she enjoyed the administrative end more than coaching. Clark was an aggressive go-getter who could make things happen. Helping shape solid foundations for the women's programs was the perfect fit for her.

"Early on, there were many of us who were helping make this happen who said, 'Just give us the opportunity and they (the players) will do it,'" she says. "It's just so nice -- and not to say I told you so -- to see that played out every day. Give a program the coaching, participation opportunities, the scholarships and high-level competition, and success comes."

And the success did come. Idaho's growth in women's athletics mirrored what was going on nationally in the 1980s and '90s as the Vandal women's athletic programs went from the AIAW to the NCAA.

Soon, Idaho was playing in the NCAA women's basketball and volleyball tournaments, enjoying national success.

"Even as we were developing when we were still in the AIAW, we had almost all of our programs ranked in the top 15 in the country. Everything just came together," she says. "We suffered a little bit when we went from AIAW to the NCAA being that we were a small college going to Division I without all that many scholarships. It took us a while to catch up but we certainly have had some success in literally all of our programs at one time or another.

"It's still really coming along, and as same as always, we're squeezing a penny to get two cents worth out."

Clark says there's still more to do, but she leaves without regrets.

Through all the changes, within the athletic department and NCAA guidelines, Clark's vast knowledge and thoroughness have been priceless.

Last week, they held a retirement dinner/roast, which drew around 250 people, including Clark's mother and brother. They read off a list of things that were going on in 1974 when Clark joined Idaho's staff. Things like Michael Jordan was in the third grade, stamps were eight cents, President Ford pardoned former President Nixon.

It was also pointed out that the entire 1974 UI women's athletic program had one scholarship, which was split up as a waiver fee between four athletes.

Clark received an Idaho golf bag, a new set of clubs as well as an oversized driver, an 8-foot one to be exact, as a gag gift.

Her brother also presented a check for $5,000 to the Kathy Clark Endowment Fund, which awards scholarship money to UI women's athletes. The fund began in 1989 and actually awarded its first scholarship last year to volleyball player Shalyne Lynch.

KHTR's Tom Morris, who is the radio color commentator during Vandal football games, served as emcee for the dinner.

"The thing about Kathy is that she always had an open door as an administrator and she was a true Vandal with an integrity about her," Morris says. "She could decipher an NCAA manual and make it understandable for those who had questions. She always put the student-athlete first and always had something positive to say."

True Vandal or Vandal for life. Those are titles reserved for UI graduates. Yet Clark is more of a die-hard Vandal than most of the school's graduates. She has more black and gold in her wardrobe than she cares to admit.

Walking down the halls of the athletic department in the Kibbie Dome, it will be strange to see her empty office.

"It's not the work that I will miss, but all the people," she says. "I work with wonderful people in the athletic department and associated with the athletic department, whether that be fans, parents of athletes, the student-athletes or the staff.

"As the word has gotten out that I'm leaving, not that I'm the most important thing as I have been here a long time, I've heard from former athletes, coaches and parents and it's been great. But to reflect on how many people I've been associated with over the years, my gosh, it's certainly with mixed emotions and mixed feelings that I leave.

"This place, and this community, are home to me. When I first came here, I thought this was one step closer to home (Oregon), but this became home. I never wanted to leave. This just seemed to be where I wanted to be. This place will always be a part of me."

And a part of her will always be at this place.

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