PORT ANGELES — Added to the many accolades that Port Angeles High School Athletic Director Dwayne Johnson has received over the years is a new one — being inducted into the Washington State Gymnastics Coaches Association Hall of Fame.
Johnson was inducted during the state 2A/3A state gymnastics championships held in Tacoma on Feb. 16.
Johnson’s involvement in gymnastics goes back decades. He spent 24 years as the equipment manager at the WIAA state gymnastics meet. He also was for 10 years an assistant gymnastics coach for Port Angeles High School in the 1990s. He even helped set up gymnastics equipment back when he was a student at Seattle Pacific University.
“When I became head coach in 1990, I recruited [Johnson] as my assistant coach,” said Jan Urfer, who is now the executive director of Klahhane Gymnastics in Port Angeles.
“He wasn’t very familiar with gymnastics, but he had a great background in motivation,” she said.
Urfer said Johnson deserves far more credit, however, for just being an assistant coach. She said he played a big role in keeping gymnastics thriving in the region.
“He was really instrumental in keeping gymnastics alive not only on the Olympic Peninsula but on the Kitsap Peninsula, too,” Urfer said. Those Kitsap programs were important for the Olympic Peninsula programs so local schools would have nearby schools to compete with.
As far as his induction, Johnson said, “it was very well appreciated on both ends.”
“It was a culmination of a lifetime body of work,” in gymnastics, he said.
‘Bar boys’
Johnson was nominated by Ryan Fleisher, president of the Washington State Gymnastics Coaches Association. He said Johnson did a huge amount of work for the state meet, renting trucks, driving to various schools to collect equipment and organizing work crews to set up the equipment.
“After the equipment was delivered Dwayne and his crew (lovingly called the ‘bar boys’) were at the meet all day for each day of the tournament fixing any equipment problems and the boys set the bars for every athlete that did the bars. Dwayne was also so happy and loved being a part of our meet, he and his crew became like extended family to all of us in the gymnastics community gymnasts and coaches,” Fleisher said.
“He was a vital piece of what made our state meet so great. He always found the best young men to be the ‘bars boys’, they were hard working, kind and just great guys. Over the years we got to know many of them very well, one of them Jacob has now moved on to be the new Dwayne. Dwayne and his crew were so important and in my mind they were unsung heroes of our meet, it wouldn’t have happened without them,” Fleisher said.
“Several years ago our board changed the hall of fame to include not just coaches but those who have positively impacted high school gymnastics, I felt this was a perfect description of Dwayne so I nominated him,” he said.
“The first time I walked into the Tacoma Dome is where I witnessed WIAA director Cindy Adsit moving a wrestling mat and that’s how this loyalty began,” Johnson said in his induction speech.
“I became Bob Wendt’s assistant equipment manager for two years and in 1993 became the WIAA State Meet Equipment Manager. I talked with seven head coaches before I told Cindy Adsit that I would take on this endeavor … We all wanted the best equipment to advance this sport. Vault, Bars, Beam and the No. 1 issue, the wrestling mat floor. We started with the foam block, to springs, to reinforced fiberglass panels with stratum springs.
“The AAI innovation relationship was developed and fiberglass vault boards were suggested and became the industry standard because they were lighter for our coaches and the rebound would be greater for our athletes.
While these relationships were been built over the years, I hold these memories with honor and privilege. This was not a job, nor an adventure, rather a demonstration of will and desire not fail these state competitors, state coaches, and state family members, that worked so hard to compete at the state meet,” Johnson said.
Johnson also thanked WIAA and Tacoma Dome staff and his wife Michelle and sons DJ, Dane and daughter Jackie “for their endearing support and love of this sport.”
Thanks to Johnson’s many years working in the local gymnastics scene, the program at the high school is thriving with three state trips to the state 2A/3A Gymnastics meet. Port Angeles was just one of three 2A schools that qualified for the state meet as a team.
This year, the Roughriders came in sixth in the state, also the program’s third straight year of improvement at the 2A/3A state meet. Urfer said the program is in great hands now with coaches Megan Hoover and Jackie Mangano.
