FORKS HIGH SCHOOL has a new boys basketball coach this season, whose name is Rick Gooding.
If you’ve read this column a few times, you’re probably thinking something like, “Hmm. Forks . . . last name of Gooding . . . he must be related to Bob,” as in Bob Gooding of Olympic Sporting Goods (360-374-6330).
Good for you; you’re obviously a better sleuth than me.
After about two weeks of talking to both of them on a weekly basis at the beginning of the high school basketball season, the sports editor asked me if Rick Gooding is Bob Gooding’s son.
Up to that point, the thought had never even crossed my mind.
Even after the question was raised, I was skeptical about the two Goodings being related.
I said something about Bob possibly being Rick’s uncle, but for whatever reason that’s as far as I was willing to go.
The next time I talked to Rick on the phone, I asked him if there was any relation.
“Yeah, he’s my dad,” Rick Gooding said.
“It was kind of funny, I was reading the paper [the previous day], and our names were in articles right next to each other.”
According to Bob, though, Rick isn’t going to become my one-stop-shop for basketball and hunting and fishing reports.
“All I’ve ever done is kill things or catch things — and I’ve caught zillions of them,” Bob Gooding said.
“But my boys have zero interest in it. One’s a computer whiz and the other is a basketball whiz.
“I’ll talk about something like going duck hunting in Pasco, and they’ll say, ‘Uh, OK. You have fun with that.’ ”
Rick enjoyed hunting and fishing before sports started taking up his time.
“He can have it all he wants,” Rick said of his dad’s love of hunting and fishing.
“I’m not going to drive 10 hours to eat a greasy duck.”
Rick does enjoy fishing, but said he has probably only been out fishing once in the last 10 years.
Apparently, something they do have in common is a dedication to their respective hobbies.
Rick was a member of the 1999 Forks basketball team that made the state tournament and was the JV coach for a number of years before taking over the varsity this season.
Bob said he would often serve as the adult supervision when Rick and his friends would play as late into the night as the open-gym rules allowed.
Bob also said the Forks football coaches tried to convince Rick to play football, but Rick didn’t want an injury to affect his basketball season.
“He’s goofy about it,” Bob said of Rick’s hoops obsession.
Bob can talk Spartans basketball for 10 straight minutes, but he is about as interested in the X’s and O’s of the game as Rick is in steelhead and chinook.
“He was teaching me about the Auburn Shuffle, and I thought I was going to end up in a mental hospital,” Bob said, adding that his only response to these types of conversations is, “Huh? Really?”
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Outdoors columnist Lee Horton appears here Thursdays and Fridays. He can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5152 or at lhorton@peninsuladailynews.com.
