File photo Jim Mason (back row) had a notable finish to his career as a coach when his Cardinal golfers won its first tournament under his guidance back in May at Chewelah.
After 34 years in the classroom, on fields, courts and fairways, Medical Lake's Jim Mason is calling it a career.
"It's time to do some other things, I want to go hunting and fishing," Mason, a Walla Walla native, said in announcing his retirement recently.
He could not have gotten a better retirement present, albeit by luck or happenstance, either. "I got a great retirement gift, I drew a bighorn sheep tag, almost impossible to draw," Mason said.
It came at the perfect time, Mason said as he plans to spend much of November in the Manson area at Lake Chelan trying to bag a trophy of a different kind.
Mason turns 59 later this summer and will continue to live in Medical Lake where he will be able to enjoy watching his son, Nick, a sophomore, and a three-sport athlete.
"I get to watch him and not yell at him," Mason said. "There wasn't a lot of yelling," he admitted.
While he's going to miss the kids, " I'm not going to miss the paperwork," Mason said.
After a tour of playing college football that included a variety of stops, Mason played briefly, in 1980, at Eastern Washington University and later served as a graduate assistant under Dick Zornes.
He got his start in coaching under another legend. Mason student taught in Cheney and had first high school coaching duty under Tom Oswald in 1982.
Before coming to Medical Lake, Mason taught and coached at Selkirk High School near Ione, Wash. where he was a head football coach and made the state playoffs his final year. At Selkirk he taught, "Pretty much everything, health, science, history, P.E.," Mason said.
At MLMS his specialties were health, history and science. He coached football, volleyball and basketball.
He came to the high school when Rick Olsen was hired as football coach and tasked with developing the school weight room. In his final year he taught three periods of history and two of weights, plus coaching golf.
Mason worked 18 years at the middle school and 12 more at the high school.
It was at the middle school where he met the guy who would one day be his boss, current high school principal, Chris Spring. Mason was part of an interview team when Spring applied.
"I come to find out later, and we joke about it all the time, of the three people that interviewed me, he didn't want to hire me," Spring said. It wasn't anything against Spring's credentials but rather Mason thought that others who had paid dues in the district deserved the nod.
But once on the job the two worked well together, sharing a common work ethic and passion for teaching.
Speaking from the other side of the table now, Spring called Mason "A dream employee; he comes to work every day with a great demeanor and head on his shoulders," and foremost, perhaps, "A great ability to connect with young people."
Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].
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