Whitefish's Nelson wins national coach of the year

The Flathead Valley has a national coach of the year in its high school ranks.

Whitefish High School golf coach Terry Nelson won the National High School Athletic Coaches Association National Coach of the Year for golf.

The award was announced Wednesday. But Nelson found out a couple of weeks ago by phone when Montana Coaches Association Executive Director Ralph Halverson told him.

"I'm very proud," Nelson said. "I am surprised."

The 63-year-old coach is no stranger to a mighty accolade such as this. He is a 10-time Montana Coaches Association coach of the year and it was the fifth time he was a finalist for the national award.

The main reason he said he received the award this year was because of how well his teams did at the State A tournament in October. Led by Chris Conners's individual title, the boys won their seventh state championship in Nelson's 23rd season. Matt Krause, Sam Krause and Derek Denning all placed in the top five with Tyler Holtet placing ninth. Led by Maresa Jenson's fourth-place finish, the girls placed second. The girls have won 12 state titles under Nelson.

"One of the most telling stats of the teams is the girls team winning percentage is 98 percent and the boys is 95 percent," Nelson said. "The boys are undefeated the last two years."

Those percentages correlate to team wins per every team it has played against under Nelson.

Nelson attributed his teams' success to Whitefish's junior golf program.

"The junior golf program gets a lot of credit," he said. "It was started back in the 1970s by Mike Dowaliby. He has since retired but he still helps me with the high school team. He shows up every once and a while and helps with chipping and putting. He is a great asset. We are able to start kids as young as 6-years-old in the junior program."

As a testimant to Nelson and his devotion to golf, he is playing in the Montana Men's Amateur tournament in Missoula, which started Tuesday and runs through Friday. He shot a first-round 9-over 82 and a second-round 14-over 87 Wednesday.

"I'm a pretender not a competitor," Nelson said. "I'm definitely not the player of the year. I've got a couple of former players and some coaches in the event so I came along to support them. My only goal here is to finish. I've only played in two state ams. I just love playing the Missoula Country Club so much I had to get into this one."

Nobody knows about him winning this award at the Men's State Am.

Nelson has been coaching the WHS program since 1985. He moved from Michigan, where he coached golf for three years but was known more as a basketball coach, to the Flathead Valley in 1969. He was the Muldown Elementary School principal for 13 years before becoming the principal at Whitefish Middle School for 12 years. He retired as a school administrator in 1985 and now "just work(s) at a golf course."

"It's kind of a good little gig," he said of his Whitefish Lake Golf Course job.

Nelson also took over the WHS athletic director job on an interim basis for eight weeks this year when Meg Olson took maternity leave.

"It was fun - I liked it," Nelson said of being an AD. "It was busy work but it was a lot like school administrative work."