 Seven-time
hall of fame inductee John Woods knows the secret to success
By DAN KIDDER
To John Woods, the secret of success really isn’t
a very big secret.
The Valley Center resident has been a coach,
athletic director, and athletic conference commissioner since
1970. He was inducted into the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo alumni
hall of fame in 2009 and is a member of seven different halls
of fame, including the state athletic director hall of fame (inducted
2009) and NCAA Wrestling Hall of Fame (1999). Last fall, he was
named the athletic coordinator in charge of intercollegiate athletics
Pasadena City College.
Despite all the accolades, Woods knows that he
wouldn’t be where he is now if not for the hard work, dedication,
and motivation of the people he looked up to.
“Life isn’t easy. Whatever you want
to achieve in life, you’ve got to earn it,” he says.
“I can’t take credit for the great things that have
come my way; I’ve always been standing on the shoulders
of others.”
Woods grew up on a farm in Visalia, the youngest
of six children. His father had a stroke when Woods was still
young, so Woods remembers watching his mother raise the family
and says he learned a lot of important life lessons from her.
“Mom took care of us, no matter what,”
he says. “She would go to work all day, and still somehow
make sure she was at all of our games. She wouldn’t not
let us play sports, because she knew how important it was for
us to learn sacrifice and commitment. I saw those qualities in
her every day.”
After graduating from high school, Woods left
for Cal Poly in 1964. He admits that he was in a little bit over
his head at the time, but also appreciates the role that sports
played in his growth and maturation.
“I had never left home before that, and
when I got to college, all of a sudden there was this whole new
arena,” he says. “I wasn’t going in the right
direction, but my coaches helped me fill that void. They really
helped me get on a much better path.”
Woods played football and wrestled in high school
and his freshman year of college, but had to choose between the
two in order to have more time for his studies. He ended up picking
wrestling, and in his senior season, went on to win the NCAA Division
II title at 167 pounds and went on to finish second at the NCAA
Division I National Championships. He was a Division II national
runner-up in 1968, thus earning three NCAA All-America honors.
He was also a team captain in 1969, selected to the NCAA East/West
All-Star Team in 1969 and led Cal Poly to NCAA Division II team
championships in both 1968 and 1969.
Overall, Woods was 34-6-4 in dual meets as a
Mustang with five falls. He earned his bachelor’s degree
in physical education in 1969 and continued on to earn his master’s
degree in education in 1970.
After school, Woods began teaching science and
coaching wrestling at Orange Glen High School in 1970, where he
led the Patriots to a 45-9-2 record in two years, as well as a
pair of league titles and a CIF-San Diego Section runner-up finish.
In 1973, Woods became the wrestling coach at
Palomar College, where he spent the next 16 seasons leading the
Comets to a 179-19-3 record and six California Community College
state championships.
The success with the wrestling program led Woods
to the position of athletic director at Palomar, where he served
for the next 21 years before becoming the commissioner of the
Pacific Coast Athletic Conference (PCAC) in 2007.
“All through high school and college, I
had great coaches and mentors,” Woods says. “All I
wanted was for people to feel about me the way I felt about them.
I just wanted to have an impact in someone’s life like I
was impacted by these coaches. I just emulated the people I looked
up to. I expected a lot from my students, and I always wanted
the kids to be the best. I tried to bring out the best in them,
and I hope I was successful in some way.”
Woods’ statistical records speak for themselves,
but perhaps the strongest endorsement comes from the success he
sees in the lives of his own four children. He and his wife, Libier,
are the proud parents of daughter Kelley, graduate of Cal State
San Marcos and now married and mother of three children of her
own, son Curtis, who graduated from Chico State, son Leandro,
a senior at Cal State San Marcos, and daughter Ave, a junior at
Cal State San Marcos.
“We have great kids, and even though they’re
not kids anymore, you never really stop being a parent,”
he says with a laugh. “I always tried to put good pressure
on them to help them be the best they could be. I remember our
youngest daughter, Ave, asked me once, ‘Dad, why do you
make me play sports?’ I thought about it for a second, and
I told her, ‘Because you choose not to.’ The same
way that my mom wanted us to learn those important lessons through
sports, we wanted our kids to have those same opportunities. Ave
and I still laugh about that conversation to this day.”
The Woods family has lived in Valley Center for
more than 30 years, and Woods says it has always felt like home.
“I believe that your home is your castle,
and that you want to look forward to going home at the end of
the day,” he says. “And when I drive over that ridge,
to me, that’s home. When you like where you live, it just
helps the stress dissipate. I can’t imagine living in a
crowded city, where your neighbors are twenty feet away and you’re
always hearing everybody else and getting involved with all their
problems. Up here, we have great neighbors, plenty of space, and
even though my commute is about thirty-five minutes every morning,
that’s one of my favorite parts of the day. I go the back
way, out Old Castle, and it gives me time to think and get ready
for my day.”
Woods also appreciates the many positive aspects
of the community.
“The people here are just great people,”
he says. “We have a lot of good friends here, and everybody’s
very real. We like going to the farmers’ market and seeing
everybody, and it’s great how friendly everyone is. This
really is a great place to live.”
As for his work with the PCAC, Woods says that
he was always proud to be a part of a conference that is so committed
to being on the forefront of innovation.
“It’s a conference that’s ahead
of the curve,” he says. “They’re proud to be
a leader in terms of new systems, and they’re always looking
into trying different things and coming up with new ideas. I always
saw it as my responsibility to take care of the students who played
in my conference, and I wanted to give them the best opportunity
I could.”
And now that he’s working for Pasadena
City College, Woods says he’s enjoying the work he’s
doing, but also looking forward to having more free time to pursue
some of his other passions.
“I love to hunt, and it’s something
that I enjoy doing with my kids whenever possible,” he says.
“I also have been enjoying my free time; the yard’s
as clean as it’s ever been. But I’m always looking
for the next thing, although I’m not quite sure what that
is just yet. I’ve got more free time than I need, and I
have no doubt that I’ll find something new to try before
too long.”
No matter what comes his way, Woods says that
he truly appreciates all the good things in his life.
“Every day, when I wake up, I look around
and see how truly blessed I am,” he says. “I’m
alive, I’m happy, and I don’t expect anything more
than I deserve.”
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