Vic Godfrey - Inducted 2015

The 1958 Aberdeen Central and 1963 Northern State grad has been a track and/or cross country coach for more than 50 years – much of it at Watertown.

Godfrey began his coaching career in Indonesia while in the Peace Corps from 1963-65. During that time he worked with Olympic gold medalists Emil Zatopek and Charlie Jenkins.

In 1965 he coached gymnastics and track at Madison, Minn., before going to Watertown for three years. From 1969-76 he was the cross country and distance coach (in track) at Wisconsin-Parkside. There he coached Olympians Lucian Rosa and Jim Heiring and Boston and New York Marathon champion Kim Merritt. It was at this time that he was the director of the Olympia Sports Village, which served as a training camp for many of America's top runners.

In 1977 he was recruited by the U.S. Sports Academy and sent to the Kingdom of Bahrain. During 12 years there he was the head coach of the Bahrain Olympic track teams in 1984 and ’88 along with numerous Arab, Asian, World and CISM championships. Bahrain athletes competed in 27 countries on five continents during this time. Godfrey coached Ahmad Hamada, who became the Asian and Arab champ and record holder in the 400 hurdles.

He returned to Watertown in 1989 and has been the girls and boys cross country coach there ever since. He also was the Arrows’ boys and girls track coach until retiring from that in 2012. Watertown was state boys track champ in 1998 and state girls cross country champ in 2001, and the Arrows have been runners-up 10 times. Watertown has been ESD champ 17 times.

He has been the state coach of the year in girls cross country (1993) and boys track (1998). He was a national high school girls cross country coach of the year finalist in 2004. He is in the Northern State, Wis.-Parkside and S.D. High School Coaches halls of fame.

At Northern, he was a two-time SDIC champion in the mile and 880 and also competed in cross country and wrestling.