ABERDEEN – It may not be the biggest gym, but Grays Harbor’s modest Sam Ben Gym looks pretty good to new Grays Harbor men’s basketball coach Matt Vargas.
“People say Grays Harbor stinks but I can walk from right here in my office to a weight room that we can call ours. That’s a blessing,” he said. “Then you walk another 20 feet to a court where we can practice. I’m ready to go to work because it doesn’t get any better than that.”
Vargas was named as head coach on July 1 after coming on as an assistant to former head coach Kevin Williamson, who left to take an assistant coaching job at Cal State San Marcos after one season with the Chokers.
Prior to coming on as an assistant halfway through last season, Vargas was head coach at Tohono O’odham Community College in Arizona where they they were runners up in their region in 2014 and 2015.
TOCC’s campus was located more than 50 miles from Vargas’ home and the gym his team practiced in was another 25 miles away.
Despite waking up at 4 a.m. and commuting more than 100 miles a day to and from his home and getting TOCC to compete on a national level, Vargas unexpectedly found himself without a job at the end of the 2016-17 season.
Vargas credits tribal politics for his contract not being renewed but his son’s battle with Crohn’s disease put his own troubles in perspective.
“I’m wining and crying about a job and the next thing I know, two months later, my son if fighting for his life,” he said. “It puts things into perspective real fast. You realize your this father who built this amazing thing at Tohono O’odham and built this amazing program and that doesn’t mean anything when your kid is sick.”
Vargas’ son battle with the intestinal disease required treatments and surgery to correct and added to Vargas stress while he was still between jobs.
It was around this time halfway through Williamson’s first and only year at GHC that he reached out Vargas in attempt to convince him to join the staff.
The coaches have a relationship that goes back nearly 10 years when Williamson coached at Kofa High School in Yuma, Arizona around the same time Vargas was coaching Pima Community College in Tuscon.
With his son’s health still in question, Vargas initially declined Williamson’s request but when a recent surgery put Vargas’ son on a path to recovery, he reconsidered.
Vargas said it didn’t take much convincing to sell his son on moving to the northwest.
“I told my son about the water and the fishing and he was sold. He was an avid fishermen but he was an avid fishermen in the lakes and ponds around Tuscon, so when he got out here and he could drop his line in some real water it was a wrap.”
Vargas’ family situation has stabilized with the improved health of his son he now plans to make a connection with local talent.
Vargas has already made a verbal offer to Aberdeen point guard Ben Dublanko and helped Williamson sign Monte grad Trevor Ridgway and Taholah native Zack Cain.
Vargas needed a little less than half a minute of game play before he decided he wanted Cain on the roster.
“The ball went up, 28 seconds were played and I got up and Kevin asks, ‘Where are you going?” recalled Vargas. “I said that kid is the best kid we’ve seen in this area. There’s nothing more to look at. He hit two three-pointers from the parking lot and he grabbed three rebounds. Williamson called me 10 minutes later and said “Zack Cain is really good.” I said, ‘I know because I’ve seen it before.’”
For Vargas, Cain and players like him, is part of a larger plan to get a program headed in the same direction of TOCC.
Williams, who took the job with the hope the college would be making improvements to the athletic facilities said that Vargas has the right attitude for the challenges of the job.
“My biggest thing to him was don’t get caught up in what I got caught up in,” he said. “I was brought in on different circumstances, so I told him this program is what it is. I told him that If you are happy with what you see here this is going to be the greatest job for you in the world.”
Vargas doesn’t have any complaints about the facilities or life on the Harbor in general. With his professional and family life in better condition than they were a year ago, he plans to lay down some roots in the area.
“I’m not going to be a flash in the pan to where I’m here for a year and bounce out to something better. I’m here to build something special here,” he said.
