Kelly Graves the potato plower turned coaching connoisseur

Yes, you read the headline correctly. Women’s basketball head coach Kelly Graves was plowing potato fields in Washington state before his coaching career gained momentum.

His first full-time coaching gig was at Big Bend Community College in Mosses Lake, Washington. It was 1989, Graves was fresh out of undergrad, and it was a women’s coaching position… so it paid a whopping $2,500 a year.

To stuff his pockets a bit more, Graves looked to his local community and found a job plowing potato fields at 5 a.m. If you can picture the Ducks’ now illustrious head coach driving a tractor, your imagination is better than mine.

As he worked as a part-time coach and plower, the basketball team started to find success, and Graves gained recognition for his coaching prowess.

Four and a half hours away sat an assisting coaching position at the University of Portland. Graves lept at the opportunity and worked with the program from 1992-1996. He then spent a year as the Saint Mary’s assistant coach before taking over the head coaching job.

As the Gaels’ head coach, he took the team to a 19-9 record in his first year before taking them dancing in the program’s first-ever NCAA tournament with a 27-7 record. The Gaels even went to the NIT tournament in Graves’ final year with the program.

Most Duck fans and women's basketball fans are familiar with Graves’ career after this point. In 2000, he started his fourteen-year tenure with the Gonzaga women’s basketball team.

Before Graves took over, the Bulldogs had a last-place finish in the West Coast Conference. By the time he was done with the program, Gonzaga was a national contender.

However, Graves had his sights set on the big stage and on April 7, 2014, he got his well-deserved call-up.

The Oregon Ducks announced Graves as their head coach in the spring of 2014 and there was a lot of pressure on him to produce the same kind of success that people had seen over the past decade.

However, in his first season with the team, Oregon finished at 13-17 overall, 6-12 in the Pac-12. It didn’t take too long for Graves to whip the program into shape. In his second year in Eugene, the Ducks finished at 24-11 and made it all the way to the NIT semifinals.

In Graves’ 10 years with the team, they have made it to the Final Four, when they lost to the Baylor Bears, and the Elite Eight twice, losing to the UConn Huskies and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in consecutive seasons.

From potato plower to a consistent coach. To a national title-contending coach. To a coaching connoisseur. Kelly Graves has climbed his way to the top and hopefully, for Duck fans’ sakes, he’s here to stay.

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