Coach V, always calm and serene under pressure. (Shelli Trumbull photo)
Coach V (fourth from left) and Wolf football players relax after a football camp.
Coach V is Coupeville through and through.
Dustin Van Velkinburgh grew up and became a man in this town, raised by a “phenomenal mom,” FloyDene Van Velkinburgh, and nurtured, prodded and shaped by a series of coaches who gave a young man without a father positive male role models.
He met his wife in the high school office (more on that later), starred on its athletic fields and now, a decade after graduation, he passes on the lessons he has learned to a new generation of young Wolf athletes in the town he embraces, the town he thrives in.
“I just love this place, this town and this school,” Van Velkinburgh said. “Growing up in Coupeville was huge for me. There were a lot of good people to learn from and it helped build my character, made me who I am today.”
And who he is today is a coach popular with players and parents alike, a man who guides the Coupeville High School boys’ JV basketball squad and works as an assistant Wolf football coach around his day job as a contractor.
From unpaid volunteer coach at age 20 to middle school hoops guru to his current positions (and, at age 28, a head coaching position somewhere down the road is almost a certainty), he has followed a path straight uphill.
A path that started on many of the same courts and fields he now gives direction on. A five-sport athlete during his high school days (football, basketball, baseball, track and soccer), he was a First-Team All-Wesco soccer player for Oak Harbor High School (back when the Wolves didn’t have their own program) and an award-winning wide receiver while wearing his own school’s red and black.
Toss in a basketball career that included being a key player on a 16-4 squad his senior season that was ranked as high as #7 in the state, and you have a pretty impressive body of work.
But Van Velkinburgh, whether he knew it or not at the time, was doing two things at once. He was excelling as an athlete, but he was also picking up bits and pieces of knowledge from all his coaches along the way, lessons he now uses.
“Looking back, I can name all my coaches from second grade on,” Van Velkinburgh said. “I got great stuff from all my coaches, the ones who were great with me and the ones who were hard on me.
“My mom always said, no matter the situation, there is always something to learn.”
He easily reels off names of coaches who had an impact on him, and they are names familiar to locals. Bagby. King. Dickson. Barker. Bottoroff. Sellgren.
Ron Bagby, the longtime Wolf football coach who retired three years ago, once watched Van Velkinburgh reel off field goal after field goal on the practice field. After telling his player the team could skip conditioning that day if he made the next attempt, Bagby waited until Dustin wound up, then suddenly threw his keys at his foot, throwing off his attempt, then chuckling about it.
Van Velkinburgh then beat every one of his teammates in a brutal workout (run a 100-yard dash, do 20 pushups, run a 100-yard dash, do 19 pushups, etc.), before storming off the field.
“Wouldn’t talk to me the rest of the day!,” Bagby said with a huge grin as he looked across the office at his protege.
That kind of intensity stayed with Van Velkinburgh during his first go-around as an unpaid volunteer football assistant. He would stand next to the coach, record every detail of every play, then hustle home, type the report up and have it on Bagby’s desk first thing Monday morning.
“I don’t know if he ever read the things, but I wanted him to know how much I wanted the job,” Van Velkinburgh said.
Paid jobs as a middle school basketball and football coach (where head coach Vinny Sellgren let him run the offense) followed and now Coach V is an established part of the fraternity of Wolf coaches, right along side many of his mentors.
“I carry a piece of each of the coaches I had with me. I’m like a sponge, I soak up knowledge from all the people around me,” Van Velkinburgh said. “It’s odd to talk about death or the end of a career at this point, but I want to be able to look back and say I made an impact on kids lives like my coaches did for me.
“I want to coach successful programs, and success can be measured in many different ways,” he added. “Every kid is different, but there’s always a moment when the light comes on, whether it’s dribbling with the other hand or sacrificing for their teammates. That’s what I always hope to see.”
Van Velkinburgh, who married his high school sweetheart Jessica Bowden (the couple met in the office when they both had to skip P.E. — he had surgery on his foot, she had a broken elbow that sidelined a spectacular gymnastics career, and his immediate reaction was somewhere along the lines of “Who is she? I have to meet her!”), is grateful to be where he is today.
In a town where his three young children can join him on the basketball court after games, or, sometimes, in the middle of a game, if they cut hard at the right moment and get past mom.
“Staying here early in my coaching career has been great. The sense of community. The people,” Van Velkinburgh said. “If I can give them back a piece of what they gave me, I’m happy. That fuels my fire.”
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