Eastern Washington University Athletics

Gavin twice earned NAIA All-America honors as a center for Eastern’s football team, earning first team honors in 1969 and second team accolades in 1968. He also played on Eastern’s 1966 and 1967 teams which had a collective 18-2 record and advanced to the NAIA championship game in 1967. In 1967, 1968 and 1969, Gavin was a first team All-Evergreen Conference selection and earned Little All-Northwest honors all three seasons as well. As a senior, he was named to the Kodak All-West Coast Team for small colleges (all divisions below Division I, including the Big Sky Conference). In four seasons playing for Eastern, he missed only one game because of a concussion. He was captain both as a junior and senior, and is believed to be the first underclassman to serve as team captain in school history. He also received team MVP and Most Inspirational honors in 1969. He went on to win 120 games in 29 seasons as a high school head coach, including the WIAA State AA title in 1976 while coaching at West Valley in Spokane. His team finished the season unbeaten and defeated Hoquiam in the championship game. The year before, West Valley fell to Sumner in the title game. He started his coaching career at Deer Park High School, and followed his stint at West Valley by helping Central Valley to its first-ever State playoff appearance in 1982. He finished his coaching career in Yakima as head coach at Davis and Eisenhower high schools. He helped Eisenhower win the Big Nine Conference title in 1992 as the Cadets had consecutive winning seasons and advanced to the State playoffs. In 1999, Dick Zornes selected Gavin to the "Z" Team consisting of 36 players that he felt were the best players and made the largest contributions toward the 158 games Eastern won in Zornes' 26-year association with Eagle Football. Gavin was selected by the Eastern Athletic Department to the “100 for 100” All-Time Football Team, which was honored on Sept. 27, 2008, to commemorate Eastern’s 100th year of football. In a public vote, he was selected as the top center among position-by-position winners on the “100 for 100” squad. He was inducted into the Washington State Football Coaches Hall of Fame in January 2009. The 1967 football team he played on was the inaugural team inducted into the Eastern Athletics Hall of Fame in 2001.