TERRY MOSHER
Dustin Booth has a college degree, works in the IT department at South Kitsap and is one of those rare people who coaches three sports– golf, wrestling, football ‑ all of them at SK.
But if it wasn’t for his mother, Patty Booth, none of the above might have happened.
“I can attribute my work ethic and everything I have to my mom,” says Booth. “She is an unbelievable lady. She has done everything for my brother (Jacob) and myself by her self.”
Patty was pregnant with Jacob (her sons were born 15 months apart) when she split from her husband, who has not been involved with the two boys (“I really don’t know him,” says Dustin). But that did not stop Patty from going the extra thousand miles or so to insure the boys would be involved in their community through sports.
“I never missed a practice or a game,” says Patty of the two boys’ activities, even if that meant traveling miles between games on the same day to make sure she was there.
“When I was 14 I had a Babe Ruth All-Star Tournament in Mount Vernon,” says Dustin. “My brother had a 13-year-old Babe Ruth All-Star Tournament in Wenatchee. I played Saturday morning and she watched that. Then she drove over to watch my brother play in his game that day. She came back the following morning for a 12 o’clock championship game we had and then I drove with her back to Wenatchee to watch my brother’s team play their championship game Sunday evening.
“I don’t know how she did it,” Dustin adds of his mom, who works as maintenance foreman at a Port Orchard apartment complex. “My goal when I was in high school was to go pro in something just so I could help her, because she deserves it.”
Patty says it was not that tough, although many single parents would probably not agree with that. She did have the backing of her family, the Hoskins. She had six older brothers (all now deceased) and one older sister who helped her.
Dustin was the closest to his uncles Vern and Ken. They were in the roofing business together and Ken later raised thoroughbred horses to race. It was his uncles who got Dustin into golf, which he thought would be the sport that would earn him enough money to help out his mother. He is now a four-handicap golfer, which is not good enough to make the PBA Tour, as he once hoped, but helps him teach as co-head golf coach at SK.
“I remember when I was about 10 or 11 I caddied for my uncle Vern in a tournament at GoldMountain,” says Booth. “Vern was probably in his 50s, and I was just hooked on golf about that time. I played a lot of golf, just hacking around the yard with clubs. My uncle Ken lived on some property over on Sidney near Alberstons (in Port Orchard) and I would hit buckets of balls out into the woods.”
As a young lad, Booth, now 33, would often leave school for his aunts and uncles homes because his mother was then working the graveyard shift at ManchesterElementary School. So there were accommodations that had to be made as the son of a single parent
But Booth played all the sports as a young boy, spurred on by his mother who was an active participant. He played football, basketball, baseball and wrestled at Cedar Heights Junior High. When he hit high school he dropped wrestling and basketball.
“Dustin was in everything,” says Patty. “And I wanted that, because he got what he didn’t have for not having a father. Other coaches became his father figures. And he loved it. He would have a fit if we were going to be late. He always had to be on time. He’s still that way.
“But it was not tough for me. I had a blast with my kids. I enjoyed everything. We started playing ball when they were three and four years old. We played catch. If they didn’t throw it to me where I could catch it, they had to chase after it. They would get tired chasing it so they learned to throw it the right way so I could catch it.
“We played catch every night in the yard. I’d hold up my glove and if they hit it without me moving it, they got a point. That was the game. It was an accuracy game.”
Patty also hit ground balls to her sons. She would hit them as hard and as fast as she could. She even remembers one day she hit the ball so hard it flew instead of bounced along the ground. The neighbor’s window caught it. She got it fixed.
Being as active in sports as he and his brother were meant money was sometimes tight. One of his assistant peewee football coaches paid the fees for him and his brother a couple years.
DUSTIN BOOTH
When Booth was a junior at SK he worked cutting nails out of horseshoes for a neighbor, who would then sell the horseshoes at the Farmer’s market. Booth made enough to pay for the lettermen’s jacket he so much wanted. When it came time to pay for the jacket he was told it was already paid for.
“To this day I don’t know who paid for it,” says Booth “My mom had no idea, I have no idea, but I know I had a $450 lettermen’s jacket and somebody with a gracious heart paid for it.”
A quarterback, Booth showed up as a sophomore for his first football practice at SK and got in the quarterback line. Coach Ed Fisher asked, “Who are you?” He answered and then was asked, “Where were you two weeks ago during quarterback camp?”
Booth said he was at a driver’s Ed course the high school then had in the morning, the same time as the QB camp. Fisher didn’t accept that as an excuse and said, “You can’t be a quarterback this year, go over to the receiver’s line.”
So that is how Booth became a two-time All-Narrows League first team receiver (junior and senior year), all-state receiver his senior year (1998) and played in the East-West All-State game (his roommate was Marcus Trufant).
“I wasn’t very fast, but I could catch the ball and run good routes,” says Booth.
Booth played outfield in baseball for the late coach Elton Goodwin at SK. He hit .428 with a home run and six doubles his senior season. He had never hit a home run over a fence in 13 years of playing baseball until the last game of the regular season his senior year. The Wolves were playing at Foss and he connected with a pitch. Thinking he had a double, Booth slid into second only to see the base umpire signaling a home run.
“I jumped up and was just bawling,” says Booth. “I get to third base and coach Goodwin is there and he gives me a big hug and says, ‘I love you Boother.’ That’s the nickname he had for me. He was crying.”
Booth played his freshman year at Central Washington on a partial football scholarship. He played that year with a bum shoulder that he injured his senior year at SK and went through spring football in 2000 while coming off shoulder surgery. But that was as far as he went. He didn’t get along with his position coach and after a dispute over weight lifting he decided that summer not to return and just concentrate on his studies.
So now Booth has come full circle. He is a young father of twins with wife Schayna, works his regular job at the school and coaches three sports there. So he has his hands full, but it’s never been other than that since he was very young.
“They are a handful,” says Booth of his twins (Jesse and Jenna, 4), “but I want to do everything for them because my mother had to play both roles (father and mother). I didn’t have a father figure in my life, but my kids are going to not have one.’
Patty adds, “He just turned out to be a wonderful father, a wonderful husband, and a wonderful son.”
“There is no way I could repay my mom for what she has done and given me and my brother over the last 33 years,” says Booth. “What she did kept me busy and kept me goal orientated. I wanted to play sports so I had to keep my grades up.”
“There is so much structure and accountability put on you as a student athlete. Football was my first high school sport and just all the little things that they (the coaches) instill in you help you to be a better person. I attribute a lot of that to coach Fisher, coach (D.J.) Sigurdson and coach Goodwin. They made me a better person.”
And now he is determined through his coaching to do the same for others. Its payback time, time to give back to the school program and the community as others did for him.