Linfielder ODIS AVRITT saluted in PIL/Portland Interscholastic League May 2023/’Members of the Month’ feature
Linfielder Odis Avritt graduated in 1963 from Portland’s
Cleveland (Commerce) High School. For Cleveland he competed in football,
wrestling and track & field. He was inducted into the PIL/Portland Interscholastic
League Hall of Fame in 2008.
Odis, Linfield Class of 1968, was profiled the PIL/Portland
Interscholastic League Hall of Fame website “Members of the Month” feature. The
profile which follows was written by Dick Baltus, Wilson High School, Portland,
Class of 1973). Slight edits by
Wildcatville.
High School Honors: Football letter winner; 1st Team
All-PIL; 2nd Team All-State; Wrestling letter winner; Track and Field letter
winner
College Honors: Football four-year letter winner at Linfield
College; 1st Team All-Conference; 1st Team All-Northwest; 1st Team All-West
Coast; Honorable Mention Little All-American
A person can find almost anything on the World Wide Web these days. Photos of dogs, cats and grandchildren. Close-ups of half-eaten cheeseburgers. Tips for cleaning potatoes in a dishwasher (don’t laugh, it worked). Selfies. Lots of selfies. So…many…selfies.
And, if a person digs deep enough, they can
find Odis Avritt (Cleveland 1963) claiming his 15 seconds of fame
in a home video promoting his “famous” chili during a Linfield College tailgate
party. See video: https://youtu.be/yjiC9jQq-Ng
So what if the video has only
been viewed by 106 people (107 now). And who cares if it’s only eight seconds
long, meaning Odis left seven seconds of stardom on the table. Presumably next
to the cheese and onions.
If Odis and his chili needed some
fame they got a small dose of it then, and he’s about to get served up some
more. But odds are Odis doesn’t need any more of it. He isn’t the kind of guy
who sought any in the first place, though he definitely got his share of
acclaim. At Cleveland. At Linfield College. In his long and successful career
in sales and marketing.
Odis competed in four sports in
high school, though he gave up baseball after one year and didn’t wrestle for
much longer. “It didn’t work for me; I don’t know what it was,” says Odis,
before proceeding to give us a pretty good idea what it was. “My coach, Don
York, would always match me with the best wrestler on the team. This guy was a
senior and I was a sophomore and he always tied me up in knots. I didn’t like
that.”
What Odis gained from giving up
baseball and wrestling was a greater focus on his two best sports, football and
track and field. He responded by excelling in both.
But before he did, he was a kid
who grew up playing sports in the streets of S.E. Portland’s Hosford Abernethy
neighborhood. After his father died when Odis was very young, he was raised by
his mother, Elizabeth Washington, whose own story is worthy of being told. Odis
provides a brief excerpt from it:
“She was a very interesting
woman. She started out in nursing, at the bottom rung of the profession. She
wound up getting her LPN (licensed practical nurse certification) from Clark
College in Vancouver, then her RN. Years later, she earned her bachelor’s
degree from the U of O Nursing School. She wound up working 35 years as a nurse
and was the first woman of color to be appointed chairperson of the Oregon
State Nurses Association.”
Even with the steady and positive
presence of his mother, who is “still doing well” at age 95, Odis says he
missed out on the benefits of having a father in his life. “Without having a
father involved, attending my games and things like that, I just went out and
played,” he says. “I didn’t really know anything about the things I could do to
improve.”
Odis was fortunate to have some
good friends to help fill that void, including classmate and fellow PIL Hall of
Fame inductee, Dennis Patera, and his older brother, Norm. “I’d work out with
Norm at the Cleveland track, and others would come over and we’d play flag
football,” Odis says. “He was very much a mentor who encouraged me to keep
playing. It was pretty important to have a person do that for me.”
By the time Odis was a sophomore
at Cleveland, he was already making a name for himself in football and track.
He’d started running track to help improve his speed for football and
ultimately became one of the top sprinters in the PIL.
While the Cleveland football team
had “a tough time” during his tenure, Odis had no trouble making enough of an
impression on his own, as a running back, linebacker and cornerback, to be
named 1st Team All-City and 2nd Team All-State in 1962. He also earned a spot
on the 1963 Metro Shrine football team.
In one memorable game that Odis
considers his best high school performance, he ran for one score and returned
an interception for a second in Cleveland’s upset win over Madison.
Odis had long dreamed of playing
football at the University of Oregon and was disappointed the Ducks never
called while he was racking up high school honors. Washington, Washington
State, Idaho and other schools did, but the interest wasn’t mutual. “I wanted
to play winning football since I hadn’t done it since grade school,” Odis says.
One Saturday in 1962 Odis found
himself in front of a TV watching an NAIA bowl game pitting Linfield against
Pittsburg State. By game’s end, he’d become intrigued by the notion of being a
Wildcat and reached out to one of Cleveland’s assistant coaches to learn more
about the private school with the long history of winning football. After hearing
his coach sing Linfield’s praises, Odis learned Wildcat coach Paul Durham,
coincidentally, was going to be speaking at Cleveland’s senior year sports
banquet (Odis wouldn’t learn until many years later that Durham had taught at
Cleveland before taking the Linfield job).
The two were introduced at the
banquet and by fall Odis was competing for the Wildcats in football and, the
next spring, running track where, as a freshman, he would set the 100-yard
school record of 9.7 seconds. “My teammate broke it a year later,” he says,
just a touch ruefully.
In football, Odis excelled as a
running back and catching passes out of the backfield. His honors included 1st
Team All-Conference, All-Northwest and All-West Coast teams and honorable
mention Little All-American. He was inducted into the Linfield Hall of Fame as
a member of the second Wildcat team to compete for a national championship.
As a senior, Odis won the
Wildcat’s Most Inspirational Player award, an early indication of the
leadership skills that would help him achieve great success in the business
world. After serving as an Army clerk in Viet Nam, landed a sales and marketing
job with a paper distribution company before moving onto jobs with
Weyerhaeuser, Kimberly-Clark and Grays Harbor paper companies. While at
Weyerhaeuser, he earned one company-wide Salesman of the Year award and was
Mill Representative of the Year multiple times.
“All through school, chemistry
was the worst subject I could think of,” he says. “I never thought I’d be
working in a related business.”
By the time Odis retired in 2018,
he had left the paper business but, from the sounds of his retirement schedule,
he forgot to leave the working world. He moved back to a neighborhood in the
Cleveland High district and for more than 20 years has been active in the
school’s alumni association, serving two terms as president, taking charge of a
golf tournament and helping lead fund-raising efforts among his many
contributions.
Odis and his wife, Alicia, share
children from previous marriages. That includes a son, Taylor Avritt, Linfield
Classs of 2011, who followed him onto the Linfield gridiron.
“The most fun I ever had at
Linfield was going back to watch my son play,” he says. “That was in the early
2000s and was the impetus that brought a bunch of my former teammates together
again to tailgate and watch the team play.”
Odis is also an avid golfer and
serves on the PIL Hall of Fame Selection Committee, helping pick men and women
who, like him, have distinguished themselves in high school athletics and,
often, beyond.
“Being inducted was one of the
greatest things that ever happened to me,” says the 2008 inductee. “I never
really thought something like that would happen. My wife and mom and kids all
attended the ceremony with me. It was great to be back in contact with athletes
I’d grown up with or who competed before me — people I might only have had a
little knowledge of before. So to be able to meet them and, in some instances,
develop lasting relationships with them has been great.”
No doubt those people would say
the same thing about Odis. Especially if they’re fans of chili.
#
Photos: Odis Avritt
and Taylor Avritt (both photos from Linfield Athletics) as Linfield football
players. Video (by Wildcatville): Odis Avritt
