There aren’t many forces that would dare deter Gretchen Klein or diminish her status as a winner. 

From Hoquiam, with roots much further north in Burlington, Gretchen is an established athlete. She’s a two-time champion of the Washington Senior Women’s Champion of Champions (2017, 2022), and a 3-on-3 basketball player. In both sports, she’s participated in the annual National Senior Games, where she medaled in golf in 2023. 

Sports and athletics have been Gretchen’s modus operandi for quite some time. She is the daughter of Gary Knutzen, a well-known figure who served a 52-year tenure as Skagit Valley College’s athletic director, from 1963-2015, and was himself a prolific wrestler. Indeed, both Gretchen and her dad are enshrined in the Burlington-Edison High School Athletic Hall of Fame. 

Overlap between Gretchen’s early years and her father’s professional life was not uncommon. 

“I basically just grew up in the gym,” she’ll tell you. 

In doing so, Gretchen became thoroughly involved with volleyball, basketball and track through her high school years, sports that were practically all that was available to girls at the time. Later, as an undergraduate at Skagit Valley where her dad worked, Gretchen was again a three-sport athlete, having added slow-pitch softball to her repertoire. 

She later transferred to Washington State University and played intramural sports there on her journey to earning a degree in education. Later, she met her husband, Ed, who had also previously attended WSU and was a member of the Cougars’ men’s golf team.

“He was an assistant pro for a couple of years,” Gretchen recalled. “I thought, ‘I guess I better learn how to play this game.’” 

Becoming the mother of their family, which of course required most of her attention, Gretchen described her golf as not much more than something she “dabbled” in early on. But as years went by and her children eventually departed for college, Gretchen’s game began to take shape with the newfound time she could devote to it. 

“I’ve always been competitive,” she explained, inadvertently stating the obvious. “But it takes time, you can’t just go out for a little bit and expect to get better.” 

As her game began to blossom, so too did the built-to-last friendships that came with it. Today, Gretchen remains close to several fellow longtime WA Golf championship participants, in a way that indicates just as much camaraderie as competitive spirit. 

“We all kind of play the same stuff,” said Gretchen, adding that during a given championship week, “we will get a house together, room together, get dinner together, and then we go out  and compete against each other.” 

Those close-knit bonds are not limited to Gretchen’s golf life. In the Senior Games, in which 3-on-3 basketball teams create their own names and identities, hers is known as the “Women Warriors.” 

Of the players on the roster, some are cancer survivors, and others have lost close family members and spouses to cancer. As such, their shirts are a rich, vibrant pink. 

Gretchen fought (and won) her own battle with breast cancer in 2010. Clad in pink, her team is proud to represent itself. 

“We try to promote our story and shed positivity,” she said in reference to what she and her teammates have been through. “We wear hot pink shirts and kind of stick out.” 

Having lived in Hoquiam since the 1980s, Gretchen has become a loyal member of the women’s club at Grays Harbor Country Club in Aberdeen. While that part of the state may have a smaller golf community than most, she’s proud to be a representative of it. 

“In talking with friends, they’re talking about their ladies’ club that has 50, 60, 100 people in it,” said Gretchen. “My ladies’ club has probably five, six.” 

But whether in that club, at a WA Golf Championship or National Senior Games match, it’s those everlasting alliances that get Gretchen to keep her name in the game and continue to be a competitor striving for top results. 

“To be there with friends, wanting to just challenge yourself,” she said. “I push myself to try to do the best I can. With golf, there’s always something you’re working on.” 

Evidently, through it all, Gretchen’s wins have added up to far more than any trophy case could indicate alone.