Sequim’s Olympic Games hometown hero is getting his own day of honor.
Sequim Museum & Arts, 544 N. Sequim Ave., will host “Honor Matt Dryke Day” to honor Dryke, the 1984 Olympic Games gold medalist in skeet shooting, from noon-3 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 13 at the museum.
A Sequim native, Dryke — who turns 66 today, Aug. 21 — won Olympic gold in skeet shooting at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, California, with a record 198 points.
He was a two-time world champion in skeet shooting (1983 and 1986), and a nine-time U.S. Champion. He was a three-time Olympic Games competitor (1984, 1988, 1992) and would have been a four-time Olympian after qualifying for the 1980 Games but did not compete due to the U.S. team’s boycott.
The event comes one day before Dryke will join nine other individuals, including 1936 Olympic Games gold medalist Joe Rantz, and one team in the inaugural Sequim Athletic Hall of Fame ceremony.
“I’ve known him since he was born, and his parents,” said Judy Reandeau Stipe, volunteer executive director of Sequim Museum & Arts. “He’s just a sweetheart; I love him to death.”
She said she helped organize a special day simply to help remind the community of Dryke’s accomplishments.
Dryke will be on hand at the museum to talk with visitors and tell of his competitions, Stipe said.
“He likes to talk and shakes hands with people,” she said.
Though school will in in session, Stipe said she’s hoping she can get a group of students from Sequim High School, located just across the street from the museum to visit. Dryke met with a number of Sequim teens at a party following the screening of “The Boys in the Boat” film in December 2023, a movie centered on Rantz’s gold-medal-winning exploits; those teens had backed efforts to bring a premier of the film to the Olympic Peninsula.
“[Matt] loves to talk to young people; he’s every easy to speak to,” Stipe said. “It’s wonderful to see such a small town produce two gold medal winners.”
Born in 1958 in Port Angeles, Dryke trained at his family’s 40-acre gun range, Sunnydell Shooting Grounds in Agnew — Chuck, his father, turned the land into a training facility for his son — and rose to prominence in the shooting world as an expert marksman.
Photos courtesy of Sequim Museum & Arts Matt Dryke, gold medal winner in skeet shooting at the 1984 Olympic Games, instructs Sequim teen Danika Chen at Sunnydell Shooting Grounds in June. “He’s still giving shooting lessons and showings at 66, Chen said. “He says the trick is to follow the target with your eyes and the gun will follow.”
Dryke joined the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit at age 18 and shot with the unit from 1978-87. At the Pan American Games, he won gold medals in 1983 and 1987 and a silver medal in 1979. He was a gold medalist at the Championships of the Americas in 1981 and 1985.
He eventually took over from his father running the range, where he gave private lessons.
Dryke met his wife Yvonne, a pistol shooter from Peru, in 1995 while training shooters aboard. They married in 2002 and have a daughter, Ellen; the family continues to reside in Sequim, where Dryke has resumed shooting lessons at Sunnydell despite some health issues in recent years.
Sequim Museum & Arts has a standing exhibit of Dryke, including a video detailing his story.
“We get lot of tour groups from the cruise ships, and they [say they] had not heard a lot of this young man,” Stipe said. They’re amazed, she said, particularly when they watch the video of what she calls antics”: making coleslaw (shooting cabbage and onions in the air), putting holes in dimes with his shots, and hitting targets while riding a unicycle.
“It’s a whole Matt Dryke people haven’t seen,” she said.
Stipe said she’s hoping to get the community to make the second Friday of each September to be “Honor Matt Dryke Day.”
