After an early life on the Long Beach Peninsula, Trevor Person moved to Battle Ground in 2000, where he graduated in 2002 as a Tiger. He played basketball and football and went on to play basketball at Lower Columbia College, later at San Diego Christian College as well. In 2006, Trevor met his wife, Paige, while at school. They were married in 2009, shortly after Trevor's return to our small town in 2008. Since then, they have been joined by three children (Micah, 10, Beckett, 8, Brooklyn, 4) and most recently, a dog (Zag, 2). Trevor now serves as the Battle Ground High School athletic director (and assistant principal), and after ten years, Paige made her return to coaching last year for the Fall 2024 season of the BGHS girl's volleyball team. Trevor had no doubts that she was the woman for the job; "One of my strengths," Trevor jokes, "is hiring the right people."

Outside of athletics, the pair share an obvious bond of faith and a heart for service and leadership. When Trevor decided to re-enter education—after taking a BA in Kinesiology and Business during his undergraduate studies—so that he could teach, Paige pursued a Master's degree in guidance counseling. She worked with students in that capacity for several years, happily. "We've both fallen in love with working with young adults," Paige says. "We see it as an investment in our community." While Trevor is humble, almost reluctant to share much about himself and his work, Paige is good at turning a phrase, with a sharp memory for her husband's contributions to the school and the wider community. Her admiration is reciprocated; Trevor describes Paige as, "a one of a kind wife and mother…loving, caring, intelligent, and funny."

According to Paige, Trevor's greatest strength is his knack for forming meaningful relationships with the student athletes. "We actually spend a good amount of our summers traveling for athletes' weddings now," she says, not bothered in the least. Trevor ascribes this success to what he hopes the students learn beyond the game itself. 'You have to make it about more than winning and losing." Kaizen, a Japanese word meaning 'improvement', has been central to Trevor's philosophy since his own days on the court and field. "Even with our own kids, we tell them: it's always about the next play." Trevor wants the students to develop character and to grow as people, and Paige is ready with a list of programs and acronyms he's implemented or championed to that end: Student Athlete Leadership Team, or SALT, allows coaches to nominate and elevate role model athletes as they develop their leadership skills; Servanthood, Thankfulness, Unity, Passion, Humility (STUPH), promotes the essential values student athletes should aspire to; We Appreciate You, or WAY, encourages the students to recognize the staff that serve the athletes off the court—the head custodian of BGHS is an important past recipient of that recognition. In the spirit of an existing motto at the school (Unity, Toughness, Class), Trevor takes athletes to the elementary school to practice reading with this next generation of student athletes, and to embrace their role as community leaders. "The younger kids look up to these athletes," Trevor says.

Trevor feels right at home in this community, the way he did seventeen years ago when he came to Battle Ground for the first time. He doesn't seem to doubt his decision to settle here, and even if Paige admits that she misses the sun in San Diego, they both have nothing but praise for their little town. "It's the people that make it special," Paige says certainly. Trevor describes his very first impression of his fellow Battle Groundians: welcoming, hard-working, close-knit. Paige says that no matter how much it grows, Battle Ground maintains That Small Town Feel—a feeling we all know when we feel it. Driving or walking down Main Street: the row of shops and restaurants, with its little creek and bench, beautiful even in winter; the houses with lights hung on the porches; the various churches; the Tigers football stadium. The charm and vitality of that image is kept alive by engaged locals who have a positive vision for this community, and do their part to realize it, for the love of it.  "I think Trevor still has his high school Tiger gear in his dresser," Paige teases. "He's in his dream position."