Not long after he got hired as a PE teacher at Bradley West Elementary School in 1999, Jeff Voss began golfing in the Kankakee County Amateur Men’s Golf Tournament. He finished as high as third a few times, but the 10-time Oak Springs Golf Course champion could never win the big one.

Earlier this month, that changed.

It took an overtime hole against LC Brimberry, but Voss earned his first County Am title at Oak Springs on Sept. 14 after carding a two-day score of 142, becoming the first golfer who calls Oak Springs their home course to hoist the trophy.

“All the hard work I put into it went into that moment,” Voss said. “Utter elation.”

After celebrating with his family, the next people Voss was ready to share his moment with were the students and staff he sees at Bradley West, where he’s in his ninth year as the assistant principal.

The congratulations began at school last Monday and continued each day until Friday, recognized by the faculty and staff as Jeff Voss Day. While teachers dressed like him and office employees wore shirts to congratulate him, the students celebrated with him at their monthly Friday assembly.

“I wanted to do it for the kids, I wanted to share it with the kids. ... It was just great,” Voss said. “Our theme for this month is respect, so I started off by talking about respect in life, and then at the golf course, like you treat people with respect on the playground, so a teachable moment.

“They made me feel good.”

A high school golfer at Bradley-Bourbonnais, Voss has used the game he loves at school, most recently at lunch. If students behave during their lunch period, a putting green is rolled out and a student is chosen for the chance to sink a putt in front of their peers.

“Someone gets picked, and if they make the putt, they can sit wherever they want for lunch or something like that,” Voss said. “They love it. But it also helps with behavior as well, because they look forward to it.”

The putting green got rolled out Friday, and fourth grader Aiden Snyder was one of the lucky ones who got a go at it. A golfer himself, Snyder knew how much it meant to see Mr. Voss accomplish something that meant so much to him.

“I’m proud of him because it was his first championship that he won,” Snyder said. “ … [I am] happy that he got that and everything.

A PE teacher and boys basketball coach at heart, athletics have long been a way for Voss to connect with students. Whether it’s a lunchtime putting contest or just talking sports, it’s one of the ways Voss can keep the open, friendly relationships that he looks for with his students.

And over almost three decades in education, he’s learned how to walk that line between friendship and authority.

“I’ve got to make sure to lay down the law sometimes, but also be a restorative justice kind of guy,” Voss said. “I want to be the good guy, I want to be able to help them, but I’ve also got to do my job. I think it’s a good balance.”

While the golf course gets most of his free time during the spring, summer and fall, once the winter rolls around, Voss’s extra time is spent in local gyms, where he officiates about 50 high school basketball games a year.

A former boys basketball coach at Bradley Central, not only has becoming a referee allowed him to stay involved in basketball, but in a much less stressful way.

“I don’t care who wins, I don’t care about uniforms or practice,” Voss said. “I get a front row seat to the game, see people I know who I can talk to at the game, so I love it.”

Whether it’s at games he officiates, out at the golf course, or even out to eat, like when he saw a student around a decade ago who brought up the lunchtime putting greens, Voss enjoys running into his former students and seeing how well they’re doing.

And if they haven’t yet achieved the goals they set out for themselves while under his tutelage at Bradley West, he knows they still have plenty of time to keep working at them.

The trophy he got to bring to them last week is proof of that.

“I told the kids today, you can be young or old, but you can still have dreams as well,” Voss said. “And I captured mine.”