14 minute read
The Best We Can Possibly Be
THE BEST
Almost every Spartan knows Dave Hawley. They know his voice, gregarious nature, easy laugh, big smile, and heartwarming hugs and stories. If you don’t yet know Dave Hawley – you should! Dave has been a member of the Collegiate family for forty years (with no plans of slowing down), and he just celebrated his 50th State Tennis Championship win – what a legacy! Here, he reflects on his time at Collegiate, his success in teaching and tennis, and his most rewarding and humbling moments while part of our community. Thank you, Dave, for sharing your stories and yourself with us!
KG // Your 50th State Tennis win in time for your 40th anniversary at Collegiate – how do you feel? DH // Frankly, it’s been overwhelming. I find myself looking back over the time I’ve been here and thinking of random things. It’s been a journey down memory road and really kind of cool to see things dovetail together. It’s been perfect timing, especially with the tennis – it means so much to our kids. That to me is really phenomenal. I’m just overwhelmed by how into it they’ve been. They want to be part of something big, too. I really didn’t get how it was going to resonate with people. Coming out of the woodwork, people calling and writing. Many players, coaches, and parents have called to wish us well. I had a girl, Claire Vanderpool, who graduated from here in ’83, who came out to see me. She read the article in The Wichita Eagle and brought me her copy of it and she’d highlighted the part where it talked about us not cutting kids and valuing every kid. So that meant enough for her that she got in the car, bought me some M&Ms, came out, and talked about it. So that was really cool, a nice thing. The collective joy people have in being part of it! Really good! Pleased! We’re making a shirt! KG // This particular team of boys – what set them apart from other teams you’ve coached before? DH // I think it’s the here and now and the moment, but I also think they realized early that they had a chance to be part of something with the school that was pretty big. At least with some of them, that’s fueled their desire to get better. The most remarkable thing about these kids – these six, and a few more not in the top six – about two or three years ago, they really took a step to say, “We don’t want to be average players. We want to be beyond that!” And they’ve gone outside to other programs – to Genesis, to Crestview, to wherever – to play in tournaments all over the area. To see their investment has been huge. And they like each other. That’s a critical thing. If you dropped them in the middle of all these years, would I feel the same way about them? I think I would. But I’ve had a lot of groups, if they came along now… I might say the same thing. I was convinced that the group that graduated in 2010 and 2011 was going to be my favorite group ever. They still are incredibly meaningful to me for a lot of reasons. But other groups come along and you feel your heart kind of expanding. That’s a cool thing! This group – I love seeing their own self-determination to be really good players.
KG // Do you have a favorite boys’ or girls’ team? DH // I always give this answer and it’s the safe answer, but any teams I coached that my own kids were on were my favorite teams. What’s my most talented? Team-wise, it’s my 1996 boys. They were so amazingly good. We had six incredible players, one of whom was my son. It also included Matt Wright, Chase Koch, Michael O’Shaughnessy, Jamie Rheem, Preston Jones, and Zach. They were incredibly good. In terms of talent level, trotting them out and never having to worry about winning or not, that’s a nice feeling once in a while. And they were great kids, too; I had a blast with them. Our road trips, we would talk about everything from Madrigals to other sports to NBA to this, that, and the other. I told this year’s team – “I think
THE BEST
WE CAN POSSIBLY
BE // By Katie Hatfield Gunzelman ’07
there’d be a spot for you on our ‘Mount Rushmore’ of teams, but you can’t be George Washington, because that’s the ’96 team.” Probably one of my very favorite teams was a team that didn’t win State, finished 3rd at State. But they overcame. First year we were in 4A in 2004 and they were just battlers, and I loved that in them. The 2008 boys’ team has a very near and dear place to me. My dad died that spring in the middle of the season, and they rose up, even though they were VERY young – three sophomores, two freshmen – and not only WON state, but were the kind of kids you always want as players. Most proud of these guys – sophomores Wyatt Kesler, Miles Dunne, and Brandon Somerhalder; freshmen Paul Abromeit and Daniel Ritchie. Then I had a girls’ team in 2010 – Grace LeMaster, Jillian Johnson, Esther Cho, Lindsay Funke, Keli Dunn, and Mary Meeker – we were the best ranked team in the State going into the State tournament and we had a horrible first day. We’ve never had a worse first day. And yet on the second day, I told them, “Let’s relax; let’s have fun; let’s just play; do the very best we can!” And they did and they turned it all around and we won by one point. And that one is a favorite, not because they were the best players, but because they just latched onto each other. If there’s one thing about my teams I like more than anything else is they seem to invest in each other a lot. They latch to each other and lift each other up. cont’d next page
Coach Hawley with the 2017 Boys’ State Tennis Team. Left to right, top row: Austin Gartner '17, Max Wheeler '19, Lakelin Conrad '18, Easton Ewy '17; bottom row: Matt Regehr '17, Ben Murphy '17
KG // How about a favorite player? DH // That’s dangerous. That’s loaded. There are a lot of them that have stood out for a variety of reasons. Some kids have overcome a lot of stuff. Some kids have grown from being average or not wanting to be much of a player to saying, “This is going to be my passion.” So I’ll say I don’t have a favorite player; I have a ton of favorites. KG // What was it like to coach and then to teach your own kids? DH // It’s funny. The teaching part… each kid was different. Zach – this was 24 or 25 years ago – I think he didn’t even want to acknowledge that I was his dad, which was fine. I felt the same way growing up about my dad in public circumstances – just the way you’re wired. The other two, Meagan and Ben, were a little bit goofier about the whole thing. But I loved teaching them and I think, deep down, they liked being taught by me. Coaching was a little different animal. There are some bittersweet parts of all that. Meagan didn’t get the athletic glory that the boys did. They both won multiple state championships. I have a little bit of a regret with her and that is I wish I would’ve pushed her earlier. I went exactly, in my mind, the way she wanted to be addressed, but I really wish I would’ve said to her earlier on, “You’re going to want to have a little bit bigger role in this at the end, and you may not like it now but I think you’ll really like it later.” But you can’t regret a lot. And she’s probably, of the three, in terms of being around her during the sport – I probably enjoyed that more than the boys, in one respect because I coached her in two sports (tennis and basketball) and them in only one. It was a mostly incredibly positive experience coaching and in the classroom. I’d say a couple big pluses on that one. KG // As a teacher and then as a coach – where have you found your most rewarding moments? DH // Seeing kids grow in the classroom and seeing them come back and say, “I remember things I did in 7th grade, I never thought that’d mean anything. But I get to college and some of that stuff comes floating back to me…” So I like that a lot! But it’s a lot of both – not one more than the other. It’s probably more important, anything kids have taken from the classroom than maybe what they’ve taken from the tennis court… I would think. KG // What characteristics do you think make you such a terrific coach?
DH // I’m not the greatest technician. I was a really good player back in the day when I could play. I think I’m a good “X”s and “O”s coach, I teach good lessons, I’m good at finding drills. But I also think there are a lot of people out there who can do that just as well as I can. I just refuse to let our program be mediocre. I don’t want mediocrity. That would be the most painful thing to me to ever slide into something where we’re not, every single day, saying, “OK, what are we bringing to the table?” I love the fact that every kid, boys and girls, who gets to our top six feels an expectation – not to me, but to those who have come before them and those who will come after them. I think that’s probably the biggest thing – I want us to be superior, and not superior like we’re arrogant but just the best we can possibly be. If we don’t win, if we’re not first… I can live with that. If we’ve wrangled every bit of talent out of what we have and somebody else was better, I can live with that. But I want us to never be done with it and say, “Boy, I wish we’d done that better.” And that’s probably my biggest strength. I just refuse to let us go quietly in the night as a program. KG // Now that you’ve I love the fact that every kid who get to our top six feels an expectation – not to me, but to those who have come before them and those who will come after them.” “I love the fact that every kid who gets to our top six feels an expectation – not to me, but to those who have come before them and those who will come after them.” reached this milestone, do you have another one in mind? Did you have this milestone in mind? DH // No! Even several years back, we had a little bit of a dry spell on our boys’ side – went three or four years without being champions. And a couple years in the girls’… But I never really had thought about it until we got to 47 and I thought… “We’ve got good kids ahead of us, and maybe that’s going to happen.” But no, that was never a goal. I remember when we got our first one. I remember when we won and we won it in Ellsworth. We weren’t expected to win. Lyons had a terrific team and, in those days it was a one-day tournament, they had an uncharacteristically bad day. They’d beaten us three different times during the year, including at the League Tournament. We were kind of a younger team, and we stuck it out. I didn’t even know we’d won until they announced it. I didn’t even check the scores; I just assumed Lyons had won the title. But they said, “Second place, Lyons.” And I go, “Wait a minute… that must mean that we won!” And I remember just being overwhelmed by that, not emotionally, but just like, “man!” And I thought, “If nothing ever happens again, this is a very significant thing.” So I remember thinking it was very very cool – I like having one! I never believed, though… that was never a goal. In terms of future goals… no. I think next year, for the first time in probably several years, we’re going to be as rebuilding as we’ve been on the boys’ side. As I’ve
been preaching to the younger kids, we’ve got some places to fill that these four seniors have taken for the last three or four years. It’s time to step up their games if we’re going to continue to compete on that level. In terms of just winning and being successful… About ten years ago, we were in 3A and we were actually hosting the tournament down at Riverside. It was down to us and Claflin. The last match of the tournament was going on and was, for the most part, a meaningless match between Claflin and Conway Springs for the 9th and 10th place in the tournament. No one else really cared except us and Claflin. Conway Springs, in this match, had four match points consecutively – all they had to do was win any one and we won the title. And they lost six points in a row... and it was as deflating a moment, momentarily, as I can remember. We’ve talked about this a lot since – never leave your destiny in somebody else’s hands. If you can’t do it yourself, you have no right to be miffed if somebody doesn’t come through for you. But no more numerical goals at all; just fun goals! My grandkids are starting at WCS this year and that’s going to be fun. That’s a classroom goal. I told my sixth grade parents at our meeting this year, I said, “I’m just going to tell you right now. The first time I see them on the Bunny Hill Quad out there running around, I’m leaving the classroom and I’m going out to grab them because that’s just kind of a dream come true.”
KG // Is there one particular thing you’re looking forward to most about having your grandbabies on campus? DH // My wife and I always thought at some point we were going to have to move to Oklahoma, to be with our grandkids, once we retired. I didn’t want to do that! I love it here. But we were of a mindset that at some point, when I retire, we were going to have to go away. But Ben and Courtney moving here has changed everything. It kind of cheats Zach and Haley and their boys in Edmond because we were kind of looking forward to being down there to watch all their ballgames. We’ll still go – we go two to three weekends every month down there to see baseball or basketball or just to hang out with them. But I’d be lying if I wasn’t saying that this is the coolest thing to be able to be in the same town with your grandkids all the time. We may not see Family photo (top row left to right: Ben, Deacon, Meagan, Zach, Bennett; second row: Courtney, Dave, Sally, Bo, Haley; bottom row: Caroline, Helen, Jenson)
them every single day. I imagine a lot of days we don’t. But knowing that we can, in ten minutes, is just an incredible gift. KG // Personally or professionally, do you have a favorite memory from your time at WCS? DH // I do. I have lots of them. I’m not sure I can talk about it… In December 2006, when our granddaughter, Harper, began to have seizures and was diagnosed with mitochondrial imbalance, the Collegiate family rallied around the Hawley family in a way we will never forget. Haley had to quit work when Harper was in the hospital, and Zach had to miss stretches of work... and even though insurance covered much of Harper’s care, they were suddenly dealing with trips to Ft. Worth, living expenses, etc., that they had never counted on (who would?). Bunny [Hill] asked me if she could approach the school community, alumni, etc., with details of the situation, and an opportunity for people to give to help the kids defray their costs, and after asking Zach and Haley, I said yes. The response was staggering. I won’t tell you the number except to say it humbled us all... that people would “rescue” our family. And when Harper died, more than several of Zach’s teachers and coaches and my colleagues made the 150-mile trip to the funeral. I think that experience says more to me than any other about what WCS means to me.
