Early History:
Dave was born in Beatrice, Nebraska in 1946 and grew up on a small farm 10 miles
west of Beatrice. He attended a one-room country school for grades K-8, and Beatrice High
School for grades 9-12. He played football all four years of high school and at Bethel College
in North Newton, Kansas, primarily as an offensive lineman. Bethel is an NAIA school and
his only athletic scholarship was as the track team manager. Since the track team only had
one coach, he became an assistant coach to some extent. Dave was always a big kid growing
up and weighted as much as 210 pounds until prior to his senior year of college when he
started running and then reported to the college football team at just under 180 pounds. This
hooked him on running and fitness, which were the basic tenets of his coaching career.
In 1970 after graduating from college, Dave and his wife Cheri moved to Houston for
teaching positions in HISD. His first position, from 1970-73, was at Ryan Middle School,
where he did not coach. However, in the spring of 1973, he built a track on the Houston
Mennonite Church property in the Spring Branch area, and began a track club for girls, the
Houston Mennonite Track Club. He had consulted with Herman Goldberg and Oliver Brown,
both HISD teachers and coaches, as to how to begin a program.
Coaching History
His first coaching experience was with the club program, which he served as head
coach from 1973 until 2014. His first school coaching experience was at Fleming Middle
School, where he taught from 1973-78. Some of the girls at the school were running with the
club program before girl’s track was first started in HISD middle schools. However, the first
few years only female coaches were paid to coach girls’ teams, so he volunteered to help
coach the girl’s track team at Fleming, which won the first city track meet. His first paid school coaching job was at George Washington, K-8 school in HISD, where he worked from
1978-80 and was the boys’ head track coach.
In 1980 the George Washington facility was converted to the School for Law
Enforcement, so Dave transferred to Reagan High School where he remained until 1987. He
was very fortunate to arrive at Reagan when Larry Roberts was the Athletic Director at the
school and he allowed him to be the head boys’ cross country and track coach with no other
coaching responsibilities, something which was rather unusual at that time. There were only
3 boys out for cross country the first year, but 5 years later, with 50+ on the team, Reagan
won the district cross country meet, as well as the HISD city JV and freshmen meets. Wayne
Rushwam, Miguel Aldrete, and Jose DeLaLuz were among the top distance runners. In track,
the top athlete was David Campbell, a sprinter, who would go on to run for four years at
TSU.
In 1987, after 17 years in HISD Dave began teaching in Spring Branch and became
the assistant track coach to Bob Collette at Strake Jesuit, in charge of all field events. Collette
left Strake after his first season with them, but Dave continued as an assistant for two more
years with Mike Crowley. In 1990 he began what would be 13 years as the head cross
country and track coach at Stratford High School in SBISD. At first he was the head coach
for both girls and boys in cross country and track, but later coached only girls. During his 13
years, nearly all the school track records were broken. Over the years at Stratford he had a
number of outstanding female distance runners -- Alexis Smith, Amy Stanberry, Lindsey
Mosley, Kristen Weber, and Elizabeth Hilligoss -- with all but one qualifying for at least one
state meet and going on to run at the next level. On the boys side the top athlete was Bill
Collins who won state and vaulted at UH.
In 2003 Dave retired from public school and taught until 2013 and coached through
2014 at Houston Christian High School, a private school in the Spring Branch area, where he
served as the head coach for the cross country and track teams. At Houston Christian his
teams competed in TAPPS for the first 9 years, and had 15 individual state champions, and
then in the SPC conference the last 2 years with 3 conference champions. Alex Ralston,
Bruce Bennett, Anthony Whitaker, London Lomax, Taylor Payne, Mary Louise Clawson,
Katherine Quandt, Kelsey Crawford, Jaela DeJean, and Amie Leitko were just some of the
state champions who went on to compete at the next level.
Other track related activities
Along with coaching cross country and track and field, Dave also became involved in
officiating, first at the University of Houston and then at Rice University and at other venues
as well. The highlight of these was the NCAA track and field meet in 1983 at UH when he
served as the head long and triple jump official. He also started hosting track meets, first with
the club program, but also at Reagan where he started the Reagan Relays and then at Houston
Christian where each season he hosted a large cross country meet for middle school and high
school athletes, as well as a track meet at both levels. Also, when he began the track club he
started competing in open track meets and fun runs himself for the first time and for nearly
20 years would compete in decathlons both in the Houston area and around the state. The
highlight of his competitive track career came in 1981 when he placed 4 th in the national
master’s decathlon in the 35-39 age group with a score of just over 5000 points, and set 5
PRs
Coaching philosophy
Dave believed that each and every athlete on his teams needed to enjoy the
experience and at the same time value the health benefits derived from the sport. One of his
favorite quotes that was used with all the teams was, “I can always find someone who can
beat you, and I can find someone you can beat, so the only important thing is your time or
distance.” Athletes were taught to compete against themselves and that their true measure of
success was their personal improvement.