Hope Athletics

In 2018, Hope student-athletes Megan Bigelow and
Joey Dawson were demonstrating to communities in Ghana how a simple filter could turn filthy mop water into crystal-clear, drinkable water. One year later, they were assembling the filters themselves — just a small part of their internships at Sawyer Products, a company that makes water filtration systems and other outdoor products.

Whether in Sawyer’s air-conditioned headquarters in Florida or in a hot village in Ghana, whether on a dust-patch soccer field or in an executive boardroom, both experiences taught the Hope student-athletes that being on mission for Christ can happen anywhere.

Bigelow and Dawson, both seniors, went to Ghana as part of the college’s SEED (Sport Evangelism to Equip Disciples) program, which uses sport as a means to connect with others, tell them about Jesus, show them his love, and help the student-athletes grow and deepen in their faith. 

 “Sport brings people together,” Dawson said. “It’s like music, it’s a common language.” 

Dawson is majoring in economics and business and part of the Baker Scholars program. The two-time captain has run on the men’s cross country team for four years.

SEED has been bringing Hope student-athletes on international service and evangelism trips for three summers, in locations that have included Ghana, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, India, Uganda and Zambia.

Critically, SEED trips also provide clean water for communities that so desperately need it. During each trip, Hope students train communities on how to use Sawyer water filters. In addition to donating the filters, Sawyer also makes trips for SEED participants affordable. (Full disclosure: Sawyer Products also funds a Hope research program that tests the sediments in its filters used in developing nations.)

“I’d never been on a mission trip, so I had no idea what to expect,” Bigelow said. “When we went over there I thought it would be fun to play sports with kids, but the water aspect was a lot larger than I thought.”

Bigelow is a scrappy midfielder on the Hope women’s soccer team and a business and economics double major from Flushing, Michigan. A 2019 All-MIAA First Team honoree, Bigelow has played in 80 games and tallied 37 shots on goal during her tenure at Hope, racking up seven goals and six assists for 20 points. She was a three-year starter and captained the team for the 2018 and 2019 seasons.

Like Bigelow, it was Dawson’s first time on an international mission trip.

“I had never been out of the country before, but I had a hunger to go somewhere new and to learn about a side of the world that I’ve never been to and people that I knew next to nothing about,” Dawson said. “This trip was an amazing opportunity to do that through an avenue I’m really passionate about: sport.”

At each stop in Ghana, the SEED team played games with children, conducting clinics in frisbee, soccer, baseball, volleyball and American football. They also taught Bible lessons and memory verses, and they shared the Gospel.

“To be able to do a trip that had the potential to talk about Christ with people, or to have cool conversations and form friendships around Christ as the center, that was amazing,” Dawson said.

He fell in love with the Ghanaian children (his tripmates said Dawson gave endless piggyback rides to the eagerly relentless kids), and he realized that, whatever he does after Hope, connecting with children is something that God is calling him to do.

Bigelow was struck by the faith of so many people she met in Ghana. “Their love for God was the greatest love I’ve ever seen, and they don’t even have clean water,” she said. 

After the trip, “we all talked about how we have this global family that we didn’t know about: one, through Christianity, and, two, through sport,” Bigelow said.

The following year, in the summer of 2019, both Bigelow and Dawson landed internships at Sawyer.

 “I was interested in working for Sawyer after our trip because it’s an outdoor company with a great mission. I was passionate about their products and the work they were doing,” Dawson said.

Hope alumnus Kurt Avery ’74 is the founder and CEO of Sawyer Products. His experience at Hope and as a Baker Scholar paved the way for his business success, and he’s intentional about providing similar opportunities to others.

“Kurt started this internship program as another way to give back,” Bigelow said. 

Bigelow’s and Dawson’s internships were wide-ranging. Some days they’d be on the factory floor assembling Sawyer’s water filters or other products; other days they’d critique and create Sawyer’s displays and packaging. 

“Kurt wanted us to get a taste of factory work to instill a humble work ethic, realizing that your decisions as a white-collar desk worker impact other people and their lives,” Dawson said. 

Avery also served as a mentor for the interns. “Every day we would meet with him, and he would teach what he called Grasshopper U — a lesson he got from his MBA classes in graduate school,” Bigelow said. “We would bring a pad of paper to his office and he would just teach us different things.”

“He would carve out time to sit down with us and teach us various lessons that he had learned through the years — sometimes through the hard way —  that could make us better leaders,” Dawson said.

“After watching Kurt, it’s so cool to be able to witness how he doesn’t work just for this life, he works for the life after this one. It’s great to see how he’s intentional about incorporating that into his work,” Bigelow said.

Their big project at Sawyer was to help the company better communicate to Generation Z.  “For several weeks we did market research,” Dawson said. “We compiled a presentation, and we flew out to the planning conference in Colorado, where we presented to the executive committee.”

 “Sport brings people together,” Joey Dawson said. “It’s like music, it’s a common language.” 

The ability to plug into so many elements of a successful company was a valuable experience that they hope will impact their work as they build their own careers after graduation. They also saw first-hand how a for-profit organization can find success in the marketplace while pursuing charitable causes. Sawyer donates filters and funds SEED trips because its leadership believes in doing good for the world — not only by meeting the physical needs of people who need water, but by meeting the spiritual needs of people who need the living water of the Gospel.

In 2019, Avery received the Hope for Humanity Award, presented to Hope College alumni athletes who have demonstrated Christian commitment and service to others in their careers after Hope. “We’re a company with a mission,” Avery said at the annual HOPEYs Awards ceremony. “I’m not going to take anything with me.” 

 “There are a lot of different ways to be a witness to Christ,” Dawson said. “Not all people are called to preach on the street corner, but we’re all called to full-time ministry.”

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Feature photograph by Steven Herppich; Action photographs by Lynne Powe ’86; Ghana photographs by Megan Bigelow and James Ellis

Student-athletes Mitchel Achien’g (pronounced Me-Shell Aah-Ching) and Mason Opple embarked on much different paths to Hope College four years ago, but they’ve shared a lot in common since they arrived. 

Both are great students, award-winning athletes, and even better people who have excelled on multiple teams over multiple seasons during their Hope careers. They perform at elite levels despite a myriad of expectations and demands on their schedules.

Achien’g is a multiple-event performer in indoor and outdoor track and field. The senior from Nairobi, Kenya, is pursuing an economics major and a business minor and has landed on the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association Honor Roll (which takes a 3.5 GPA or higher) and Hope dean’s list multiple times. Achien’g was the 2019 MIAA Most Valuable Field Athlete in indoor track and field last winter, and then helped the Flying Dutch outdoor team repeat as league champions last spring.

Opple plays football, baseball and, for the first time this winter at Hope, basketball. The senior from Hudsonville, Michigan, is majoring in business and holds a B+ average. He was chosen as the league Most Valuable Offensive Player this past fall in football and was an all-MIAA rightfielder for a baseball team that won a school-record 31 games in the spring of 2019. This winter, he has been a role player on the basketball court for the Flying Dutchmen. 

Recently, Achien’g and Opple met for the second time ever and sat down in DeVos Fieldhouse to talk about their experiences as busy student-athletes. Their insights reveal how their dual identities are kept in balance.

What is it about your sports that you most enjoy?

Achien’g:I think the competitiveness through the years is what I enjoy most. In sports, you’re never the same every year. Your sophomore year, you’re better than your freshman year. Your junior year, you’re better than your sophomore year. You grow and develop. Being able to see that improvement through competition is very important to me.

Opple:It is the aspect of hanging out with teammates to accomplish the same kind of goal. You get to compete every day when you practice with your teammates or play against other teams. Competition makes people work together.

How has playing in multiple seasons helped you both on the field and in the classroom?

Opple: It is how it has always been. You grow up obviously playing these sports, so you get in a rhythm. We’re always in the whole class-practice-homework mode. You don’t really ever break that, which is nice because then you have a structure that you stay with all the time. Getting away from a sport has power to it, too, which I think some people don’t realize when they try to specialize in one sport. In the spring, I’m playing baseball, not even thinking about football. In the fall, it’s the opposite. I think that really does have a lot of positives. For me, the change of scenery, the change of sports, gives me a fresh perspective as I move from one sport to the next.

Achien’g: For me, it’s different because in the fall, I’m not really competing. My competition season begins in december or January. Just having that discipline of working hard in the off-season, knowing that even though you’re not competing, it counts. I think that matters. Even if I’m not in my official season, it’s healthy for me to be disciplined and know whatever I put in will affect my performance. That’s the same thing in class. You may not be studying for an exam, but just going through your schoolwork and making sure you understand what’s being taught really helps.

What’s the biggest challenge of being a multi-season athlete?

Achien’g: For me, it’s missing that aspect of having a social life. I’m training in the off-season and, of course, practicing in-season. I don’t get to hang out with my friends whenever I want. So, I’m really in-season the whole year. I have to make time to have a social life.

Opple: The biggest challenge is probably being away from the team [I’m not currently on]. In the fall, I rarely see the baseball guys as much as I would like to. The same way in the spring. I don’t see the football guys as much as I would like to. Obviously, I’m not complaining about not having to get up at 5 in the morning all year long, but they’re grinding together. They’re creating those bonds at those 5 a.m. lifts, and I’m not there. So, I miss out on that whole full-year, camaraderie aspect of one sport.

What’s your favorite part about playing in multiple seasons?

Opple: You get to compete year-round. Then there’s the aspect that you get these two completely different sets of friends that is just awesome in its own way. I can go hang out with the baseball team on a Friday night and the football team on a Saturday night. It’s two completely different worlds, and I really enjoy that.

Achien’g: Keeping my physical fitness all year is my favorite part. It’s usually very hard to continue your fitness in the off-season. Having to practice all year helps me keep my fitness going.

What’s been your favorite class at Hope College?

Achien’g: My English 113 class. It helped me develop my writing skills. Coming into Hope College, my writing skills were not that good. The class showed me a different way of writing, a different way
of expressing myself.

Opple: My labor economics class. It gave me a different perspective on the typical econ like Micro, Macro. It was a challenging class yet rewarding because I felt like I learned a lot and it was taught by a great professor.

How do you find time to get enough sleep and what do you do to eat well?

Opple: When you have a full day, class at 8 in the morning, practices, film, homework, you’ve got to get to bed. You’ve got to get at least seven, eight hours of sleep. You’ve got to keep to that schedule because our bodies are creatures of habit. Nutrition-wise, I’m not a super health freak, but I just control what I can control or not eat those things that are blatantly bad for me.

Achien’g: I have to make sure that I’m sleeping enough to make my body recover, replenish and get ready for the next day. Same for nutrition. I have to make sure I’m eating the right foods that will help my tissues and muscles. Good sleep and nutrition are the key to being ready even for practice for the next day.

Where does your energy come from? 

Achien’g: For me, it’s more like I don’t want to not have energy. I want to get better every time, every day. When I have those types of days, I remember: “This will make you better. If you give up right now, you’re not going to become good.”

Opple: I would say sports actually give me energy. Maybe you didn’t do as well on test as you wanted, you’re having a rough day for whatever reason. That two, two-and-a-half hours you get to go out on the field and compete, play the game you love, is that getaway and gives you the energy back.

If you were given some time to relax, no studying, no competing, what would you do?

Opple: I live in a house of five other guys. Four are football players, one is a baseball player. We play video games on the TV in the living room, a lot of Madden. We hang out, make it a competition. Winner plays this guy or that guy and so on. We keep track on the whiteboard.

Achien’g: I like to travel. I like exploring new places and stuff. When I have the time and am able to travel, I do that. It’s kind of relaxing. I get excited to see new things.

How have you felt supported at Hope College?

Achien’g: There have been times when I’ve gone to a professor and asked to be in a certain section for class because of my athletic schedule. They have been understanding and accommodating. I get a lot of support from the Hope faculty and staff.

Opple: To be honest, the coaches couldn’t have made it any easier. They’ve been super supportive of me missing things — whether it’s missing spring football or missing fall baseball. They support me. They go to the games. Professors hear you play these sports and they support you. Everybody at Hope College supports and loves to see you playing more than one sport. It couldn’t have been made any easier for me.

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Top feature photography by Steven Herppich; Action photographs by Lynne Powe ’86

A profound brotherhood has formed amongst five senior men graduating from the Hope nursing program this May. Not only have they supported each other in mastering the balance of being student-athletes on five different athletic teams, they’ve also embraced a future in a female-dominated field.

Nick Bazany, Austin Kane, Blair McCormick, Trace Slancik and Logan
Shadaia have championed being in the nursing minority, knowing they
have the potential to bring a new perspective and experience for patients and co-workers alike. 

“Having the support of these guys around you, guys who understand what you’re going through, is a really big thing for all of us,” McCormick, the men’s soccer goalkeeper from Wadsworth, Illinois, said. “When times are stressful, it’s good to have guys around you to talk about these personal experiences and remind you why you want to be a nurse in the first place.” 

After they pass their National Council Licensure Exam this summer, the five will join the 11.4 percent of nurses in America who are male, according to 2018 United States Bureau of Labor statistics. They’re used to that kind of stat. They make up five of the 12 declared male nursing majors at Hope College, with 139 total students in the program.

Bazany, a men’s lacrosse defender from Howell, Michigan, praises the support and encouragement they have all received along the way, from Hope College professors to practitioners in the field. 

“Everyone just accepts the fact that we’re all doing the same thing they are and being guys doesn’t make that any different. We have the same goals for our patients and want to do the same things for everybody,” Bazany said. “After a while, you don’t forget you’re a guy, but you just kind of stop noticing that as a defining difference.”

Each of the men looks back to the hard moments in their lives when a nurse, or team of nurses, went the extra mile to make the best of a bad
situation as their reasons for going into the field. They want to provide that same comfort and assurance for someone else. 

For McCormick, it was the nurses, and one male nurse in particular, who cared for his grandma when she became ill. McCormick was in awe as he watched the male nurse care for her, and realized how well he was able to get to know her and make her comfortable in a short amount of time, and in such a tough situation. 

It was similar for Bazany, whose mom was diagnosed with breast cancer during his freshman year of college. He gives all the credit to the nurses who cared for her during her hospital stay and recovery period.

Kane first realized he wanted to help people when a close friend died from suicide during his sophomore year in high school.

“It was hard for me, but it also drove me to realize that I wanted to make a difference in people’s lives and have them not feel that pain,” said Kane, the ice hockey goalie from Flint, Michigan.

The sentiment resonated two years later when he watched the nursing team make the end of his cousin’s life as comfortable as possible. It was seeing nurses provide individualized care and help one person at a time that solidified Kane’s career path.

Slancik, a catcher for Hope baseball from Scotts, Michigan, was also drawn to nursing when he realized that nurses get a bit more face-to-face patient interaction than doctors in a lot of cases. They are able to build relationships with not only the patients, but their families too, which he likes.

Becoming stand-out nurses comes down to relationship-building for the group. That, and the ability to communicate with people in situations that aren’t necessarily the most comfortable. As Bazany explains,  “You have to be able to advocate for any patient at any moment in time.”

“It’s also about passion,” Kane said. “A passionate nurse is what makes a good nurse, because in general, passion is what fuels them to take care of their patients in the best manner possible… Without passion, how can you really be good at something?”

It’s that same attitude that also enables them be successful student athletes — the push to be the best and leaders in what they do. The level of selfless leadership speaks for itself as four of the men lead their respective teams as captains.  Shadaia, a fifth-year senior from Oakland, Michigan, helped to guide the football team as a student-assistant coach in the fall of 2019.

“The biggest perk of being a nursing student-athlete is that you gain two families,” Shadaia says.” I am a part of a family with football and nursing. They both provide a great support system.”

Dr. Donna Garrett, chairperson of the Department of Nursing, finds that student-athletes in the nursing program are often the best at time management and advocating for themselves. That fact holds true for all Hope student-athletes in the nursing program, whether they’re men or women, Garrett emphasized. Twenty percent of Hope nursing majors are on varsity athletic teams. 

“They’re top athletes as well,” said Garrett, referring to the majority of nursing majors who are student-athletes. “If they’re going to be successful academically, they are also going to be the student-athlete who is successful in their sport, too. It just seems to be a personality trait, where they’re willing to put in the work and sacrifice to do both aspects well.” 

The department works diligently with athletics to ensure that students can fully participate and be successful in both realms. The priority is for student-athletes to be present for all their games. Then it comes down to working one-on-one with the student-athletes and coaches to make sure that they can balance practice times, clinicals and everything else in-between. 

It’s an advantage that Garrett and the five men realize happens with regularity at a place like Hope. The support and flexibility provided by their professors and coaches has been second to none. However, it still comes down to personal accountability where, as McCormick explains, they sacrifice the little things because it becomes about big-picture life views. 

“You go into it to do what you love and to ultimately help people,” Slancik echoed. “You’re really living a selfless lifestyle, and that makes it all worth it in the end.”

Garrett agrees that men are an underrepresented group in nursing, but more are slowly going into the field, creating good role models for this group of men — a group that she calls “fun” and “kind-hearted,” always stepping out and going the extra mile for anyone with whom they cross paths.

Post-graduation, Bazany, Kane, Slancik and Shadaia hope to spend time in an intensive care unit of a hospital. They also plan to attend grad school to become nurse anesthetists. McCormick plans to attend grad school to become a family nurse practitioner and focus on preventative care.

Until then, their focus will continue to be on conquering their academics and their opponents. 

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Feature photography by Steven Herppich; Action photographs by Steven Herppich and Lynne Powe ’86

Part One

One is well into his collegiate coaching career, the other is just starting out, but both have recently entered the Hope College head coaching ranks. No matter their age difference, head women’s lacrosse coach Keagan Pontious and head swimming and diving coach Jake Taber ’04 have a passion for leading and mentoring student-athletes that is palpable. They join 14 other Hope head coaches — with 199 years of college coaching experience between them — who share the same zeal to transform lives through the Hope athletic experience.

Keagan Pontious and her Seton Hill University lacrosse teammates were preparing for the first NCAA tournament game in Griffins program history when she received an incoming call from a random number in Holland, Michigan. It was Hope College Athletic Director Tim Schoonveld ’96 asking if she might be interested in Hope’s women’s lacrosse head coaching position.

With her focus on the upcoming game, Pontious politely told Schoonveld that she had other things on her mind just then. Still, she expressed interest and told Schoonveld he would be hearing from her later.

“I think I surprised her, but it also got her thinking,” Schoonveld said.

That was May 2019. The next month brought glowing headlines. Pontious earned an All-American spot for her midfield play and landed the job as head women’s lacrosse coach at Hope. Schoonveld chose a 23-year-old to fill a position previously occupied by Kim Vincent, who led the Flying Dutch to a school-record 11 wins in the 2019 season. Vincent was at the helm for five years before her retirement created the vacancy.

“I received an email from a parent of an athlete who played club for Keagan [at Pure Advantage Lacrosse] and who had been recruited to play for Hope,” Schoonveld said. “Her dad was so impressed that he emailed me to recommend Keagan.”

Roughly a week later, some of Hope’s women’s lacrosse players brought her name up in conversation with Schoonveld again.

“I felt like we needed to at least talk to her,” Schoonveld said. “Now I’m thankful for those people who recommended her.”

Pontious said her first in-person meeting with Schoonveld was “awesome” and that she quickly found stability. She feels department wide support and delivers high praise for the successful people around her.

Have a conversation about Pontious with her former coaches, and you receive remarkable reviews about her work ethic. Talk with her parents, and you get stories about her competitive streak and drive to get better and outwork the competition. All told, you understand why — and how — Pontious got her first collegiate coaching job fresh out of college.

 “When she was three years old, she rode a two-wheel bike because her sister was five years old and had just learned how to ride a two-wheeler. She wanted to keep up,” said Jane Pontious, Keagan’s mother.  “She told us to take her training wheels off, and off she went. She’s been that way ever since.”

Ralph Shefferly introduced Pontious to lacrosse in eighth grade at Duncan Lake Middle School in her hometown of Caledonia, Michigan. Her physical education teacher at the time, Shefferly put a lacrosse stick in her hands — “the worst possible stick” as Pontious describes it — and in no time she could catch and throw with both hands.

“Keagan was a natural from the very first time we played catch together,” said Shefferly. “I told her when she first started playing [lacrosse] that she would be an All-State player. Sure enough, she was All-State four years and broke many state records for scoring.”

Pontious has high expectations for her 2020 Hope squad — including an MIAA championship and unwavering team togetherness — and she has already instilled the heart-and-hustle philosophy adopted from her college coach at Seton Hill, Courtney Grove.

Grove discovered Pontious at a Notre Dame lacrosse camp. When Grove learned she was uncommitted, a four-word invitation followed: “Come see Seton Hill.” Pontious visited and fell in love with the people there.

That one visit to Greensburg, Pennsylvania, did it. Pontious knew she could carve out a prominent role from the onset if she kept her tireless work ethic intact. Not long after the Seton Hill commitment, though, the University of Michigan wanted her to visit, too. There are what-if-I-went-to-Michigan moments for her, but she knows Seton Hill was the right choice: “It was absolutely the best experience of my life.”

Despite two different season-ending injuries. The first was a broken foot her sophomore year that caused a medical redshirt. She was expecting a breakthrough year after a strong freshman showing, but surgery put her in a boot the entire season. The second injury was a torn ACL as a junior. She took a fifth academic year to complete her four years of athletic eligibility.

Pontious actually reflects fondly on the injuries. The extra year gave her the time needed to confirm she desired coaching as a long-term career. The fifth year also produced a resurgent Pontious, as she earned All-American status and helped lead the Griffins to their first-ever NCAA tournament berth. Grove noticed through the injuries that Pontious had an innate ability to lead and was always looking to better herself and her teammates. 

“Even with a broken foot, she was out sitting in a chair warming up the goalies before practices,” Grove said. “This was an example of her leadership. It showed her teammates that she would do anything to help the team and be part of the team.” It also showed Grove that Pontious would someday make a great college coach.

As head coach of the Flying Dutch, Pontious understands that her powerful platform holds abundant influence and responsibilities, regardless of her age.

Grove was delighted, then, when Pontious called Schoonveld soon after her final collegiate game to talk in detail about the Hope job. No breaking news here: Pontious now has an entire Flying Dutch team to operate. Her bachelor’s degree in business administration and MBA with a specialty in management closely apply to her coaching.

Her organizational approach includes whiteboard calendars mounted on her office wall to keep things in order, plus sticky notes galore surrounding her computer. She inherited the heavy use of the little square notes from her mother, who would post them all over the house — to-do lists, inspirational quotes, reminders. Pontious now writes plays on them. 

 “I’m very passionate about this game, and I know that the team realizes that about me,” Pontious said. “I tell them all the time that I should never have to question your heart for this game. If your heart isn’t in it, then you might need to think about whether or not you should be here.”

“She understands her role is to transform lives through lacrosse, and she is doing a fantastic job,” said Schoonveld.

Being a collegiate athlete has life-changing potential; Pontious knows this firsthand. Teammates become lifelong friends. Coaches mold their student-athletes into better people. Wins and losses reflect the ebbs and flows of human existence.

“Hope is a place that changes lives,” Pontious said. “That’s what Seton Hill was for me. Lacrosse for sure changed my life, and I want to allow the women here to be changed through lacrosse and have their college experience be super great because of lacrosse and everything else that Hope College offers.”

As head coach of the Flying Dutch, Pontious understands that her powerful platform holds abundant influence and responsibilities, regardless of her age. She exudes a confidence that makes one feel as if she already ditched the training wheels and pressed onward to greater coaching heights. That should not be surprising, but an incoming call from Holland, Michigan? Well, that was unforeseen. 

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Photographs by Lynne Powe ’86

Part Two

One is well into his collegiate coaching career, the other is just starting out, but both have recently entered the Hope College head coaching ranks. No matter their age difference, head women’s lacrosse coach Keagan Pontious and head swimming and diving coach Jake Taber ’04 have a passion for leading and mentoring student-athletes that is palpable. They join 14 other Hope head coaches — with 199 years of college coaching experience between them — who share the same zeal to transform lives through the Hope athletic experience.

JAKE TABER knows a lot can happen in one one-hundredth of a second. In less than the time it takes to snap your fingers. Less than the time it takes to blink an eye. Less than the time it takes for a hand to glide through four inches of pool water to touch out at the wall. 

Within that amount of time, you’ll find much of Taber’s coaching philosophy. 

Don’t go thinking that Taber’s many professional tenets have that much brevity; they absolutely do not. In fact, the new head swimming and diving coach could — and would — talk to you for hours on end about how he builds bodies and minds and spirits to swim fast. He just loves talking about the technical stuff. So, sit down and pull up a chair if you ever ask him the ways of his swim-coaching world. You’re going to be there awhile.

There was a time, though, when one one-hundredth of a second taught Taber about clearly-defined expectations and full-hearted empathy. It was a time as transformative as any on his way toward becoming a head coach.

Here, let him tell you how that worked:

“In 2003, I was a junior on Hope’s swim team. I kind of came into college thinking if the stars aligned and I continued to get better, maybe I could have a decent career here. I had enough self-awareness to know that I wasn’t one of the best guys on the team, but I also knew where my opportunities were. Internally, I had a goal to get to the NCAA national championships. I wasn’t good enough to do it individually but, right place, right time, I might be able to weasel my way onto a relay. 

“So, my junior year came around and there were three spots on the 200-yard free relay that were all absolutely locked up and there were two guys fighting for the one remaining spot — me and Travis Barkel. JP [John Patnott, Hope’s head coach at the time] was pretty upfront and pretty fair about how relay spots were earned. Top time in the 50 prelims at the MIAA meet wins the spot. And as it turned out, Travis won the spot. He was one hundredth faster than me in the 50 prelims.

“I wanted to be on that relay so bad, and in the moment as a 21-year-old who was fiery and competitive, I was really bummed about it. Boy, I cried hard between prelims and finals. But I remember watching the relay that night and watching Travis swim and knowing JP got it right. Travis was great on that relay.”

Fast forward one year later. It is Taber’s senior year, and a similar situation exists, but this time with a different result. Taber earned a spot on the 200 free relay team that year and qualified for the national championships. The dream he was once denied became the dream he proudly achieved. 

Having experienced those diametrically-opposed outcomes as a student-athlete, Taber now applies that two-sided understanding into almost every detail as a head coach. The quick-time lesson from 17 years ago is part of his day-to-day modus operandi now, one in which he communicates and role-models his passion for the sport and the people in it. Charismatic, positive and driven to his core, Taber is a quick learner too, because one-hundredth of a second was all the time he needed to figure out a lifetime’s worth of career priorities.

“In my mind, missing the national championships by a hundredth of a second my junior year, even though it was only for a relay spot, had a really big impact and influence on how I’ve coached and how I’ve approached some of those challenging situations on the pool deck and in my life,” he says. “It taught me to communicate — some would say over-communicate — and listen. It taught me how to be understanding when goals aren’t and are met. The bottom line is this: At the end of the day, my biggest responsibility is to challenge every single student-athlete to be better in their sport and in their life, too.”

Today, Taber is Hope’s sole head coach. Last year, he shared head coaching duties with Patnott, his long-time mentor and Hope’s 39-year head coach. Together, the two guided the women’s swim team to a 2019 MIAA championship, a title returned to Hope for the first time in 15 years. It was an experience that Taber relished on several levels.

“I joked to a lot of people that last year was kind of a mid-career internship for me,” he says, smiling at the recollection of co-coaching with Patnott. “I mean, how neat to be able to be on the pool deck with your mentor as peers, looking at the same things with the same goals. Last year, coaching again with JP, was just a blast.”

Taber started his coaching career as an assistant under Patnott from 2004 to 2007. He then went onto become the head swim coach at Olivet College (2007-12) and Albion College (2012-18), earning accolades at both and winning a 2017 men’s championship at Albion. Coming back to his alma mater was always his goal, he says, but when Patnott told him he was thinking about retirement two years ago, Taber and his wife, Kelly Kraft ’04, weren’t sure if the timing was right for them to go home to Hope. They had three small children and a good support system in Marshall, Michigan. Life was messy and busy but good. A move and job change would have only added to their frenetic life with littles. 

“I love my alma mater and when you have an experience like I had here at Hope, you want [returning to coach] to work out,” he explains. “But when you’re at that phase of life like we were — and are, it needs to make sense for your family, not just because it’s your alma mater. But Kelly and I talked and the moment we realized it would work, we sprinted back here.” 

Charismatic, positive and driven to his core, Taber is a quick learner too, because one-hundredth of a second was all the time he needed to figure out a lifetime’s worth of career priorities.

The Tabers now have four children — seven-year-old Tessa;
five-year-old Colby; Sloane who is almost three; and Augusta
Hope, soon to turn a year old. “Life is real right now,” Taber likes to say with the ineffable smile of a proud and tired father. He is unguarded about expressing his deep love for his family, calls Kelly his rock and glue, and is unashamed to share all of his real-life family realities with his student-athletes or visiting prospects, too. He is who he is, and you know it from the get-go because there it is, all fittingly worn on his sleeve — a husband and father, a man of faith, an assistant professor and a head swim coach who cares enormously about his swim team family, too. 

So, it is with the personable Taber that you see an un-sanitized
version of a life lived at full tilt. It starts with a 5:30 a.m. morning practice, to a daycare drop-off, to class or practice prep, to afternoon recruiting calls, to a 6 p.m. end-of-afternoon practice, to 8 p.m. bedtime stories and snuggles. For a guy who one day dreamed of becoming the general manager of the Detroit Tigers (his car radio is tuned to MLB Network 365 days a year), Taber is extremely happy with where he is and what he is doing.

“I had one good swim meet in high school and I thought it would be a good idea to swim in college because of it, and that changed my life,” says Taber, who was a three-sport athlete, also playing soccer and baseball, at Battle Creek Lakeview High School. “Then once I got to Hope, it was the experience, it was the people, it was the camaraderie, it was being a part of something bigger than myself that made everything special. 

 “Along the way, I listened to my dad say, ‘Jake, go to school, get your education, then wake up in the morning and want to go to work.’ And I do. I love what I do. And that makes
all the difference.”

—

Photographs by Lynne Powe ’86

Earning even one berth on Hope’s all-time single-season football leaderboards isn’t easy, much less three spots, but Duy Dang ’91 did it, and he’s the only one who crawled through barbed wire in a jailbreak to get there.

(And that isn’t the half of it.)

Back in 1987, Dang was a five-foot-eight, 130-pound freshman who kicked for two Hope accolades that are still notable: most points by a kicker, with 28 points after touchdown (PATs) and 10 field goals for a total of 58 points (eighth in the rankings), and most field goals kicked, completing 10 of 13 (tied for third). He claimed a third top-10 spot in 1989 with eight of 14 field goals (tied for sixth).

Dang, who graduated with a degree in business, came to Hope from Tecumseh, Michigan, where he kicked in high school. But his story really begins not with coming to Hope and Holland, or even with coming to Tecumseh, but with coming to America as a 12-year-old refugee from Halan, Vietnam. Halan was a farming village that, in the late 1970s, was still reeling from the American involvement in, and withdrawal from, the Vietnam War.

Dang’s story was covered by the Grand Rapids Press and later reprinted in an October 1987 issue of News from Hope College. The article describes his harrowing experience: the Viet Cong’s arrival in Halan, borrowed gold to buy his passage out, an escape to Saigon, two arrests, a jailbreak, an overpacked refugee boat adrift for a week in the South China Sea, and his eventual arrival at a military base in the Philippines. From there, he made his way to the United States.

After spending some time in a refugee camp in the U.S., Dang bounced around a bit before settling in with the Nix family in southeast Michigan. His foster father, Wayne Nix, was the football coach in Tecumseh, and he encouraged Dang to try out for the team, effectively setting him up for his athletic success at Hope — and much of the personal and professional success that followed.

Twenty-eight years after graduating from Hope, Duy Dang is now living in Vancouver, Washington, “just next door to Portland, Oregon,” he said. He currently works as a senior district sales manager for Eli Lilly and Company. 

 “After Hope College, I was fortunate enough to land a position as a pharmaceutical sales rep for Merck and Company, and I began my career in Michigan,” Dang said. 

In 1995, Dang relocated from his Michigan territory to the company’s headquarters in Philadelphia, where he worked while earning his MBA at Villanova University. When he was promoted to management at Merck in 2000, he relocated to the Pacific Northwest, where he’s lived for nearly 20 years. 

“The influence that Hope had on me is undoubtedly meaningful
and critical to my success,” Dang said. He cites the school’s academic program and the opportunity to develop various skills that have served him well, but he’s also quick to mention the diversity of experiences he had (Dang remembers his off-campus study experience in Vienna as especially meaningful) and, of course, his time on the football field.

“My experience at Hope went a long way in helping me be a type of coach for my team and the leader that I am for the company. I took a lot from that experience.” — Duy Dang ’91

“As you work in any organization, you’re never by yourself,” Dang said. “You work as part of a team, and you win and lose as a team. My experience at Hope went a long way in helping me be a type of coach for my team and the leader that I am for the company. I took a lot from that experience.”

Not unlike a football coach who oversees 11 players on the field, Dang manages a team of 11 regional sales reps. And the sport similarities don’t end with the numbers.

“I reflect a lot on Coach Ray Smith and how he coached us, and sometimes I find myself using some of the lines that he used. In looking back, I particularly appreciate the way he cared for the players and the integrity he displayed,” said Dang, who was an All-MIAA selection in 1987. “I have the utmost respect for Coach Smith, and I think of him as a great leader.”

In the decades since leaving Hope, Dang has been able to return to Vietnam several times.

“My first trip back to Vietnam was in 1995, about 15 years after I left,” Dang said. “I went back to visit my parents and my family. Since then, I’ve made many other trips back home, and I’ve been able to bring my parents to the U.S.” His parents have been in America for about 15 years; they live in nearby Portland. He’s also been able to bring six of his siblings (four brothers and two sisters) to live in the U.S.

Dang has a family: wife Linh and two children, Ethan (13) and Olivia (almost 5). He met Linh in Vietnam; she lived in a village near Halan, where he grew up. They worship at a Catholic church in Portland. 

“Reflecting back on the overall experience at Hope College, it’s pretty crazy to think that a school like Hope — with its unique social roots and the Dutch Reformed affiliation — ended up being the alma mater for a person like me. What are the chances?” Dang said. 

“As a young person from Vietnam with an aspiration to learn, being offered the opportunity and being embraced by Hope was tremendous. It says a lot about the institution that Hope is and, more importantly, about its people.”

Glenn Swier ’76

Sport: Soccer

Academic major: Psychology/Religion Composite

Athletic achievements: All-MIAA, 1973-75; MIAA MVP, 1974 and 1975

Glenn Swier has dedicated his life and career to faithful service, putting his Christian beliefs into practical application. Currently, he is the associate director of formation for ministry and director of the dual track MDiv-MSW program at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan, a position he has held for the past 14 years. 

Immediately after graduation from Hope, Swier worked on the adult psychiatric ward at Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services. Later, he served with community development ministries in South Korea and Botswana for a total of four years with his wife, Ruth Muyskens ’76 Swier. Upon returning to the United States each time, Swier worked in urban ministry, first at The Other Way and then with Heartside Ministry in Grand Rapids. 

When his three adult sons were younger, Swier coached them — and a whole bunch of other boys, too — on the varsity soccer team at Grand Rapids Union High School, a role he held for 15 years. He holds a master’s degree in social work from the University of Michigan. 

Of his time at Hope, Swier says, “It was a real formative experience for me. It awoke my sense and awareness of a bigger world. It made me ask, ‘What does a Christian do who takes his faith seriously when there’s a lot of injustice that goes on around the world? What is my response to that?’”

Swier has spent his entire career giving his answer.

—

Linda Percy ’84

Sport: Volleyball

Academic majors: Mathematics and Accounting 

Athletic achievements: All-MIAA, 1982, 1983; MIAA MVP, 1983

To know much of Linda Percy’s journey, all you have to do is look at her passport. Percy has traveled the world as a wildlife conservationist and foreign service officer, using her knowledge of accounting and finance to move her along the way. 

Immediately after graduating from Hope, Percy worked as an accountant for Whirlpool in Michigan, and then as a CPA at DeLoitte and Touche in Chicago and London, England. She left that latter post to become a financial consultant for Shell Oil in Bulgaria, where she also taught at the American University in Blagoevgrad. But, after working two full-time jobs for two years, Percy decided to take a six-month “walkabout” around Australia and New Zealand, and “eventually I landed on the African continent,” she says. 

Since 1995, in Africa is mostly where she has stayed. Percy has worked in wildlife conservation in Cameroon, Congo, Uganda and Gabon as well as in Fiji in the South Pacific. “I started out at Hope as pre-veterinary,” Percy explains. “I love animals. But when I got a B+ on my first bio exam, I knew I needed to switch majors since at that time you practically needed a perfect 4.0 to get into vet school. I really enjoyed math and accounting and was inspired by my Hope profs. I’ve been blessed to use my financial background to travel around the world and try to make a difference.”

Since 2008, Percy has worked for the U.S. Foreign Service, first with the U.S. State Department and now with USAID. Fluent in French, she has worked in Haiti, Mali, Senegal and now Uganda with those two organizations.

Percy is also the parent of two adopted children from Liberia,
a son (20) and a daughter (17).

—

Paul Lillie ’00

Sport: Tennis

Athletic achievements: MIAA MVP, 2000; All-MIAA, 1998-2000

Academic major: Biology on a pre-med track

Paul Lillie’s route toward working in the world of law took an academic path first through the natural sciences. As a biology major, Lillie had planned on having a career in medicine, taking all the pre-med requirements to enter medical school. But he changed his mind late in his college career and decided medicine was not for him. For a few years after graduation, he worked as a full-time tennis instructor and boys and girls high school tennis coach in Minneapolis. Then in 2005, Lillie enrolled in law school at Hamline University. He received his J.D. in 2008.

“It was good that I had gone through the whole pre-med process,” says Lille, looking back. “My education at Hope was excellent. Not only did I learn a lot through the liberal arts, I was set up well to go into law. I had exposure to many academic areas and the scientific background, specifically, lent itself to law as far as the technical aspects, breaking things down and analyzing them.”

Today, Lillie is an account manager for the Thomson Reuters Corporation in Chicago, working with lawyers daily to market and sell different solution-based products to law firms.  

When he’s asked to recall his fondest memories of college, Lillie says, “The people come to mind when I remember Hope. I met so many great people. My academic advisor, Maura Reynolds, was fantastic and a great supportive influence. I had many excellent professors, my tennis coach (Steve Gorno), who valued academics and being a good person both on and off the tennis court, and my teammates who became lifelong friends. At Hope, I felt like I had the complete college experience, academically, athletically and socially.”

—

Sheri McCormack ’14

Sport: Cross Country, Track and Field

Academic major: Spanish with a chemistry minor on
a pre-dental track

Athletic achievements: Cross country — All-MIAA, 2011, 2013; MIAA MVP, 2013; 17th place at the NCAA Division III Cross Country Championships, 2013; Track — All-MIAA, 2012-14; 6th place in the NCAA Division III Track and Field Championships, 1500 meters, 2014

Sheri McCormack had — and still has — a way of putting smiles on people’s faces. McCormack consistently achieved at a high level to the delight of her coaches, professors, family, friends and, of course, herself. Now practicing general dentistry in Goldsboro, North Carolina, she earned her doctor of dental surgery degree from the University of Michigan in 2018 and also completed a residency at East Carolina University in 2019. 

Today, her running is limited. “The last race I did was the Boston Marathon in 2016,” she says. “I actually try not to run too much anymore because I really want my knees to work when I’m 70, and I’ve already put a lot of mileage on them.”

Asked her most memorable class at Hope, McCormack does not reference a science or major class. Instead, she remembers her freshman First-Year Seminar, taught then by Rick Dernberger. “The class was called ‘Crucial Conversations’ and we had to buy a book with the same title,” she recalls. “It gave a lot of really great tools when talking through difficult situations. It’s always helpful to know how to do that no matter what stage of life you’re in. I still have that book. I loan it to friends quite a bit because a lot of people do have high-stakes conversations. I read it in 2010 and over nine years later, I still reread it to think about the techniques. That class transformed the way I talk to people.”

Before I begin, I have something to disclose right at the start of this “Finishing Lines” essay: I didn’t touch a basketball for all of summer 2019. Yes, basketball has been a huge part of my life since before I can even remember. I don’t think I’ve ever gone more than a few consecutive days without being in a gym with a ball in my hands. I love basketball. I always have and I always will. But I was willing to go basketball-free for an entire summer in 2019. Why? Because basketball is just what I play. For three months last summer, I wanted to learn more about who I want to become. 

So, I went to Lesotho in Africa. 

I went to Lesotho to intern with the social worker at Beautiful Gate, an organization that exists to reach out to orphaned, abandoned and neglected children ages newborn to five years old, and give them the love they need and deserve. In a country afflicted by overwhelming poverty and extreme disease, children can often be given little regard and love. Beautiful Gate says, “We will love these children and give them a home until we find their forever families.”

One of my responsibilities at Beautiful Gate was conducting assessments of the children during my last few days there. Assessment questions were different based on the ages of the kids, but I was assessing their eating habits, physical and emotional development, language, behavior and social interaction. (Quick shout-out to my outstanding Hope social work professors who laid an educational foundation for me to do this already!) It was a long process and a bit draining as I spent the day reading files of difficult situations, but it was also amazing for me to be able to assess them based on the time that I came to know them throughout the summer. 

So, you see, I looked right into the eyes of a lot of brokenness in Lesotho, but honestly, there is just as much brokenness in the U.S. Children should not have to go through horrific things only to grow up in an orphanage, or get lost in the foster care system.

One day in particular was extremely tough, though. It was the day we experienced an infant death. I had the opportunity to go to the hospital to see this babe a few hours before she passed, and it was beyond hard. Seeing that sweet little one hooked up to various machines and tubes was heart-wrenching, to put it lightly. Her brain filled with fluid, and eventually they found her to have no brain activity. She passed away a few days later.

So, loss happens quite often at BG. Some loss is beautiful, though, like times in which children are united with their forever families and we have to say goodbye so that they can be with the people whom the Lord intended for them. Some loss is just plain hard. And let me tell you, the death of that baby was just plain hard.

Yet, that hard, hard death helped me learn so much about grief. It’s difficult during those times to give glory where it’s due or to find the good, but it’s also during those times that God reveals himself the most. God works through the hard things. He shows up, responds and teaches if you’re willing to listen and learn. That sweet baby girl will no longer have earthly suffering. She will not experience life as an orphan. She’s with Jesus, she’s healthy and she’s so loved by her heavenly Father. The grief became lighter once I acknowledged this, and for that I am thankful. 

Hard times were softened by good times, too. I had the opportunity to witness six adoptions and go on a follow-up for the reunification of a five-month-old baby. The BG social worker took me to a rural village where we climbed a mountain to a one-room home where this baby’s grandmother lived. There, we assessed the family’s living conditions and gathered information about what the family was like, whether or not they had an interest in taking the child and what sorts of resources they could provide. 

So, you see, I looked right into the eyes of a lot of brokenness in Lesotho, but honestly, there is just as much brokenness in the U.S. Children should not have to go through horrific things only to grow up in an orphanage, or get lost in the foster care system. What they SHOULD have are people who are fully devoted to advocating for their needs when they’re vulnerable. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case, both here in the U.S. and abroad. Having spent hours upon hours with the children at Beautiful Gate, it breaks my heart knowing that many of them will remain there for many years without entering into a forever family. That’s an intense realization.

But I’m excited to continue studying social work and hopefully be a part of a solution to a lot of brokenness here or in another country, wherever the Lord leads. After this summer, I know with 100% certainty that I’m going to be a social worker and that I want to work with children. It’s hard work and emotionally heavy more often than not, yet it’s all worthwhile and rewarding. 

If I can make even a small difference in the lives of children and families, then every difficult thing will forever be worth it. 

—

Photographs contributed by Kenedy Schoonveld ’21