Hackett Mentor's Care Sparked Lifetime in Hoops for BCAM President White
By
Pam Shebest
Special for MHSAA.com
July 24, 2026
KALAMAZOO — When Kevin White counsels an unruly student, he usually understands what’s going on.
At one time, he was that student.
For the dean of students at Kalamazoo Hackett Catholic Prep, White’s life has come full circle.
He thrived while attending St. Monica Elementary School as a child, but after his father Damon passed away in 1989, the family moved to Portage and he changed schools.
“Eighth and ninth grades there was a change in behavior and grade point average,” White said. “Right about Christmas break, I had three gentlemen in my living room.
“Mike Smith, Shawn Potts and Nib Reisterer were having a conversation with my mom. They were worried about the direction I was headed and I think somehow those three came up with a plan to get me back (to Hackett).
He soon realized he needed the structure, discipline and smaller class sizes available there. But the worst part of transferring to Hackett was that he had to sit out the upcoming basketball season.
“I was not allowed to play right away because they decided my grades weren’t good enough to play, only to practice,” he recalled. “To sit on the bench as a high school kid with a bad GPA, and (bad attitude), it was like when I was little. If I wanted to do things, I had to do them the right way.”
At Hackett, he was reunited with Reisterer, his mentor who put him through some tough workouts.
“They were some of the hardest workouts I ever had because I had to go back to changing some bad habits, which changed pretty quickly,” White said.
He also had to face the players he idolized as a child when they asked why he wasn’t playing.
“That’s when I knew I had to kick it into gear because I didn’t want to let those guys down,” White said. “They said, ‘You wanted to wear that jersey since you were in fifth grade.’ My mom says peer pressure is the best pressure.”
Learning from the best
White first encountered Reisterer, who changed his life, during elementary school.
After losing his father, White would have to remain at school until his mother, Sheila, who was a police officer, picked him up.
“This gym teacher was, ‘Hey, do you want to hang out in the gym?’ Then he said he had basketball practice at 5 and did I want to come with him to practice? And he’s been stuck with me ever since,” White recalled. “It turned into ‘can I come to practice’ to ‘can I go to a couple games?’ Then I got to ride the bus. Then the Reisterer vacations at the lake became ‘Kevin’s coming too.’ There was a time when the Reisterers became my extended family, and within that came a basketball family.”
Reisterer, who was physical education teacher at St. Monica, said he knew White’s situation and wanted to help.
“My son Ryan was only a couple years younger than Kevin,” he said. “Ryan just adored him, and Kevin became my second son.”
Reisterer, who was also Hackett’s head boys basketball coach, noted, “Kevin became my ball boy. He came to every practice and did all the drills with the kids. He led the team in warmups before the game and became quite a celebrity himself.”
The highlight of his younger years was riding the bus with the Irish players, White said.
“Doing my third-grade homework with them showing me how to do the math problems and arguing about giving me the answers or not giving me the answers,” White laughed.
“The reward was, if you behaved in school you got to go to the games. So it was real easy to behave because I wanted to hang out with the high school guys and be on the bench.”
That sparked his love of basketball.
White graduated from Hackett in 1998 and then played at Glen Oaks Community College. With thoughts of prolonging his career in basketball after college – he went on to graduate from Western Michigan University – White remembered words he heard in passing.
“The guy said, ‘You might be able to play for a long time, but you’ll coach a lot longer than you’ll play if you start coaching right away,’” White said. “As a young guy, you hear it but you don’t think about it.
“Then you get into coaching and start working camps and going to the Final Fours and start networking. I like playing, but I love teaching the game. It’s been fun doing it that way.”
Reisterer said White wasn’t going to “set the world on fire” as a basketball player, but he worked his way through the coaching ranks, from instructing young kids and contributing at summer camps to filling roles at the high school and college levels, learning at each stop.
“He has quite a network of coaches and a lot of experience,” Reisterer added.
Prioritizing family life
As an assistant coach at Kalamazoo College, White met athletic trainer Kathleen O’Farrell and was immediately smitten. He credits her with making him more detailed and organized.
They eventually married and have two children – Vincent, 7, and Riley, 3.
“Vincent is at the age where he wants to come to practice with dad,” White said. “People ask if he’s going to play basketball.
“Right now he loves to swim, loves to play soccer. I love that because I can just sit there and be Dad.”
Vincent not only goes to practice with his dad, but has his own whistle, his own spot in the locker room and his own practice plan.
“He’s in charge of the clock,” White added. “I make him sweep the floor because I had to sweep the floor when I was young. If he decides to coach, I wouldn’t be upset.”
White called his daughter a “mini-me.”
“She will say hello to anyone,” he said. “She’s got confidence, she will speak up. If she doesn’t like something, she will tell you.”
White honed his coaching skills as an assistant to several college and high school coaches, including at Hackett last season, and discovered that working at the same school where he coaches is special.
“I will tell any young coach, if you can get a high school job in today’s age and work in the school, that’s a win-win,” White noted. “The relationship with players is an advantage of working in the school because you’re with them during the day and after school, a lot of times more than they’re with their parents.”
White is running the summer basketball program at Hackett, but that’s not all the gregarious coach is doing.
As the current president of the Basketball Coaches Association of Michigan (BCAM), “We run an event called Reaching Higher,” he said. “High school teams are selected from all over the state and they come for two days to play at Grand Valley University.
“It’s open to college coaches all over the country to watch the top high school players from the state.”
He was also involved in Midwest Live where 20-40 Michigan teams compete against teams from Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania at Cedar Point.
But next month, White will be back at Hackett, working to keep students on task.
“I see a lot of my classmates and myself in students today,” White said. “Yes, times have changed, but kids still want to be taken care of and want to be treated well and have support. Yes, some discipline comes with my job, but it’s also built on relationship and trust.
“I want (alumni) to come back and tell current kids that yes, Mr. White was hard on me about x, y and z, but when I needed something, he was there for me and if I didn’t follow through, he made sure I did.”
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PHOTOS (Top) At left, fifth-grader Kevin White celebrates with the Hackett boys basketball team in 1991. At right, White huddles with his players this past season while serving as an assistant with the Irish varsity. (Middle) White stands for a photo with BCAM Executive Director Dan Young. (Below) White poses with wife Kathleen and children Vincent and Riley. (Photos provided by Kevin White.)
Lessons Passed Down the Coaching Tree
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
July 18, 2013
Lessons, like legends, are meant to be passed from generation to generation.
And just as parents hand them down to their children who then do the same, coaches teach athletes the best of what they learned as athletes themselves. Some of those athletes then become coaches as well, and in turn, educate a next group of teenagers growing up in part through their participation in sports.
As we begin to turn our eyes toward another school year beginning next month, here are a few favorite lessons taught by four recent participants of the MHSAA’s Coaches Advancement Program – with back stories on how they learned those lessons themselves and explanations of why passing them on continues to be important.
We are family
Steve Brooks
Ypsilanti boys basketball
Bio: Brooks led the Ypsilanti High School program the last 10 seasons, guiding the Phoenix last winter to its first Regional championship since 1981. He has been selected as the first boys basketball coach for the newly-formed Ypsilanti Community Schools, a merger of the former Ypsilanti and Willow Run districts. Previously, he coached three seasons at Inkster and also led that program to the Quarterfinals.
Lesson learned: Brooks was in fourth grade when he and a friend happened to ride their bike past Flint Northern’s football practice field during one of coach Fred Crawford’s training sessions. The noise and excitement and especially the defensive coaches yelling first caught the kids’ attention; Brooks and his friend ended up watching through the fence until Crawford approached and asked if they’d like a closer look. “He said, ‘Hey, you’re going to be a Viking one day, aren’t ya?’ It was so simple. But it made an impression on me as a young man, the pride and tradition of going there,” Brooks said.
Brooks’ family later moved to a neighborhood in Flint Northwestern’s district. But when the school boundary was redrawn before his junior year – and he had his choice of staying or attending Northern – Brooks remembered saying he would be a Viking one day and made the switch. Building togetherness remains a major focus of Brooks’ Ypsilanti program today, 49 years after Crawford first invited him into Northern’s football family.
Lesson taught: “At any time, our players can come in and talk about personal things and feel like they can let stuff out and it won’t go further than the people it’s entrusted to,” Brooks said. Making a connection to players begins early through his middle school coaches and remains key to building that familial trust.
It’s a philosophy that goes to Brooks’ core. “When you’re starting to coach nephews and younger brothers of players you’ve had, it’s that same type of feeling and promoting of family,” Brooks said.
Do the right thing
Heather Prentice
Portage Northern competitive cheer
Bio: Prentice has coached Portage Northern the last eight seasons and guided the 2007 and 2008 teams to the MHSAA Finals. Total, she’s coached cheer since 1986, including previous tenures at Climax-Scotts and Laingsburg.
Lesson learned: Prentice learned more from what she felt her high school experience lacked. She loved cheering – but decided as a coach to take an active role in the lives of her athletes. “I’ve matured the older I’ve gotten, and I think what’s become more important the older I’ve gotten is putting more of the focus on what I want my kids to leave with,” Prentice said.
“I’m not a parent, and I’m a person in their lives for a very short time,” she added. “But it’s a very significant period in life, and I try to carry myself as I would want them to remember me.”
Lesson taught: To that end, Prentice focuses on mixing plenty of fun with the hard work and lessons she teaches. Integrity ranks high on that list.
She’ll point out during workouts that if an athlete does 23 jumping jacks instead of 25, only that girl will know. But cutting corners, if it continues, tends to catch up with a person.
The payoff is finding out those lessons have paid off.
“The great thing about coaching for so long is you get letters or emails back from kids; ‘I thought of you today when I was disciplining my 3-year-old child,’ things like that. Or, ‘I went in for a job interview and they asked for one of my qualities. And I said I have integrity. I do have integrity, and you taught me that.’ Those are the cool moments,” Prentice said. “They really did hear me; they did hear what I am saying.
Accept responsibility
Duane Enderle
Birch Run girls and boys soccer
Bio: Enderle has coached Birch Run’s girls program since its start, and this spring led the Panthers girls to the District Final for the second time during the program’s six-season history. He also coached the boys for four seasons before taking the last two off, but will return to their sideline this fall.
Lesson learned: Enderle was a sophomore starter on his South Hagerstown, Md., team during one of the first seasons under eventual longtime coach Mike Tesla. At one point that season, Enderle didn’t make a Saturday practice – and during the next Monday’s game never left the bench.
“I learned at an early age it doesn’t matter how good you are. There’s always a consequence,” Enderle said.
Lesson taught: He’s noticed the last few seasons, both on the high school and club soccer fields, a growing number of players unable to control their emotions. “They get yellow cards and come out of a game for 10 minutes, and if it’s one of the good players it ends up hurting the team,” Enderle said.
He said this year’s Birch Run team saw a different side of him as he pushed accountability a little bit harder. It’s a lesson that doesn’t lose significance, even as athletes change over the years and push boundaries in different ways.
“That’s the biggest thing I try to pass on to them, their own self-responsibility and accounting for all of their actions,” Enderle said. “Everything they do always has consequences.”
One for all
Kim Crum
Mattawan girls lacrosse
Bio: Crum is a 2002 Mattawan graduate and played three seasons for the highly-successful softball program led by coach Alicia Smith. Crum just finished her third season coaching the school’s girls lacrosse team after previously coaching the Kalamazoo United team for three seasons.
Lesson learned: Being part of a team is a full commitment to those teammates, something Crum works to instill in her players each spring. She learned that in part as an athlete under Smith – who last season led Mattawan to its second MHSAA championship in three seasons. “With a group of teenage girls, a group of any teenagers for that matter, they form cliques and opinions of people before they get (on a team),” Crum said. “When we were on that team, there were people that didn’t agree, didn’t get along. But when we set foot in practice, for a game, we were part of a team and it didn’t matter what happened outside of there during the day. I try to tell the kids that now.”
Lesson taught: Instead of finishing practices with “1-2-3-Wildcats,” the team’s mascot, Mattawan closes with “1-2-3-Family!” Crum’s emphasis on “team commitment” also has grown through working with her assistant Matt Stephens, the school’s football coach during the fall.
Playing a high school sport often means seeing those coaches and teammates as much or more than family during that three or fourth-month span. Some of Crum’s lacrosse players have played together in the past or together on other sports teams. But she and Stephens are quick to remind them that each team, each season, is a new group with new dynamics to learn.
“Every time we do something, we look at it as how it affects the group,” Crum said. “We have to figure out how each other work. ... Be patient. By the end, we’ll figure things out.”
PHOTO: Ypsilanti boys basketball coach Steve Brooks (far right) celebrates with his team this March after leading the Phoenix to its first Regional title since 1981. (Photo courtesy of Randy Castro, Ann Arbor Journal.)