Sleeman Charting 50th Season at Pioneer
By
Chip Mundy
Special for Second Half
October 20, 2017
By Chip Mundy
Special for Second Half
ANN ARBOR – It is fitting that Don Sleeman coaches high school students to excel at making long runs.
Sleeman’s run at Pioneer, however, has not been long as compared to a cross country course. It has been long in terms of a marathon.
This fall, the 79-year-old Sleeman is coaching his 50th boys cross country team at Pioneer, and fittingly, it is ranked No. 1 in Lower Peninsula Division 1 and a serious contender for the MHSAA title. He took over the program in 1968 – just a month before Al Kaline, Denny McLain and Mickey Lolich led the Detroit Tigers to the World Series title.
Those former Tigers are long retired. Sleeman still relishes everything about his coaching career. While running is his passion, the relationships he has formed with his athletes are the everlasting rewards.
“Recently, I just saw one of the guys from my first team,” Sleeman said. “My first team stands out; those guys will always be my first team, and they’re in their 60s now. When I see them, it’s like we’re old friends.
“There are a multitude of memorable teams. We won the state title in 1987, and it was the greatest thing that ever happened. We won it again in 1990, and every time it happens it’s the greatest thing that ever happened.”
Pioneer won Class A titles again in 1993 and 1994 and added a Division 1 title in 2008. If it can win a title this year, Sleeman and Pioneer would have MHSAA Finals titles in the top division in four consecutive decades. And Sleeman has the team that can do it.
Eight men deep
Sleeman has a pleasant problem with his 50th team.
“I’ve got a thing most people would be glad to have, but it is kind of a problem,” he said. “I can run seven, but I have eight kids who deserve it. One kid is on the sidelines every meet, and that is something I have fumbled with. I don’t want to leave anyone out.
“I just look at the total picture and try to be as fair as I can to everybody. One of the underlying thoughts is whoever has the last best performance gets the nod unless there are other extenuating circumstances. I try to focus on who has had the most recent success, so it’s sort of a challenge for them to match up to that.”
Pioneer has five seniors and three juniors, and all of them are capable of scoring. On Thursday, Pioneer had seven of the top 14 finishers as it won the third and final Southeastern Conference jamboree of the season.
Junior Nick Foster has been the top runner this season. Foster, who finished seventh in the Division 1 meet last year, set a course record Thursday at Hudson Mills in Dexter as he won in 15 minutes, 29.5 seconds.
“I think he can be top three in the state this year, but I’ve always thought he had that kind of capability,” Sleeman said of Foster, who might be the team leader but also has plenty of help.
Two other juniors, Ethan Mielock and Michael Shkolnik, finished 37th and 52nd, respectively, last year at the MHSAA Final. Seniors Jack Wallace (74th) and Aldo Pando Girard (75th) also placed last year. Junior John Florence, who did not place at the 2016 Final, was fourth Thursday in the SEC jamboree, while senior Philip Valtadoros was 10th.
“On other teams when we’ve won it, if any of my top five kids had faltered, we wouldn’t have won,” Sleeman said. “I had five and that was it. And on the occasion when we got second, I had five and that was it.
“We have a luxury this year in that we have great depth. Actually, from one through eight, all have struggled at times and all have done good.”
Sleeman said he has one other luxury this season.
“One of the greatest things that is going on right now is that I have incredibly supportive parents who are willing to do all sorts of things to help me and help the team,” he said. “They are very involved. In past years I’ve had very supportive parents in terms of having a positive outlook toward what I am doing but they didn’t necessarily get involved.
“This set of parents is very involved, and they are involved in a positive sort of way.”
Getting started
Sleeman is a graduate of Fenton High School, and around that time he fell in love with running.
“I always just loved running, going back to high school,” he said. “I was running back when nobody else was, and people thought I was nuts.
“I liked the feel of it. I remember the first long run I did. We were all out at the local lake called Silver Lake. It wasn’t terribly far from town, but everybody else got a ride back. I ran back, and everybody thought I was nuts. I’ve been running literally ever since.”
Sleeman’s path to Pioneer was not a direct one. He enrolled in the Air Force. He went to college. He even did a stint in the Peace Corps. But all the time, Sleeman continued to run.
However, one thing eluded him: A steady job.
“Prior to being 30, I tried my best not to have a regular job,” Sleeman said. “I didn’t want to be tied down; I wanted to experience things. All of a sudden after I got my master’s degree, I kind of looked around and thought that I needed to get a job.”
Sleeman landed at Pioneer, where he taught for 27 years. After he retired from teaching, Sleeman stayed busy with a job in admissions at the University of Michigan. And he continued to coach Pioneer.
It was a different time in 1968. Running wasn’t very popular, and nobody had a portable phone or any type of electronic device that could cause a lapse in concentration.
Sleeman had to adjust his ways throughout the years to stay current with his student-athletes. But the running has stayed the same.
“The only difference is we have better stopwatches and GPS, and everything is online,” he said. “We have automatic timing at the finish line.
“The one thing that has changed is that I get a lot of kids who have had very little physical activity before I get them. That has changed. You get a lot of kids like that, and it takes those kids a while to adapt to cross country. It’s all about development and being able to run more, not less.”
Sleeman said sometimes he has to recruit the classes and halls at Pioneer for runners. Other times, the program recruits itself.
“Some kids come to you interested, and some kids you just pass in the hallway and you just kind of blind side them a little bit and start talking about it,” he said. “A lot of them look at you like, ‘What are you talking about?’ Then you get the ones who follow through. I’ve got kids on the team now that I didn’t know who they were when they showed up.
“It’s always been a mixture, not one way or the other. They just show up on their own. I got an e-mail this week from a kid who said, ‘I might get cut from the basketball team. If I do, I want to run. What do I have to do?’ OK, sounds good to me, and I don’t even know who he is. When you get something like that, you hope it’s because he has heard something good about the program.”
Setting an example
Many years ago, Sleeman thought it might be getting close to the time to retire.
“Just throwing a number out, it could have been 20, 25 years ago when things weren’t going well, and it was kind of a me generation at that time,” Sleeman said. “I’m thinking, ‘Why am I doing this?’ I worked my way through it, and I realized that it was just a momentary thing, and I had to do like my athletes. I had to make something out of it myself. I can’t rely on others to make it better for me.”
It wasn’t the only time he thought about retiring.
“I remember being in my late 60s and I thought to myself – I didn’t say it to anybody – but I thought, ‘I don’t need to be coaching past 70.’ Then I got past 70, and now I’m 79 and I’m still going.”
Sleeman offers no hint at his future plans, but he sounds like he still enjoys coaching and staying active.
“I don’t know how people retire and go chase a ball around a hole and hang out at the 19th hole,” he said. “I don’t know how they keep going.
“One of the things that has been beneficial to me is that I’m in pretty good health. I have some aches and pains, and in the last couple of weeks, I’ve been able to be more active. I don’t know what happened. I’m just glad that it is happening. I’ve been able to go around at the meets from Point A to Point B better. I ride my bike from Point A to Point B to see what they’re doing.”
It would seem like, at age 79 and still so active, Sleeman is setting a perfect example for his student-athletes. But his mind is working as fast – if not faster – in an effort to help.
“My personality is don’t mess with me,” he said. “I try to teach the kids what is happening and why it’s happening. I try to make everything as clear as I can in an education sort of way, but as I do that, inevitably it comes down to them listening. I tell them to look at me when I’m talking to them.
“I am a disciplinarian, and one of the things that goes with that is a certain amount of negativity about it. I don’t like that. I don’t like being a cop. I don’t like being an authority figure, but you find yourself in that position, and I’m not going to shy away from it.”
Chip Mundy served as sports editor at the Brooklyn Exponent and Albion Recorder from 1980-86, and then as a reporter and later copy editor at the Jackson Citizen-Patriot from 1986-2011. He also co-authored Michigan Sports Trivia. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Jackson, Washtenaw, Hillsdale, Lenawee and Monroe counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Ann Arbor Pioneer boys cross country coach Don Sleeman has been guiding runners on the course for 50 years. (Top middle) Sleeman yells to Angad Sidhu as Sidhu passes him during a race. (Bottom middle) Sleeman signals to approaching Nick Foster. (Below) Sleeman has led Pioneer to five MHSAA titles and could have a sixth champion on the way this fall. (Photos by Peter Draugalis.)
Longtime Coach Lober Steps Away from XC
By
Dennis Chase
Special for MHSAA.com
August 18, 2017
TRAVERSE CITY – When the Traverse City Central boys cross country team opened practice last Wednesday, the gregarious John Lober was nowhere in sight.
Instead, the Michigan Interscholastic Track Coaches Association Hall of Fame coach was teeing it up on a golf course in Kalkaska County.
Lober, the driving force behind Traverse City Central boys running, stepped down as cross country coach after 28 years. He’ll continue as the track & field coach in the spring - his 49th year at Central and 54th season of coaching overall.
“I’m definitely going to miss it, but I’m lucky to say that a lot of these kids (in cross country) run track so I’ll still have an association with them,” Lober said. “It’s always about the kids and that association.”
Bryan Burns, who coached the Maple City Glen Lake girls to the Lower Peninsula Division 4 cross country title in 2000, is succeeding Lober.
“He’s a legend,” Central athletic director/assistant principal Mark Mattson said of Lober. “The guy’s put nearly 50 years into his craft at our school. That’s unprecedented. Fortunately, we get to keep him for track.”
Lober turned 75 in March.
“He’s 75 going on 35,” Mattson added. “He has such energy and passion. He’s everywhere - all the time.”
Still, Lober thought the time was right to make a change.
“I think it was my daughter who said something about me being in the fourth quarter,” he recalled. “Well, the greatest things happen in the fourth quarter. That’s when everything is on the line. Subconsciously, I’m thinking, ‘What are you going to do in the fourth quarter? How is this going to play out?’”
Lober experienced a taste of life without cross country last season – albeit for just two weeks – when he and his partner of 11 years, Margo Million, took a September vacation to New England.
And, as for any withdrawal symptoms in the last month, Lober’s been too busy for that to happen. He took in eight Traverse City Film Festival movies in late July and then the following week played 18 holes of golf four consecutive days with his visiting grandson and a friend.
“It’s been pretty Lober silent around (school), and I know that’s by John’s choice to stay out of the way and let Bryan Burns and his staff have that program be theirs,” Mattson said. “I’m sure that’s not easy for John because I know how much he cares for kids and how much pride he takes in our school and community. He paved the way for so many years. Nonetheless, he has the utmost respect for Bryan, who he helped put in place, and for what they want to do with the program going forward.”
Lober, and coaching companion Don Lukens, took over the Central cross country program in 1989 and turned it into one of the state’s best. According to statistics compiled by michtrack.org, Central had the fourth best program in the state in the 1990s – based on MHSAA Finals finishes – despite the fact the school was split (with West opening) in 1997. The Trojans were 12th from 2000-2009 and 11th from 2010-2016.
“Excellence is typified by a high achievement level over many years,” Lober said, “and I feel we’ve been an excellent program over the last 28 years.
“The system we established that first year (based on principles popularized by notable New Zealand runner and coach Arthur Lydiard) has proven to be a successful system. Little did Don and I know when we started working together that our talents would dovetail and create such a strong situation.”
Since 1989, Central has won 86 invitationals, eight Big North Conference titles and eight Regionals. The Trojans were runners-up in nine Regionals. Central finished second in Class A in 1996, five points behind White Lake Lakeland.
Central qualified for the MHSAA Finals the first 16 years under Lober and Lukens. That streak was snapped in 2005, but it led to one of the most satisfying seasons in 2006.
“Those kids on the 2005 team were the first not to go to states, and they banded together and came back and took third (in Division 1) the next year,” Lober said. “They were awesome. That was a special team.”
The Finals runner-up team in 1996 was special, too. In fact, Lober is reminded of it every day. That squad, after its successful season, planted a tree in Lober’s front yard. Today, it towers over the front of his property.
Lukens, also in the MITCA Hall of Fame, built his legacy as a cross country and track coach at Kalamazoo Loy Norrix before retiring at 55 and moving north. He had 32 years of service in, but his move was hastened after he accidentally “chemically poisoned” himself.
“I was staining my place and I dumped the bucket all over the front of me,” he said. “But I wanted to finish because I had company coming from Pennsylvania. The next day my knees and elbows were so swollen – you talk about pain.”
Lukens originally was told he had lupus, but a trip to the Mayo Clinic revealed it was chemical poisoning.
He was told his condition would improve as time passed, but it would be advantageous if he could retire.
“They said, ‘Remember, stress is a factor. If you don’t retire, don’t plan much until after age 60,’” Lukens recalled. “Well, that scared the dickens out of me.”
Lukens, now 83, was serving as interim athletic director at the time. In the meantime, he and his wife had fallen in love with northern Michigan and purchased property along the Platte River in Benzie County. Lukens started building their house right before the move.
“Every morning I get up, sit on the porch and look at the river,” he said. “You talk about being blessed.”
His coaching days were not over, however. Benzie Central track coach Pete Moss asked if Lukens could work with the team’s pole vaulter in that spring of 1989. In late May, at the Traverse City Record-Eagle Honor Roll track meet, Lober approached Lukens about becoming his distance coach in track. When the cross country job opened, Lober and Lukens took on that responsibility as well.
It’s a union that still exists. Lukens is assisting Burns in cross country and Lober in track.
“I think my wife is happy I’m not in her hair all the time,” Lukens said. “I enjoy working with the kids. They keep me young.”
Lober, whose track team won the Class A title in 1992, feels the same. He retired from teaching during spring break in 2000 when his wife Julie’s cancer returned. She passed in August of that year. It was in those moments afterwards, seeing the support he had from his teams, that it hit him.
“I need them more than they need me,” he said.
Now that he’s not a part of the cross country program, Lober said he’ll miss the dynamics of team building and team bonding. He’ll miss watching raw athletes develop skills they didn’t realize they had. But he won’t be out of sight totally. He’ll be there for meets, just like he’s at other school sporting events during the year. After all, Traverse City Central has been his home away from home for 49 years.
“When we named Travis Schuba our new boys basketball coach last week, John was the first one looking for contact information to congratulate him and welcome him to our staff,” Mattson said. “That’s John Lober. Traverse City Central is family for John.”
And just how long will he coach track?
“I want to coach track a couple more years because I love it,” he said. “Last year was as much fun as I’ve ever had coaching track. Plus, I want to put 50 (years) in. If I’m lucky enough to do that, I’d love it.”
Dennis Chase worked 32 years as a sportswriter at the Traverse City Record-Eagle, including as sports editor from 2000-14. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Manistee, Wexford, Missaukee, Roscommon, Ogemaw, Iosco, Alcona, Oscoda, Crawford, Kalkaska, Grand Traverse, Benzie, Leelanau, Antrim, Otsego, Montmorency, Alpena, Presque Isle, Cheboygan, Charlevoix and Emmet counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Traverse City Central coach John Lober offers direction at a meet during his half-century career. (Middle) Central assistant Don Lukens, left, with Lober. (Photos courtesy of John Lober.)