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.)
Athens' #13 Makes 'Miracle' Comeback
By
Pam Shebest
Special for MHSAA.com
October 19, 2015
ATHENS — Damon Knowles talked about baseball and basketball with his cousin, Luke Lamson, one warm Sunday last December.
That’s not unusual for the two young teens, but that day Lamson lay crushed beneath the wheels of a semi trailer loaded with corn and weighing more than 30,000 pounds.
His cousin had crawled beneath the trailer to keep Lamson awake until the ambulance arrived with the Jaws of Life. Both boys were in eighth grade at the time.
Immediately following the accident, “My dad told me to go get the phone so we could call 911,” Knowles, 14, said. “I went under the trailer and was talking to Luke. I just had to keep asking him if he could breathe.”
That accident drastically changed the way Lamson figured his freshman year at Athens High School would play out. Instead of running cross country and playing basketball this year, he is on the sidelines cheering his teammates.
The fact the 14-year-old can actually do that now is a story of amazing recovery and faith.
Knowles, his dad John and Lamson were the only ones at the farm, moving the corn to the silo at the time of the accident. None of them knows exactly how the accident happened, but John Knowles said the ground was soft from rain the day before, which probably kept his nephew from being crushed to death.
Lamson said he was awake the entire time, but doesn’t remember much about the accident.
“It didn’t kill him because we kept the pressure on him,” an emotional John Knowles said. “I could have drove the truck off him. Had a piece of machinery there, I could have tipped the truck off him.
“But I kept the pressure on him and he didn’t bleed internally. There was a higher power telling me not to get the trailer off him. He should have never made it out from under the trailer, never made it to the hospital. The first couple days were nerve-wracking.
“By the time I got to the hospital (later that day), half of Athens was there. We had over 90 people in the waiting room that night; probably 25 of them spent the night.”
Said Lamson’s mother, Lucy: “Being the adult and the one driving the vehicle, my brother was a mess. This little guy (Damon) was down there with Luke, underneath the trailer while he was pinned and held his head and made him stay awake and just kept talking with him.
“To me, that was the first miracle. Luke is sitting here right now because of it.”
The family created a Facebook page, Lukey Lamson’s Comeback, to post updates for friends and family.
The first entry explained: “He has a shattered pelvis, a compound fracture in his shoulder, a fracture in his lower back, and numerous open wounds. He currently just got out of surgery and they were able to attach a wound vac to help his wounds heal.
“We are receiving some communication from him such as waves, thumbs up, and hand squeezes when he is off his sedation medication, which is only for a few minutes at a time.”
Lamson, who spent two months in Kalamazoo’s Bronson Methodist Hospital and one in University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, said at the beginning he wasn’t sure he would live.
“There was times in the hospital that Luke wasn’t real fun to be around,” his uncle said. “There was one time I come around the corner and my mother and my sister were crying. I said what’s wrong. They said Luke wants to die.
“So I walked in there. I asked the two nurses to leave. We had a good heart-to-heart talk, and things changed.”
By Dec. 10, three days after the accident, Lamson was taken off the ventilator. And by Christmas, he had survived seven surgeries.
On Dec. 28 he was moved from the intensive care unit to a regular room, and by Jan. 20 he was able to sit in a wheelchair for the first time. He left Bronson for Mott’s on Feb. 3.
One bright spot in those early days came from Bronson Hospital’s Dr. Michael Leinwand who learned that Lamson is a huge Michigan State fan. He arranged for a visit from two students from the MSU dance team along with mascot Sparty.
Lamson had an attitude adjustment at Mott’s, where he found inspiration after watching an ESPN short called “Miraculous: The Austin Hatch Story,” about the University of Michigan basketball player.
“(Hatch) survived two plane crashes and lost his mother, father, two siblings and a stepmother in those two airplane crashes,” Lucy Lamson said. “He had a crushed pelvis, brain injuries. He worked like there was no tomorrow, and he didn’t have the family to support him.
“After we watched the story, Luke looked at me and said he doesn’t even have his mom and his dad to help him, and I do. That’s when he kicked it in.”
Lamson has had 22 surgeries with another scheduled for later this week, goes for physical therapy three times a week and has actually walked Athens’ home course at Stanton Farms with the cross country team.
He expects to be on the sidelines cheering on the team at its regional Oct. 31 and hopes to be a manager for the basketball team.
Lucy Lamson said it is not just the community who has come together to support the family, but also teams in the Big 8 Conference.
While at Mott’s, the teen wanted a leave to attend an Athens basketball game when his sister, Josie, was on the homecoming court.
He worked hard to meet all the criteria his doctors set and planned the surprise.
“We played our rival, Union City,” Lucy Lamson said. “They did a fundraiser for him, too. My sister was thanking everyone and then Luke rolled in in his wheelchair. and everybody just cried.”
Lamson’s basketball number has always been 13, and that number actually gave the family some comfort.
“After the accident, that number kept showing up everywhere,” his mother said. “The room he was in at one point was 13. Damon’s first gymnastics meet after the accident, he drew 13. They won a basketball game by 13.
“Players had headbands made that had 13 on them. Other teams in our conference that played our team would come in with 13 on their shirts or wristbands. At a dollar store for fundraiser stuff, the amount came to exactly $13. That was our way of knowing that God was with us and Luke would be OK.”
Lamson, Knowles and Riley Howard, all freshmen, figured they would be battling each other on the cross country team this year.
Instead, Knowles and Howard are running with Lamson cheering them on.
Although basketball is his first love, “We talked Luke into running cross country his seventh grade year, so he ran seventh and eighth grade years,” said coach Missy Hamilton, who also teaches science at the middle school.
“He’s just amazed everybody because we didn’t think he’d be back in school last year. He came back after spring break, in a wheelchair. He’s starting to walk a little bit. Now he walks the halls (with a brace on his left leg).
“I’m hoping he’ll be ready to run with us next year, and by the time he’s a junior, full time. As he works through his physical therapy, he becomes stronger and stronger.”
Damon Knowles has dedicated this cross country season to his cousin.
Asked if he thinks of Luke running beside him during meets, Damon replied, laughing and without hesitation: “Maybe behind me.”
Howard said Lamson is an inspiration to the other athletes.
“I’ve known him my whole life,” Howard said. “I was worried that he wasn’t going to make it, but I was really surprised because he’s up and walking.
“It’s inspired me to work harder, actually, because he’s not doing this right now, but he’ll be back. The team likes it when he’s there supporting us.”
John Knowles said the family has become even closer since the accident.
“There’s been a lot of great things that have come from this accident that is bigger than any one person or any one sport,” he said. “You’ve got to have bad days to appreciate the good days. Sports is a great teacher of that.”
Pam Shebest served as a sportswriter at the Kalamazoo Gazette from 1985-2009 after 11 years part-time with the Gazette while teaching French and English at White Pigeon High School. She continues to freelance for MLive.com covering mainly Kalamazoo Wings hockey and can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Calhoun, Kalamazoo and Van Buren counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Luke Lamson, in bed, is surrounded by his doctor, members of the Michigan State University dance team and Sparty during his stay at Bronson Hospital. (Middle) From left, John Knowles, Damon Knowles, Lucy Lamson. (Middle below) Luke Lamson sits up as his recovery continues. (Below) Lamson played basketball during middle school. (Top and middle photos courtesy of Lamson family; head shots by Pam Shebest, basketball photo by Photography by Char.)