The following feature first appeared in the football game program on Sept. 15, 2018.
Mike Horn was out having dinner with his family in Canton one night in 1999 when he saw a familiar face that stood head and shoulders above everyone else in the restaurant.
It was Ron Hammye, longtime Wayne State men's basketball coach, who towered over just about everyone at 6-foot-10 inches tall. Hammye informed Horn that Wayne State's then-golf coach planned to retire, and that the athletic department was considering dropping the sport altogether.
The comment shook Horn, who played golf at Wayne State in the 1980s and was a two-time all-Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Association selection.
A week later, out once again with his family in Canton – though this time at another restaurant – Horn once again saw Hammye. Horn thought Hammye was about to deliver more depressing news, but instead got one of the biggest surprises of his life.
"He said, 'I'm the interim athletic director,'" Horn recalled. "'I want to keep golf. Do you want to interview?' And it was as simple as that."Â He started as a part-time employee and became a full-time coach a few years later under current athletic director
Rob Fournier.
Since then, in a 17-season span, Horn has won GLIAC Coach of the Year four times (2004, 2007, 2010, 2013) and has led the Warriors to the NCAA Super Regional a dozen times in the past 15 seasons.
Horn's chance meetings with Hammye nearly two decades ago brought him back to the university where he was a student-athlete, and today, Horn is one of about a dozen former Warriors (or Tartars) now working in the athletic department.
"It's a really unique place," Horn said of the athletic department and university. "We were always the underdog, certainly in the 1980s and 1990s and my first few years coaching. We were always seen as the place that was maybe your second or third choice. I think many of us have a chip on our shoulder because Detroit and Wayne State were cool back then, but nobody gave us the credit."
Horn is not alone in his story of returning to Wayne State. Former Tartars and Warriors can be found on many different WSU athletic coaching staffs.
Scott Wooster and
Jon Robinson, now assistant football coaches, both played on the football team back in the 1990s and 2000s, respectively. Nicole (Abel) Tines was a four-year softball player from 2007 through 2010 who is now an assistant coach under longtime coach
Gary Bryce.
Karen Lafata attended Wayne State in the 1970s and has been an assistant coach the past eight seasons.
Bryce Pitters has been an assistant swim coach for nearly two decades.
In addition, both tennis coaches,
Bryan Morrow (1987-91) and
Sheila Snyder (1983-86), were WSU student-athletes. Horn and Morrow were both inducted into the WSU Athletic Hall of Fame for their student-athlete careers in 2001 and 2003, respectively.
Ten (10) other former Warrior student-athletes are serving on coaching staffs as either a graduate assistant coach working on their master's or as a volunteer assistant coach.
The stories of how student-athletes make it to Wayne State are usually pretty compelling – there are family ties, transfers and international recruitment, to name a few – but the stories of how former Wayne State student-athletes end up coming home to the athletic department are equally as fascinating. Some never leave campus, or spend just a few years away. Others are gone for decades, seemingly reconnected by nothing more than chance. Â
For Tines, she went from student-athlete to coach immediately following her playing career. Tines, whose undergrad degree was in teaching, had as a student-athlete asked Bryce about opportunities to remain involved with the team, but only after she had finished her on-field career did he reach out and offer Tines a chance to be a student assistant coach.
"I had always loved coaching and loved teaching, so when the opportunity arose for me to come back and work with the team and get my master's, I jumped at it," Tines said.
After one season as a student assistant, Tines for two years was a graduate assistant coach – while she pursued a sports management master's degree – before being promoted to a full-time assistant coach in 2014. She sees herself as sort of a generational translator between today's players and Bryce, Wayne State's coach the past 38 years; she understands what Bryce expects from his players and can relate with players and what they are thinking and feeling in the 2018 college environment.
But not everyone can go from playing to coaching at Wayne State overnight. Robinson, for example, departed his graduate assistant coach role at Wayne State in 2013 and spent two years in a similar role at Ball State before – you guessed it – another twist of fate opened a door for him to join
Paul Winters' staff in Detroit.
Keith McKenzie, an assistant coach at Wayne State from 2008 through 2015, wanted a chance to return to his alma mater, Ball State, and when there was an opening, Robinson lobbied for McKenzie to get the gig. (McKenzie is now the defensive line coach.)
In turn, McKenzie put in a good word for Robinson, who then took over at Wayne State as linebackers coach – McKenzie's old job.
It was a natural career and personal move for Robinson, who is from Livonia and could move up the coaching rung. Robinson also acknowledged that he wanted to be a part of the program to finish what he and his teammates started in 2011 – the quest for a national championship. Robinson and his teammates went on an incredible playoff run that season, falling just short of their goal in the national championship game to Pittsburg State.
"My senior year, we didn't even win the conference championship. We blew it in the final game," Robinson said. "Coming back home is definitely big-time motivation to get the conference championship and do the things I couldn't do as a player.
"There's a lot of unfinished business and being a coach is my way of helping to get the job done."
For Horn, Tines and Robinson, it is special to be a part of something they at one time helped build as student-athletes. Tines says it is no coincidence that so many former student-athletes are now working in the athletic department.
"I think it says a lot about the athletic department," Tines said. "Going to coaches meetings and athletic meetings and seeing those familiar faces, and really understanding the direction we want Wayne State athletics to go in, it's really a testament to the staff."
Robinson says having so many former student-athletes within the athletic department – a family-like atmosphere – also helps push the program to get better and better each year.
"The people who have been around and the former student-athletes, they kind of know what Wayne State used to be and have a little more knowledge and grit," Robinson said. "We don't take anything we have today for granted."
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