The deans of the diamond

Updated: April 30, 2011 11:08PM

CHESTERTON — When Jack Campbell first began coaching high school baseball, most of the parents of his current Chesterton High players weren’t even born, or were still sucking on pacifiers.

When LouAnn Hopson started coaching softball at Chesterton, the Indiana High School Athletic Association hadn’t even begun its annual state softball postseason tournament yet.

Together, they are easily the most tenured coaching duo at any Northwest Indiana high school between the major boys and girls sports of any season — 41 years for Campbell, 28 years for Hopson.

“By most tenured, you mean we’re old and older than dirt,” Hopson joked.

Added Campbell: “I guess that means she’s dirt since I’m older.”

You can call them old or tenured or experienced. To Chesterton athletic director Garry Nallenweg, they are a godsend when the spring arrives, since the duo has everything under control from March to June.

“Thanks to their experiences, we don’t have a lot of worries about those two sports,” Nallenweg said. “We introduce (Campbell) as the dean of Duneland Conference baseball coaches. We’re lucky to have them. They’re not doing it for the money. When you’re doing it that long, there’s plenty of intrinsic value in what they do. They’ve adapted over the years.”

So why do they stay at it? Campbell’s answer is simple.

“Why not? I enjoy doing it. I enjoy working with the kids,” he said, before getting to the real reason he’s never left Chesterton. “I’m not one to change easily.”

Campbell’s first year of coaching baseball was 1967 at Valparaiso, before making a huge geographic change in 1970.

“Changing from Valparaiso to Chesterton was a big deal,” he joked. “We were living in Elmwood Park at the time, so all I had to do was go north on U.S. 6 rather than south. It was like a major decision in my life to make that change.”

For Hopson, it’s been about continuing what she had started as a teenager.

“I’ve always loved the game,” she said. “I started coaching little kids when I was still a teenager playing. In college I was helping coach middle school kids. I just love the game.”

Both have coached other sports over the years. Hopson was a volleyball coach at Chesterton for nine years while still coaching softball. But Campbell has taken the dual-coaching role to another level.

In addition to being the most-tenured baseball coach in the region, he’s also been the Trojans’ head girls basketball coach for 23 years.

In his 10th year as AD, Nallenweg disagrees with those who question how wise it is to coach both sports.

“There’s nothing wrong with coaches, as well as kids, taking a break and competing in another sport,” he said. “Jack starts his day here (at Chesterton High) every morning, we laugh a lot, and then he heads to work at Bailey Elementary (as a teacher), then he comes back here to coach.”

Campbell admits it hasn’t gotten easier over the years. He was also a boys basketball coach at Chesterton before taking the girls job in the late 1980s. But his assistants on both staffs are a huge key to his longevity in both sports, resulting in the 67-year-old looking like a CEO, delegating during a recent practice that was moved inside after several days of rain.

“Every year the transition gets a little more difficult, but I really have outstanding assistant coaches and that makes it much easier,” he said. “When I’m in the midst of basketball season, (baseball assistants) Doug Uehling and Rick Youngren will start the kids off in the conditioning program for baseball. You can’t do it all by yourself.”

It actually used to be harder before IHSAA-mandated rules allowed for better spacing.

“Back in the day, there weren’t really any starting dates in baseball,” he recalled.

“So when I was involved in basketball, I’d do baseball in the morning with pitchers and catchers around Feb. 1. Now you can’t do that. Now it’s basically just open gym. Fortunately the way the rules are now, when basketball ends we’ve got about two weeks before baseball can officially start. So the transition has been made a little easier.”

Actually, it’s only two weeks if his girls basketball team reaches the state championship. Otherwise, it’s three or four weeks of down time before switching.

Not to mention his summers are spent more on basketball, since that’s primetime for travel baseball.

“The biggest difference over the years is AAU and travel ball,” Campbell said. “In the summer we used to turn our seniors loose and bring back all the (returning) players and run a 12- to 15-game (summer league) and on the days we didn’t play we would practice. Then around the Fourth of July we’d be done because of football. Now with all the rules opening up the summertime, that’s changed. Plus, if you’re on a travel team, they’ll be gone from Thursday to Sunday and we’ll never see them.”

Hopson hasn’t dealt with dual-sport coaching in several years. It’s all about softball for her, but she still appreciates the help of her trusted assistant Dan Lynch.

“Dan’s a little younger and he’s a little bit more jovial than I am, which makes him a good complement,” the 54-year-old Hopson said of her assistant of the last six years. “Anything you do for a number of years, whether it’s coaching kids or making widgets, a certain amount is dependent upon the people around you. When you get good people working with you, our personalities complement each other. Dan’s more jovial and I’m more about getting down to business and that works out well.”

Both Hopson and Campbell wouldn’t be able to survive without the love and patience of their significant others — Campbell’s wife of 45 years, Carol, and Hopson’s husband of 32 years, Jim.

“She would come to a lot of the games when I first started coaching,” Campbell said. “But with all our kids (four daughters who all went to Chesterton) and grandkids, there are far more important things than watching me coach a baseball game and I don’t blame her one bit.”

Both lament the changing landscape of their sports, though Campbell appreciates how travel baseball helps his players’ individual skill levels. Hopson sees a few bumps in the road from outside sources.

“I read an article three or four years ago and it said because kids take so many lessons (AAU or private), a lot of them have difficulty making their own adjustments because they’re used to instant feedback on every swing they take,” she said. “It’s difficult for kids to learn that way. They want to know right now what was wrong with their last swing. I mean, it’s just one swing. If you hit .300 you still fail 70 percent of the time, and that’s something they don’t grasp.”

She laughed for a second and then related how kids learn about softball and baseball now as opposed to how she learned.

“While teaching first and second graders how to throw a softball (in physical education class), I was talking to one of the parents and I don’t remember anyone ever teaching me how to throw. I watched it and I mimicked what I saw,” she said.

“When I was a kid, where I lived we’d play two-on-two in the sandlot. I didn’t play organized ball until I was 14. We’d play all day until the kid with the ball went home or it was too dark to play anymore. But I was a fan of the game. Maybe some of my earlier players were fans of the game. Now if it’s not organized, they don’t do it.

“I had a coach in college tell me you’ll be lucky in a given year to have one kid, maybe two, that see the game the same way you see it. Because if you have a team full of kids that see the game the way you see it, you have a team full of potential coaches ... and you never have a team full of potential coaches.”

Despite the love for each game they coach, it can still be a grind. Hopson said her baseball counterpart “loves working on his field. He’s out there every day. I work on mine because I need to.”

It just means Nallenweg never has to worry about that part of his athletic complex.

“They both work on their fields enormously, and that’s not included in their coaching stipends,” he said. “They don’t do anything halfway. They want the best for Chesterton High School and the kids. Our younger coaches could learn a heck of a lot from them.”

Speaking of younger coaches, do any have a chance in the near future to take over for a retiring Hopson or Campbell?

Hopson still loves the game, loves sending newsletters about the the program to her former players, from Laura Langendorfer to Carrie Nulf to Dawn McClellan, loves the challenge of playing in the tough Duneland Conference every year.

Closer to the age when retirement is reality, Campbell couldn’t see himself doing anything else.

“Retirement? I’m not a golfer or a fisherman or a world traveler,” he said. “This is what I enjoy doing. I think I can still relate to the kids, though they might think differently.”

© 2012 Sun-Times Media, LLC. All rights reserved. This material may not be copied or distributed without permission. For more information about reprints and permissions, visit www.suntimesreprints.com. To order a reprint of this article, click here.