Pray

There will be sorrow, loss and grief,
but lean on friends for sweet relief.
So make the most of every day,
and don't forget to pray, pray, pray.

Athletic Directing Duo Keeps College Program Thriving

-Written as final project for Teresa Heinz Housel's COMM 255 class in Fall 2012

-Appeared as a two-part feature in the 2/6/13 and 2/20/13 issues of Hope College's campus newspaper The Anchor 

L-R: Tim Schoonveld, Eva Dean Folkert, Ray Smith
Photo Courtesy of Hope PR

When you think of two-headed monsters, a pair of athletic directors probably doesn’t come to mind. Since joining forces in 2009, Hope College co-athletic directors Eva Dean Folkert and Tim Schoonveld think of themselves as just that. 

Folkert and Schoonveld both have longtime connections to Hope, where they each spent their undergraduate years. Folkert graduated in 1983 and Schoonveld in 1996. Interestingly, they also both received a master’s degree from Western Michigan University in 2005.

Thirteen years separate the tandem, but they both agree on what part of their job they enjoy most: working with student-athletes who learn and live a dream.

“I love working with student-athletes who take college seriously,” Folkert said. “They treat it as a right, not a privilege, and they need to be grateful for the sacrifices their parents made to get them to college.”

A demanding job

Athletic directors themselves need to make sacrifices too, because the job is no easy task. While Folkert deems it a “boring” subject matter, the position deserves respect. Without experienced and dedicated athletic directors, a school’s sports program can turn to dust. 

Athletic directors constantly have deadlines. Responsibilities include facility management, hiring coaches, preparing schedules and organizing spending on things such as team travel and equipment. 

An article written by Annie Chandler about the University of Arizona’s athletic director says that the demanding hours of the job make it “notorious for its short tenures.”

Folkert and Schoonveld know that the job description doesn’t include much time for breathers.

“If you like regimen and a mundane lifestyle, this is not the job you’ll have,” Folkert said. “Each day something new comes up on our to-do lists, and the job offers variety.”

Cohesion and God’s calling

The tandem credits much of their success to the cohesion developed since 2009. They approach each other with different ideas and possess gifts in specific areas which, when mixed together, help create new ideas that broaden the scope of their athletic minds.  

“We love to challenge each other and we complement each other very well,” Schoonveld said. “We’ve established a great friendship, we enrich each other and we trust our work.”

Their upbringings may be different, but they both believe the way they ended up as an athletic directing duo was all part of God’s calling.

“God brings people together with a purpose and a plan,” Schoonveld said. “I’m more aware now than ever that I’m part of God’s plan, and I go by this. I never dreamed of being an athletic director at Hope.”

From New York to Hope

Folkert spent her high school days in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. From an early age, she possessed a love for words. She scored good grades on research papers and saw writing as a beautiful puzzle in which you could describe something in so many different ways but still hold on to its true meaning. 

Her love for sport blossomed in her high school days when she played softball, basketball and field hockey. She admired the way sport brought groups of people together in unison and how success depended on the hard work of numerous people.

Folkert’s move from New York to West Michigan in 1979 brought her to Hope College. She declared a double major in business administration and communication, and she had the opportunity to use her writing skills and love of sport soon after her entrance into Hope.

“With my double major, I was planning on going into PR [public relations],” Folkert said. “I also landed the position of sports editor of Hope’s student-run newspaper ‘The Anchor’ during my sophomore year, but then I went to work at the Holland Sentinel as a sports writer and photographer my junior and senior years.”

Finding work at Hope

Folkert graduated from Hope in 1983. According to a 2010 feature written by Michelle Brutlag Hosick in NCAA Champion magazine, the Holland Sentinel couldn’t hire her full time out of college due to a time of recession, and freelance writing for the Sentinel “wasn’t going to pay the mortgage for the newly married Folkert, so she took a job for a printing company doing layout and design, skills she picked up while cutting and pasting the newspaper columns together.” Soon after, however, in 1985 a PR job opened at Hope and Folkert got it, and she’s worked for the college ever since.

The then 24-year-old Folkert committed herself to the new job at Hope as a young woman working alongside older, qualified and successful veterans. She recalls Tom Renner, who still serves as director of public relations at Hope, seeing potential in her and making her feel comfortable from the start.

A veteran’s mind

Throughout her years at Hope, Folkert has seen plenty of work: registrar’s office, athletics ticket manager, assistant director of intramural sports, senior woman administrator for athletics, director of women’s athletics (Ray Smith was director of men’s athletics), assistant professor of kinesiology and now co-athletic director. Her time with intramural sports opened her eyes to athletic administration.

After receiving her master’s degree in sport management in her early 40s in 2005, Folkert coached women’s golf at Hope from 2005-2008 and was able to begin teaching at the college. With so much to focus on daily, Folkert still tries to abide by a routine.

These days Folkert arrives at her office in DeVos Fieldhouse around 6:30 a.m. She comes in early to check emails, check calls and organize for the day ahead.  She prepares for her First Year Seminar class about sport in society in movies. Next semester she’ll teach a Senior Seminar about sport in society and the sacred, looking at religion’s effect on sport. 

“I’m much more productive in the morning,” Folkert said. “Some days morning meetings require an early start, but most days I enjoy arriving at the office before the noise and commotion hits, taking time in the quiet to get things done.”

In the afternoon the corridors fall silent around 3 p.m., and Folkert takes this time to answer questions, check email, touch base with coaches and possibly meet with a student. She says the athletic directing job is about managing people and events and people in events. She may attend and supervise a sporting event which will keep her night busy. 

Where she should be

Despite being employed in several different areas at Hope, getting her master’s degree late, dropping coaching and abiding by innumerable NCAA rules, Folkert believes she is in the right place to use her gifts and glorify God.

“Every step in my career path, the Holy Spirit nudged me and said, ‘try this, maybe you’re good at this’,” Folkert said. “Although this job demands so much time and can be frustrating, I do like it and I enjoy watching our student-athletes play and do what they love to do while growing into their education. Hope is a special place.”

West Michigan boy

Schoonveld, known by co-workers and Hope students as “Schoonie,” grew up in West Michigan and has resided there all his life. In his childhood, his parents weren’t very into athletics, but Schoonveld found a love for sport by playing ball with the neighborhood kids.

“My family didn’t really encourage me to play sports and they weren’t huge fans at all,” Schoonveld said. “I, however, enjoyed sports from an early age, and God blessed me with some athletic ability and success playing basketball.”

Schoonveld attended Holland Christian High School where he played basketball under head coach and athletic director Mike Phelps. Schoonveld credits Phelps as a huge reason why he works as co-athletic director at Hope today. Schoonveld wanted to be like his high school mentor.

Leaving Calvin, loving Hope

For college, Schoonveld looked at Hope and Calvin and chose Calvin for his first year of undergraduate. He calls his time at Calvin his “Mormon mission” and realized that after one year satisfaction wasn’t present, so he left the school. 

“After my first year at Calvin, I took a whole semester off and worked,” Schoonveld said. “Hope’s basketball coach at the time, Glenn Van Wieren, sucked me back in to Hope to study and play basketball.”

And that’s what Schoonveld did. He enrolled at Hope and declared a major in kinesiology and a minor in political science. Unfortunately, his college basketball career hit an abrupt end due to a series of knee surgeries. Basketball still was a huge part of his life, as he desired to coach and teach.

Finding the right place

Shortly after graduating in 1996 from Hope with a teacher’s certificate, Schoonveld took the position as assistant coach of the men’s junior varsity basketball team at Hope in 1997. He also taught elementary P.E. in the Zeeland public school system at this time, and both jobs lasted until 2000.

In 2000 he began to serve as a teacher and head coach of girls’ varsity basketball at his alma mater Holland Christian High School. After earning a master’s degree from Western Michigan with Folkert in 2005, Schoonveld became the assistant principal and athletic director at Holland Christian while still maintaining his head coaching job. 

“I had a lot of responsibilities with all those titles, but I was passionate about my work,” Schoonveld said. 

Towards the end of his 2000-2009 tenure at Holland Christian, Schoonveld heard about the opening position of men’s athletic director at Hope upon the retirement of former director Ray Smith. Schoonveld went through the application process, landed the job and had great supporters during the move.

A calling and patience

“I felt like it was a calling to take the job at Hope,” Schoonveld said. “I want to leave a positive mark on the lives of those people I communicate with. College athletic directing is different from high school with so many more people to help, much more facilitating and building consensus with highly skilled coaches.

“God is teaching me patience. My time here has been rewarding and I’m here to see, learn and grow.”

Schoonveld, like Folkert, also teaches along with his directing job. Days often consist of office work and details, multiple meetings, making rounds to touch base with coaches in order to develop effective communication, supervising events and being present with his wife Lisa and their four children.

Schoonveld also tries to get in a workout every day, while Folkert says her workout is walking to the printer and back to her office 20 times a day. Exercising habits aside, Folkert and Schoonveld share a common love for the Hope community.

“I plan on being here for a while,” Schoonveld said. “This is my home, developing friendships and working with student-athletes and colleagues. It’s most inspiring to walk with student-athletes, watch them grow and learn as much from them as anything. I want to continue to use my abilities to impact lives.” 

What keeps them going

Folkert and Schoonveld know the frustrations of the job, like dealing with student-athletes who break codes of conduct, how much to charge people who constantly want to use Hope’s state-of-the-art athletic facilities and attending to endless deadlines.

But if you ask the duo what keeps them attached to this lifestyle day after day, the answer will probably include something about watching student-athletes compete and grow.

Hope students appreciate Folkert and Schoonveld’s work to improve athletic and educational experiences, the way they exhibit their faith and the approachability of the two. 

“I was Eva Dean’s TA [teacher’s assistant] for health dynamics and she invited me on the athletics leadership Montana trip this past summer,” senior Hope track athlete Joel Rietsema said. “She has really made a big impact on me in giving me great opportunities to help better myself as well as the people and teams around me.”

Folkert and Schoonveld plan to overcome the common short tenures of athletic directors due to the demanding hours. The student-athletes, however, will continue to come and go.

“One of the best parts of my job is to keep student-athletes for four years, but it’s the hardest to see them leave,” Folkert said.

A spirited two-headed monster that cares for the longevity of a college athletic program and loves making a positive impact on student-athletes—that’s something you don’t hear of too often.

Schoonveld and Folkert
Photo Courtesy of Hope PR

-James Rogers

Thanks go to Eva Dean Folkert and Tim Schoonveld for willing to meet with me several times, Hope PR for providing photos, and Teresa Heinz Housel for challenging me with this project.

 

Lie Strong

Appeared as a column in the 1/23/2013 issue of Hope College's campus newspaper The Anchor.

After watching Lance Armstrong’s doping confession interview with Oprah this past week, I thought of the times in my life when sports brought me down because of performance-enhancing drugs. Thanks to drugs, I can’t watch sports the same anymore, and that’s truly sad.

I remember gluing my eyes to the television back in the day when Armstrong, a cancer survivor, went on a tear in the world of cycling, winning seven consecutive Tour de France races and launching the Livestrong Foundation to raise money for cancer. 

I remember begging my dad to take me to any store in the area to purchase one of those heavily sought-after yellow Livestrong bracelets that I was convinced everyone in the world was wearing. Sure, I wanted one because I thought it would make me cooler, but I also marveled at what Armstrong did on a bike and I wanted a bracelet that would make me more like him.

To this day, I’m aware that Livestrong helps to raise money for cancer awareness, and I’m all for that. But the man behind the project, Armstrong, is a fraud and arguably the most pathological liar we’ve seen in the history of sports. I was cheering for a man who cheated to win, and that’s sad.

I also cheered for cheaters in baseball. I spent most of my childhood days in St. Louis, Missouri, cheering on my beloved St. Louis Cardinals baseball team. I rooted for Mark McGwire, who hit an incredible 70 home runs during the 1998 season. 

I collected his cards, spent money to watch him cranks homers, and pretended I was him while playing wiffle ball in my backyard, all while having no clue that he was pumping steroids to garner more success. He cheated, and looking back on those days is sad because McGwire tricked me.

I did a grade school project on Barry Bonds, drew pictures of Sammy Sosa to hang on my wall, and sent a letter to the Texas Rangers requesting an autograph from Rafael Palmeiro. All three of these guys (and many more baseball players) took steroids to enhance their performances, and that honestly puts a dent in my childhood memories. All those hours in awe of cheaters.

I’m a huge fan of running, and I keep up with professional runners thanks to a few resourceful websites. Running too is tainted. If an athlete breaks a record there are many accusations saying he or she is on drugs. The Kenyans and Ethiopians, who have been dominating distance running for years now, spark controversy because people label them as cheating drug users. It’s sad, but is it true?

Who can I trust now in sports? Am I still being tricked today? Are some of the runners and baseball players posted on my bedroom walls cheating to gain success? I try to picture a world of sports without cheaters, but it’s nearly impossible with the way things have shifted. 

I feel sorry too. Sorry for those athletes out there who truly work hard and put in hours to improve in their respective sport. I feel sorry because if that athlete has a breakout year or shows steady improvement, people will discredit all the hard work and credit the drugs. Even I will probably question.

I’m still a huge fan of sports, but no, I can’t trust every athlete. It’s a shame, but that’s the way it is. And it’s not just cycling, baseball, and running that are tarnished; it’s multiple sports all over the world.

With increased drug testing and longer suspensions for illegal substances, it’s my hope that one day all athletes on every level will not even consider drugs and just do it the natural way. Unfortunately, I believe that day is far, far away. 

For now, I’ll just wait and see who tricks me next. 

-James Rogers