For all of the push-ups accomplished, for all of the operating drills endured and for all of the yelling obtained throughout his days enjoying highschool soccer at Sherman Oaks Notre Dame Excessive within the Nineteen Nineties, Dan Keeler is getting the final giggle later this month when he takes command of the Nimitz-class plane provider USS Abraham Lincoln in Coronado.
“Now I’m going to have to salute him,” former Notre Dame coach Kevin Rooney quipped.
Keeler, who graduated from highschool in 1994 and went on to the Naval Academy, is taking command of one of many Navy’s most outstanding ships.
The USS Abraham Lincoln arrives San Diego in 2020.
(Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune)
“It is incredible that he has earned this responsibility,” Rooney mentioned.
Keeler was a defensive again and monitor athlete for the Knights and is one among 5 siblings who attended Notre Dame. Monitor coach Joe McNab, who simply received his eleventh Southern Part championship, was his defensive backs coach.
“Good kid,” McNab mentioned.
“He’s a guy who fit all the boxes in terms of being a great kid and doing things right,” Rooney mentioned.
Rooney, McNab and former soccer assistant Jeff Kraemer will make the journey to the San Diego space for the change-of-command ceremony. For some purpose, Keeler invited his former highschool coaches in any case these days of sweat and tears in Sherman Oaks.
“If I had known he was going to be so powerful, I wouldn’t have made him run so much,” Kraemer mentioned.
Keeler isn’t the primary Notre Dame graduate to rise within the Navy ranks. Retired Adm. Mike Mullen was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Workers from 2007 to 2011 and graduated from Notre Dame in 1964. Mullen as soon as got here again to his alma mater to handle the coed physique.
Rooney, who retired in 2019 after 40 years as soccer coach, mentioned his objective was at all times to “help kids become great people and do things right.”
Coaches know that the perfect day of all is when a graduate comes again to campus and tells them how they’re doing and explains how classes realized as youngsters actually made a distinction of their life.
As summer time begins and graduates transfer on with their lives and the category of 2029 arrives, it’s a very good reminder to everybody that it’s not wins and losses that matter most in highschool. It’s educating life classes and getting ready college students to grow to be adults, good individuals and good neighborhood members.
To see a former Los Angeles-area highschool soccer participant take cost of an plane provider is proof that every one that operating to realize stamina, all that preaching to work collectively as a staff, all these lectures that follow makes good … it’s true.
You solely have to pay attention, study and dedicate your self to reaching a objective.
A salute to all of the coaches and academics who perceive their actual job is to create alternatives for his or her college students to succeed via knowledge and inspiration.
Capt. Keeler, Bravo Zulu and Anchors Aweigh. Be protected.
