Archdeacon: A 47-year love affair coming to an end at UD

“I was sweet on one of the players and I started going to the games,” he said.

While he may have had his eye on her at the opening tip, after the game he would study the final box score and shake his head.

While going to school, he also covered high school football and basketball games for the Miamisburg News, so he was used to keeping stats. And he said the final tallies from the Flyers’ games often were wrong.

He said he mentioned that to Flyers’ coach Elaine Dreidame, who asked: “Could you do better?”

He told her he could and soon he and a few of his buddies had become the Flyers’ stat crew.

Eventually Gene Schill, UD’s sports information director, brought Hauschild into the fold as one of his student helpers and that’s when Doug discovered real love.

And not just with the job. He also met Patty Snyder, a student from Beavercreek, who was working in the athletic office and said, “She just really turned my head.”

The couple has been married 41 years and he’s now worked with UD sports information for 47 years and run the department for 42. He was inducted into the College Sports Information Directors of America Hall of Fame in 2020.

He’s retiring at the end of the school year, although he said he’ll still be around to work on “special projects” like the UD Hall of Fame and the First Four and offer other help when needed.

He said it’s with “a mixed bag” of emotions that he steps aside: “I’ll miss the kids the most.”

Saturday, he’ll be honored during the Flyers’ game with Loyola. He’ll be called onto the UD Arena court during a time out.

Patty and their three children, Kim, Rob and Mike — a standout pitcher for the Flyers baseball team who played in the big leagues in 2017 with the Texas Rangers and Toronto Blue Jays ― will be with him.

Some 50 students who worked for Hauschild in UD sports information over the years later went into the business. A few of them will be there on Saturday, including Dr. Joe Luckey.

After his 1991 graduation from UD, Luckey worked at Austin Peay and the University of Memphis and now runs the University of Cincinnati athletic department’s academic services unit.

Although the Bearcats host Big 12 rival Arizona State on Saturday afternoon, Luckey and his wife Melissa plan to slip out of that game early to be a part of Hauschild’s celebration.

“This is too important not to be here,” he said. “Doug is the epitome of who we should be celebrating in this business because for him it’s always been about the students and the university and the community. It’s never been about him.

“If every one of us attacked our job everyday like he does — with that same humbleness and commitment for doing everything right — we’d all be better for it.

“Anybody I come across who’s been involved in sports information or Dayton athletics or if they’re with the NCAA, when you bring up Doug’s name, they talk about two things: his true professionalism and what a genuine human being he is.”

Bill Behrns worked for Hauschild when he was a UD student in the early and mid-1990s and later spent two decades in sports information and administration at Loyola University in Chicago. He was the Ramblers’ SID when they made two Final Fours a few years back.

He’s now the Director of Communications and Marketing at his alma mater, Notre Dame College Prep, in Niles, Illinois.

“I wouldn’t be where I am now or had the jobs I had before if it wasn’t for Doug Hauschild,” he said.

“My time at UD was incredible. I had great professors and everything else, but what I learned from Doug — the way he built relationships and trust — was more valuable than what I learned in any class.”

Dayton basketball coach Anthony Grant often has heard similar praise when Hauschild’s name is brought up:

“When I go around the country and see different coaches and administrators at different events, they all know Doug. He’s a legend. He’s one of those guys who’s really respected in the business. It goes back to his humility, his kindness and generosity.”

Hauschild has shown those traits not only in his efforts with UD athletics, but also in his dealings with the NCAA, especially the NCAA Tournament. He’s worked 120 NCAA Tournament games over the years and hosted 100 of them at UD Arena.

His skills especially have been on display the past 24 years as UD Arena has hosted the opening games of the NCAA Tournament’s expanded field. For the last 14 years, eight teams have made the mad dash to Dayton to participate in the First Four, whose games begin just 48 hours after the field is announced.

Luckey talked about the way Hauschild applies calmness to such chaos, his professional but human manner making everyone feel welcome.

Behrns expressed the importance of that: “Think of all those NCAA Tournament games Doug has put on there and how it has helped shape the image of UD and the city of Dayton and how the NCAA wants to keep putting the First Four there each year.”

Hauschild is uncomfortable with such praise: “That’s just what being a good host is. You try to anticipate people’s needs. For some of these teams and many of the players even on the bigger teams, his might be their only time ever in an NCAA Tournament. You want them to have the best experience they could have.”

Nobody made that point in more unexpected fashion than Shaka Smart, who was in the middle of coaching his VCU Rams to victory in a First Four game here in 2011.

Smart, who first worked on Oliver Purnell’s staff at UD, was pacing in front of the scorer’s table, near where he and another UD official sat, said Hauschild:

“He looked over and said, ‘You can really tell why the NCAA always comes back here. You guys are doing one hell of a job!’”

Credit: David Jablonski

Credit: David Jablonski

Respected leader

The people who appreciate Hauschild the most are those who work with him the closest.

“He and I started here at the same time,” Grant said “My freshman year as a player (the 1983-84 season) was his first year as the sports information director. He was a friendly figure back then and all these years later, when I came back as the coach and saw he was still here, there was an immediate affection.”

Grant talked about the respect and trust he has in Hauschild and how that has helped him better understand all the demands of his coaching job:

“There might be times when I might not be in the best of moods after games but other people have jobs and responsibilities that need to be taken care of and he helps me remember that.”

And so after every game Hauschild helps get the Flyers coach — and a couple of his players — to the postgame media sessions, where you rarely see an ill mood slip through Grant’s mask of stoicism.

UD’s athletics director Neil Sullivan had a similar take: “When you take over the job at 34 (like he did as AD), you need a Doug Hauschild at your side. There is no one in our athletic department who has more respect than him.”

Sullivan mentioned times he’s had to call Hauschild at 6 a.m. or midnight or even in the middle of the night if something occurred: “He’s always measured and deliberate and even keeled. I’ve shared a lot of moments with Doug, some of them our highest and some our lowest.”

Hauschild’s other athletic directors at UD — Tom Frericks who hired him, interim Tom Westendorf, Ted Kissell and Tim Wabler — could say the same thing.

The 68-year-old Hauschild has worked behind the scenes at some of the most celebrated times — the Division III national championship of the Mike Kelly-coached Flyers football team; the Elite Eight runs of teams coached by Don Donoher and Archie Miller, the 29-2 Flyers’ team of five seasons past whose No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament was scuttled by COVID and the cancellation of the postseason.

Credit: David Jablonski

Credit: David Jablonski

He’s helped present celebrated UD athletes like tight end Adam Trautman, who was UD’s first NFL draft pick in decades, and Obi Toppin, the national college player of the year in 2020 who was a first round NBA pick.

Toppin remains one of Hauschild’s favorite UD athletes because of the playful innocence that came with his massive talent and the kindness he showed to his teammates by making sure he got them included in as many national interviews as he could.

And yet Hauschild said Toppin is not his all-time favorite Flyers athlete.

“For me, that’s an easy choice,” he grinned. “My favorite is Mike Hauschild.”

On the flip side Hauschild has had to handle media interest around everything from a pair of starters who had been arrested and eventually kicked off the basketball team some years back for theft to the firings of beloved head coach Don Donoher and his besieged predecessor Jim O’Brien to the deaths of seven student athletes over the years, including the losses to undiagnosed heart issues of Flyers’ big men Steve McElvaine and before that, Chris Daniels, whose in-season death in 1996 numbed the entire campus.

Hauschild remembered then Bowling Green coach Jim Larranaga — who had Chris’ younger brother Antonio on his team — bringing all the Falcons players to the UD campus to support Antonio at a memorial service here for Chris.

Hauschild happened to be in the office of devastated UD coach Oliver Purnell when Larranaga came in.

“He basically said, ‘Oliver, just let it go. I can’t imagine what you are going through, but I’m probably as close as anyone around here. Let me know what you need and what we can do for Antonio.’”

A decade later, Larranaga, then coaching George Mason in an NCAA Tournament first-round game at UD Arena — in what would end up a Cinderella run to the Final Four, especially after no postseason bid the year before — was spotted by Hauschild as he walked around the UD Arena concourse.

“He had heard there was a tribute to Chris Daniels there and he was trying to find it,” Hauschild said. “I told him, ‘I can’t tell you how much that meant for you to look out for our coach back then.’”

From that same first-round appearance, Hauschild had another Larranaga story.

The NCAA had cut the practice times down to 50 minutes and one veteran coach started complaining about that in the coach’s meeting.

He tried turning the gathering into a gripe session and pressed Michigan State coach Tom Izzo to join his lambast. When that didn’t work, he moved on to Larranaga and asked what he thought of just 50 minutes to practice.

“Well, Coach” Larranaga deadpanned. “That’s 50 minutes more than I got last season.”

‘A mentor and a friend’

Hauschild talked about how the job has changed since he started in the early 1980s:

“A fax machine was the height of technology back then.

“On Mondays we’d send out 500 pieces of mail. And that meant somebody first had to write the press release; then proof read the release; then make copies of it; and fold it and stuff them all in envelopes and put labels on the envelopes. All that crap.

“Now, with just one press of a button, it goes everywhere.”

One thing that hasn’t changed is the way Hauschild looks out not only for the student athletes, but the students who work in his office.

“The warmth and genuineness he shows endears everyone to work for him and listen to him.” Luckey said.

“He’s someone I’ve stayed in contact with for over 30 years now. He’s been a mentor and a friend; a person I can call to talk about the profession and talk to about life and being a husband and a father.

“When my boys would play baseball up in Dayton, he’d come and watch. He cared about them. And that’s why I want to be there Saturday for him.”

Although Hauschild appreciates it, he’s not comfortable being the center of attention. He’d rather be working the game, which he is not.

Asked about other games he’s missed in his career, he thought for a few seconds and finally said:

“Well, I never missed a game because I was sick, though there probably were a few I should have. I remember I did miss the game at Bradley in 1990.”

Credit: David Jablonski

Credit: David Jablonski

That was when the airlines lost the Flyers’ baggage, and the team suddenly had no uniforms and very few shoes for the game. They ended up borrowing practice gear and several pairs of shoes from Bradley.

“I missed all that because I had a vasectomy,” Hauschild said.

So now, no matter how much he dreads the spotlight, Saturday’s appearance on the court has to be better than that surgery, right?

“Ask me after I’ve walked out on the court and I’ll tell you if it was better than a vasectomy or not,” he said. “But I can tell you now, I’d rather be shining the spotlight on someone else.”

He’s done that better than almost anyone in the business for over four decades.

And that’s because this romance with UD athletics has been real.