UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, May 1, 1996
3B
Search continues for softball coach
Coach Luedke has applied for head coach spot
By Jenni Carlson
Kansan sportswriter
The search is on to permanently replace former Kansas softball coach Kalum Haack.
Kansas associate athletics director Betsy Stephenson said the deadline for applications was today. Assessment and interviews will begin soon to fill the vacancy left when Haack resigned on Dec. 26 to start the softball program at Alabama.
"My hope is to work through the process and have a coach by the first of June," Stephenson said. "We've accelerated a little
bit by starting before the end of the season, primarily because we don't want to disadvantage ourselves in recruiting."
The search and selection process was originally slated to begin after the Jayhawks' season ended, which could have been as late as May 27 if Kansas were to advance to the College World Series.
Stephenson could not release the number of applications she had received or any of the applicants' names, but at least one candidate is known — and known well at Kansas.
Kansas softball coach Gayle Luedek, who took over this spring, submitted her application yesterday. Luedke has assumed full responsibility of being the Jayhawks' head coach in the interim, ordering supplies, scheduling games for next season, recruiting and budgeting for the program.
"Being a head coach wasn't a career goal of mine before started coaching five years ago, Luedke said. "Since then, I've always had the mind whether could be a head coach." Luedke said her trial run this spring did not come under circumstances ideal for anyone involved. Haack left the team midseason after the Jayhawks had just completed a perfect 14-0 fall season.
But the awkwardness of the situation was eased somewhat by Luedke's familiarity with Kansas and Lawrence. She was a player from 1985 to 1988 and has served on the Jayhawk coaching staff for the past seven years. She resigned her assistant position in August to become a volunteer coach at Texas, a first-year program, before returning to Kansas in January.
Stephenson said she expected
Luedek to be a candidate for the job when she agreed to return.
"We assured her that she would be considered for the position," Stephenson said.
Even with Luedke's likely application for the job, she has not felt she had something to prove this spring.
"If it was to prove anything, it would be to myself," Luedek said. "I'm still trying to do that. I don't know what expectations the players had or the administration had."
Even with the selection process in progress, Luedek plans to concentrate on the Jayhawks' remaining games. That includes the Big 12 Conference tournament next weekend and a doubleheader against Wichita State today in Wichita.
"I don't want this stuff to interfere with what we have left to do," Luedke said.
Hill: Track runner takes after his father
Continued from Page 1.
Nathan Hill's father, John Mungan, poses in his Burlington High School (lowa) track uniform.
Contributed photo / KAMSAN
His mother agrees.
His mother agrees.
She said Hill's voice and looks were very much like his father's.
"He so much like his dad," Jerrien Hill said. "I remember track was really important to him, and it is to Nathan."
Hill put his first college medal, fourth in the 200-meter dash his freshman year at the Big Eight Championship meet, on his father's grave in Burlington.
Running is not the only interest Hill has in common with his father.
Mungan was a broadcaster for a while in Iowa and Ohio. He anchored the 10 o'clock news in Debuke, Iowa. He left the broadcasting field to work as a program director for General Electric in Cincinnati.
Hill wants to go into broadcasting, also.
"Honestly, the first reason I got into it was because he did it," Hill said. "I just wanted to see what it was like. I don't feel obligated to go into broadcasting, but I think it's something I can do."
Hill anchors the news Wednesday mornings on KJHK.
His mother said that his interest in both track and broadcasting were probably triggered by the videos, pictures and stories of his father.
"I think it's an attempt to know
the father he never got to know by being so very much like him," Jerrien Hill said. "I know his father would be very proud of him."
Thirty years ago, Mungan ran in the Drake Relays during his senior year at Burlington High School.
"It's better than Big Eight's, just because he ran there," Hill said. "He put his hands down and started, he ran on those turns, he handed off in those exchange zones. I never thought I'd get to run somewhere that he ran."
Last weekend, Hill and the rest of the Jayhawks competed in the Drake Relays.
Hill's most prized possession is a cardboard Drake Relays baton that follows him to track meets and hangs above his desk when he's not competing.
"I don't step onto the track without thinking about him," Hill said. "He's something that keeps me going in workouts and track meets. It's kind of like I'm living out some dreams that he couldn't. I know he's watching every race."
Hill did not make it to the finals in any of the relays he ran last weekend. He had made it to the finals the past two years.
His mother was planning to go to the Drake Relays, because she was unable to attend the meet on Friday. But since he did not make the finals, she didn't travel to Des Moines, Iowa.
But his adopted father, Skip Hill, showed up last weekend to support Hill and the team.
"To me he's my dad," Hill said. "In high school, he did not miss one meet, I don't think, in the four years. In college he's probably gone to well over 80 percent of them.
He always gives me thumbs up before and after my races. He's been so supportive of me."
Two years after Mungan died, Hill's mother married Skip Hill and moved to Overland Park. Skip Hill adopted both kids.
Skip Hill said that Nathan always had the freedom to explore his love for and interest in his biological dad.
"By Nathan having the ability to express his feelings, I think it actually brought us closer together," Skip Hill said.
At the Kansas Relays last year, Hill won a Kansas Relays watch and gave it to his dad.
"To me, I felt that was the least I could do to show my gratitude towards him." Hill said. "Here's a guy that comes out, to watch me run for like 10 seconds."
Hill said that he was slowly but surely learning that there was a reason for everything.
Hill once told his mother, "John was my father, but Skip's my dad."
"It's like a tragedy happened, but on the same side a miracle happened," Nathen Hill said.
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