Lynden Christian coach Curt De Haan talks with his team before their Wednesday game against Rainier in Class 1A girls state tournament.   KRIS HOLLAND/ Yakima Herald-Republic

 LIFE FORCE

By SCOTT SANDSBERRY
YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC

He’s a simple man of Christian values. After a lifetime as a dairy farmer, he is not inclined to monologues and remains profoundly uninterested in talking about himself. And although he has mentored his teams to greater sustained excellence than any high school basketball coach in state history, Curt De Haan has always maintained it has never been about him.

Ask him for his career win-loss record, and he won’t have any idea. The number of times he’s taken teams to state? Not a clue. For that matter, ask him if there’s supposed to be a space in the middle of his last name and he’ll respond simply, “It doesn’t matter.”

For De Haan, finishing his 29th year as the girls head coach at Lynden Christian, it has never been about him.

It has always been about the girls. About the game. And, most importantly, about the life lessons learned.

And this year, life has been teaching him a few hard lessons of his own.

Last March, just days after coaching the Lyncs to their seventh state championship in his tenure as their coach, he discovered had both colon cancer and a progressive liver disease that will slowly, irrevocably erode his immune system.

But Curt De Haan is not dying.

He is alive. In every sense of the word.

• • • •

He no longer has a large intestine; doctors removed it to wipe out the cancer. His heart, though, remains whole.

“It’s been an interesting journey over the last few months, but it’s been a lot of opportunities to grow,” says De Haan, 55, who spent three weeks in the University of Washington Medical Center when his body initially did not respond well to the surgery.

“There have just been a lot of positive rewards.”

Those rewards were nearly short-lived. As De Haan was brought out of anesthesia, his blood pressure dropped to 60 over 30. “I looked around the table,” he recalls, “and there was just doctors all around me.” Not a good sign.

Thus began his lengthy stay at the hospital, during which he wasn’t allowed to eat and his only respite from the waiting was the unerring presence of his wife, Sandy, and visits from friends, family members and, of course, former players. As people in surrounding rooms came and went while he stayed, though, he began to wonder.

“But you keep the faith,” De Haan says. “And, of course, whether you’re going through the good times or the bad times, God says, ‘Trust me.’ So that was a growing experience. It strengths your walk through adversity. And I’ve got a wife who was with me 12 hours a day, every day.”

He also enjoyed the little things. For the first 2 1/2 weeks following surgery, he was allowed to munch only seven ice cubes a day. When they finally let him try a little apple juice and Jell-O, he had tears of gratitude running down his cheeks. Recalls De Haan, “You’re just so appreciative.”

As the months rolled around to June, when the Lyncs would hold their summer team camp, De Haan was still nowhere near full strength, and he still had his six draining months of chemotherapy to look forward to beginning in July. He still had no intention of missing a year of coaching; he just no idea how he was going to be able to pull it off.

One day, though, his assistant coach, Leanne Van Hulzen — like most of his assistants over the years, a former player of his — assuaged his concerns. “De Haan,” she said in that last-name familiarity so prevalent in sport, “you just do what you can and we’ll do the rest.”

One thing that helped during De Haan’s recuperation was the presence of Roger De Boer, a 1982 Lynden Christian grad who had resigned last spring after a long career as the boys coach at Seattle Christian (where his team won the 2000 state championship). De Haan asked if he’d be willing to help Van Hulzen and junior-varsity coach Kelly Dykstra run the camp, and it turned out to be such a positive experience that De Boer has stayed on as an assistant.

De Boer had quit his previous job simply to be able to move back to Lynden, figuring he’d be out of coaching for at least a year or perhaps much longer. “Now,” he says, “to be working with one of the best coaches in the game — ever — was a great opportunity.”

• • • •

To say De Haan is held in high regard in Whatcom County and throughout the state’s basketball community would be a gross understatement. When word of his condition began to filter out, cards, letters and inspirational books — many from people De Haan had never met — began showing up at the De Haan home in bushels.

“The response from the community,” says Van Hulzen, “it’s been phenomenal. Incredible, really.”

And why should a simple basketball coach engender such a heartfelt response?

Because it’s never been about the basketball. And certainly never about the coach.

For the record, his accomplishments as a coach are jaw-dropping. His win-loss record coming into the tournament is 651-120, but even more remarkable than his record or his seven titles is this: In 28 seasons as head coach, his teams have reached the state semifinals 19 times. With good players or mediocre, tall teams or short, his teams have been contenders, year in and year out.

But don’t ask him about that. The record is not remotely what Curt De Haan is about.

“He’s all about life lessons,” says Beth Bajema, a 1990 graduate who played four years for De Haan, then played four years in college. When she got married during her senior year in Michigan, she recalls, “Curt was the man I definitely wanted to come to my wedding and be part of that, and he did.

“I remember thinking, wow, wouldn’t that be something if he was still a coach when we started our family and had kids? It’s just amazing that now my daughter (Coryn) is on the team and playing for the man I’ve always respected so much and admired as a coach. He was always clear that our Christian character was our most important thing to develop as a person.

“To me, he defines what it means to be a coach — on and off the court.”

Van Hulzen calls him “the most humble man I know.” De Boer can go on at length about De Haan’s “inner strength, which leads to an outer strength, too.” Jim Carberry, a Lynden pastor whose wife played for De Haan in the 1980s and who knew him first as a sportswriter covering the Lyncs, says one of De Haan’s gifts is that of perspective.

“He does it on the basketball court, where he knows what’s important and he gets the kids ready to do those things,” Carberry says. “But ... he also has the ability to do that in life, and I think that’s where a lot of the respect for Curt comes from.

“Even before (the cancer), he was able to see in his life what was important — his faith, his commitment to his family and to his school, and his commitment to the girls on his team. He’s not that excited about the nuts and bolts of the game, although he is very good at that. It’s always been about the girls and what happens in each season: Have these girls grown in their lives and become better women? That’s very important to him.”

And that’s why De Haan didn’t give up on coaching the Lyncs, even when he was going through the chemotherapy sessions he called “my poison runs.” During his recovery period, he read something on an online cancer-support site that struck him. “It said don’t give up on your passions,” he recalls. “They help you through.”

So has the outpouring of support from near and far, right down to the pink knee-high socks his girls wore on a Coaches For Cancer fund-raiser night. So far, his body has held up. His most recent CT scan two weeks ago showed he was cancer-free.

De Haan gleans inspiration from things he has read during his recovery, including the writings of college coaching immortal John Wooden, the architect of the UCLA dynasty of the 1960s and 1970s.

“One of his things that I’ve read to the kids for years is, ‘Make each day your masterpiece,’” says De Haan, whose team won its Wednesday opener and will face Granger in Thursday’s 5:30 p.m. quarterfinals.

“And that’s one thing that hit me broadside — hey, whether I have a year, six months, five years, 10 years, I’m going to make each day my masterpiece.

“I’m going to enjoy the moment. I’m going to enjoy this opportunity with the kids.”