By RICHIE HALL
For over 25 years, Derrick Dean has been involved with the Hamilton Heights boys soccer team.
First he was a player, then he spent a couple years as an assistant coach before becoming the long-time Huskies head coach. Now after 17 years, Dean announced last week that he is stepping down from that position.
Dean is taking a job at Reith-Riley, a construction company – “They deal with asphalt, concrete, basically infrastructure stuff,” he said. This also means Dean is retiring from his teaching position at Heights, which he has held since graduating from Purdue University in 2001.
“It was kind of a last-minute thing,” said Dean. He called the events and timing of moving out of teaching and into the Reith-Riley position “a perfect storm.” Dean taught technology and pre-engineering at Heights, and also advanced manufacturing.
“I’ll miss all the teaching stuff, the hands-on projects and real-world applications, all the certifications,” said Dean. “Same thing with the soccer side, I’ll miss all the memories we’ve had over the past 17 years. It was a tough decision, but it was a perfect storm. Everything seemed to line up and it made sense.”
Dean’s involvement with the Huskies soccer team began when he started high school at Heights. He was part of a big freshman class that came in and played on the team all the way through its senior year, winning a couple of conference championships along the way. Dean graduated from Heights in 1997.
“It was nice because our team never really changed from freshman year all the way to senior year,” said Dean. “Everybody just stayed together. It was very competitive. We were very good for quite a while.”
After that, it was off to Purdue, where Dean majored in Technology Education and played three years of club soccer. After graduation, he returned to Hamilton Heights to begin his teaching and coaching career.
Dean started as the assistant coach for the Huskies in 2001, after talking with Keith Thomes, the coach at the time.
“He approached me and wanted me to help him out,” said Dean.
Two years later, in 2003, Dean moved into the head coaching position when Thomes retired. He led the Huskies to a run of sustained success, including sectional titles in 2013 and 2014, as well as a couple of conference championships.
“We had some very competitive seasons,” said Dean. He always tried to challenge the team with a tough schedule, which was designed to prepare the Huskies for tough sectional opponents.
In the single-class era, Heights had to take on teams from bigger schools, such as Noblesville and Pendleton Heights. When the two-class system began in 2011, the Huskies were a Class 1A team; the three-class system started in 2017, and Heights was a 2A team.
“They loved the challenge,” said Dean. “I’ve tried to make our schedule stronger and stronger, always adding new opponents that would challenge us. I always told them I don’t care what their record was. If you’re not playing challenging games, it’ll never get you anywhere in the end.” Dean said the Huskies could’ve scheduled easy teams and had winning records and undefeated seasons, but again, it wouldn’t have gotten them anywhere.
Speaking of not going anywhere, Dean said that he will be staying involved with the Heights program, even if he’s no longer the head coach.
“I’m not going anywhere,” said Dean. “I’ll be volunteering, I’ll come to what I can. I told (athletic director) Kurt (Ogden) I wanted to be a volunteer assistant.
“I’d be willing to help out in the interview process,” said Dean. “I have offered my assistance if they need it. Everyone knows when you coach, it’s year-round. I will communicate to the parents, I’ll send things out. I can still communicate and help out with what I can.”