Sean C. Morgan
Dave McNeil is thinking long term as he takes over the girls varsity basketball program from Sweet Home High School Athletic Director Steve Brown, who has coached the past two years.
McNeil, a science teacher at SHHS, spent the past two seasons as junior varsity coach. His varsity squad will mostly be the girls he has been coaching, and they’re young. He has no seniors on the team this year, leaving him two seasons to work with the same team.
“I’m obviously really excited about it,” McNeil said. “It’s an opportunity to build our program.”
At this point, the program is viewed as an option to keep girls active between competitive sports, like volleyball and softball.
“That leaves a very bitter taste in my mouth,” he said.
As a core subject teacher, he sees most freshmen as they come into the high school, he said, and he can build a rapport with them as a teacher. He believes that will help him grow the program, which last year put just two teams on the court. This year, he has three teams, including varsity, junior varsity and JV2.
“If I can retain these incoming freshmen, that’s a solid program,” McNeil said.
Husky girls have struggled for years to win on the basketball court.
Part of that has to do with a lack of skills, which should be developed at lower grades, and a revolving door of coaches, McNeil said. He is planning to target those younger girls for camps at the beginning and end of summer to begin developing the interest and skills among younger girls, “improve the fundamentals and move the bar of competitiveness up.”
When girls reach high school, they have a lot of other opportunities, McNeil said. They’re attracted to success, and last year, his team tasted some, winning seven or eight games during the season. That’s this year’s juniors and sophomores, who will play varsity this year. With a group of freshmen, he was able to put together three teams.
“The goal is to have a more competitive program,” McNeil said. “To do that, you have to start at the beginning.”
To that end, he is reaching out to elementary and junior high principals to begin marketing basketball and his camps to Sweet Home girls, he said.
McNeil moved to Sweet Home with his wife, Jennifer, to be closer to their families. Sweet Home sits between them geographically.
“We plan on staying here for some time,” McNeil said. That will give him a chance to get the scaffolding in place to build the girls program, something he thinks will take about three years as Sweet Home girls start developing basic skills at the elementary and middle school levels.
With fundamental skills developed earlier, the high school team won’t have to spend so much time on it, he said.
McNeil has brought Ryan Underwood on as assistant coach. Underwood has coached for years at East Linn Christian Academy and has been a trainer in women’s sports programs at Oregon State University.
“He’s bringing a lot of experience working with ladies, understanding the game and teaching to young ladies,” McNeil said.
Michelle Knight, another school staff member, will coach the JV2.
McNeil, 36, is in his third year teaching at SHHS.
He grew up playing basketball, at it since age 5. He played middle school and high school basketball in North Medford, where he graduated. He earned his bachelor of science degree in science in 2003 and his master’s degree in the art of teaching in 2004 from the University of Puget Sound.
In college, he focused on academics and chose not to play ball, he said. “I knew I wanted to go into science.”
McNeil said his mother was a teacher, and his father was an administrator at a timber products mill in Medford, and he grew up with an expectation that he would earn a master’s degree.
That kind of goal makes it hard to do the school work and college sports, he said.
McNeil and his two siblings all grew up with a love for science fed by the curiosity and fascination his grandfather had for science. His grandfather served in World War II and never had the chance to go to college, but he was very inquisitive. He would take his grandkids on hikes and tell them all about the flora and fauna they encountered.
“I love learning,” McNeil said. “And I love teaching people what’s around us.”
He started his teaching career in Hawaii so he could experience different cultures and ethnicities. He knew he would encounter diversity there.
That experience gave him a strong footing in classroom management, he said. “Not only is it a melting pot of diversity, you have such a wide breadth of academic abilities.”
Hawaii is a revolving door of ethnicity as citizens of various Pacific island nations rotate through to take advantage of U.S. medical technology as part of a government program to help those nations impacted by nuclear weapons testing. That creates a constantly fluctuating population of youth who visit their aunts and uncles in Hawaii, a feature that puts a variety of academic skill levels in front of teachers.
McNeil taught middle and high school levels there, and he coached middle school girls basketball. He honed his classroom management skills and learned to work with students prone to behavioral issues and poor academic skills.
An avid outdoorsman, after a couple of years he was feeling confined by the small Hawaiian islands, which he calls “island-locked,” and he decided to move closer to his tight-knit family. With the high cost of living in Hawaii, he wasn’t able to save for retirement the way he wanted to. He returned to the mainland to work at a charter school in Federal Way, Wash.
That school included the sixth through 10th grades, focused on academics and had no sports programs, McNeil said. It was designed to prepare middle school students for advanced high school programs, and it offered strong arts programs. He spent four years there before taking a position in Tigard after meeting his wife, who grew up in the Ellensburg, Wash., area and had relocated to Portland to take a job teaching high school science.
That was in 2008 as Oregon districts began budget cuts, and his temporary position was among the cuts there. They married after that and he took a position teaching forensics and biology at North Medford High School. He was there for three years before moving to Sweet Home.
The McNeils have two children, Ember, 3, and Wyatt, 9 months.
They enjoy living in Sweet Home, he said. “It reminds me a lot of my upbringing in Cave Junction and Philomath.”
It’s easier to form stronger personal connections in a small town like Sweet Home, he said. “We wanted a small community where we don’t have to worry about the big city ‘evils,’” the kind of place where they have more control over their children’s upbringing.
His wife’s graduating class had six students. McNeil lived in Cave Junction and Philomath prior to moving to North Medford.
“We’re definitely small-town folk,” he said.