Lessons learned
Dan Vander Woude (left) is in his 16th year as Seton’s boys’ basketball coach.
“His hand is all over this building,” Vander Woude says.
Start with the gym’s wooden floor. Tom oversaw construction of that in the mid 1990s after first getting the right materials and then assembling a team of volunteers, including himself, to make sure it was built correctly.
The bleachers came next. Tom found them through a wholesale distributor in the Shenandoah Valley. And the pads on the wall underneath one of the baskets? Tom installed them so that the kids would not hurt themselves when they played.
And these are the touches you see every day.
Check out a Seton boys basketball game inside this small, but intimate setting and Tom’s handprint becomes even larger and more personal.
There is the style of play. Tom, a former Seton coach who was involved with the program on and off for 15 seasons, but never once accepted a penny for his efforts, always emphasized defense first and scoring off the pressure that it produced.
There is Dan, a Seton graduate and the state’s all-time leading boys scorer with over 3,000 points. In his 16th year as Seton’s coach, Dan teaches, just as his father taught him, that everyone, from the starter to the benchwarmer, plays an important role on the team.
And most importantly there is Joseph, the youngest of Tom’s seven boys and the one who is the greatest testimony to Tom’s unconditional love toward all that he did.
On September 8 of last year, Tom died at age 66 saving Joseph’s life after Joseph had fallen into a septic tank on the family farm in Nokesville. Tom dove into the tank and pushed Joseph above the sewage, while he remained submerged below.
Tom was pulled out and attempts were made to revive him, but he was pronounced dead that afternoon after being taken to the hospital.
Joseph and his father were usually together, but Tom was always looking for more things they could do as a team.
Joseph, who has Down Syndrome, didn’t play basketball for his dad like his six older brothers did. But Tom always had a plan to include everyone.
While serving as Seton’s head boys junior varsity coach last season, Tom made Joseph an unofficial member of the team, a role he continues to have this season on the varsity even though his dad is no longer on the sidelines.
On game nights, Joseph can be usually found serving as an unofficial assistant coach to his brother, barking out instructions to players, including his nephew Tim, a junior forward on the team.
Joseph, 21, is also a crowd favorite during timeouts and at halftime when he takes to the court and attempts a free throw or a 3-point shot, which almost always is capped off by a pumped fist in the air if he converts his attempt.
Trying to draw up a game plan, Dan is usually too busy to notice what his brother is doing, but when he hears the fans cheer, he knows what’s going on and it brings a smile to his face. Everyone enjoys it, even the refs who feed Joseph the ball. It seems right.
Thomas Vander Woude lived to serve others. It didn’t matter how. Father, husband, Vietnam vet, handyman, farmer, coach, parishioner.
What he accomplished inside Seton’s gym and all that it houses provides just another window into why Tom always viewed life as an opportunity to give back to those around him with the gifts God had given him.
“I’m so proud of my dad and I want to figure out ways to make sure his memory doesn’t fade because of the sacrifices he made for Seton basketball,” Vander Woude said.
***
The words Vander Woude and basketball are linked together liked the Mannings and football.
Other activities like soccer held a passing interest for the Vander Woudes, but hoops became the family sport. Like Tom, who grew up playing basketball in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, all his boys were good ball-handlers, shooters and defenders.
Six of Tom’s boys played at Seton, while five of them played at Christendom College in Front Royal.
Four of the boys, Tom, Steve, Dan and Patrick, scored over 1,000 career points at Seton, while three of them still coach in some capacity today.
Besides Dan, Steve, the second oldest, is Seton’s head girls junior varsity coach, while Chris, the fifth oldest, succeeded his father as the head men’s basketball coach as well as the athletic director at Christendom.
At some point, Tom coached them all. The opportunity to be involved in their lives that way was important to Tom.
The seminal moment in the family’s hoops history came when Tom was able to coach his three oldest boys, Tom, Steve and Dan, in basketball for a U-10 team.
“That was the start of ‘Vander Woude hoops,’” Vander Woude said.
At the time, the family was living in Marietta, Georgia, where Tom was a commercial pilot for Eastern Airlines.
But the family moved to Prince William County in 1981 to ensure that their boys received a proper Catholic education after Steve was placed on a wait list for admission to one of the two Catholic high schools in the Atlanta area.
Tom and his wife Mary Ellen had read about Seton in a national Catholic newspaper and flew up and met with the school’s founder, Dr. Anne Carroll.
Impressed by what they saw, the Vander Woudes knew they had found the right environment for their children.
When they arrived, Seton had been open only since 1975 and had a fledgling sports program. Tom took over as the school’s third boys basketball coach in 1982 and eventually coached his first four sons there, including Dan.
With only seven boys on the team, Dan began playing on the varsity as a seventh grader and soon developed into a prolific scorer and all-around player.
In his senior season, he scored a state record 1,265 points in 34 games (37.2 average) on his way toward totalling a state boys basketball record of 3,329 career points, an impressive achievement given that he ranks above notable hoops players like former University of Virginia standout J.R. Reynolds (third, 2,812), Boston College’s Tyrese Rice and Villanova’s Scottie Reynolds, who both rank among the state’s top 20 with 2,328 and 2,306 points respectively.
But no matter how successful Dan became on the court, his father never let him believe he was bigger than the team.
In one game during Dan’s senior year, Tom benched his son for most of the game because of a poor attitude Dan was showing toward a teammate.
“We had an argument about it at home and worked it out,” Dan Vander Woude said. “Generally speaking, dad was like that. Some coaches play favorites in sons, but to dad, character was the most important thing. He did it in a way that he wasn’t singling you out so that you were humiliated. He wanted you to respond to the challenge.”
As much as Tom enjoyed coaching his sons and teaching them lessons through sports, his faith always came first.
In the Vander Woude household, it was understood that while winning was nice, humility and self-sacrifice took priority.
“The two images I have of my dad, one of them as a coach on the sidelines, training us and coaching us in games,” Vander Woude said. “And the other one is of a dad leading us spiritually on his knees, praying whether it be in church or at home. Those two images of my dad are very powerful images.”
***
Vander Woude was at Seton Monday, September 8 when he got the news that something had happened on the farm. He didn’t have specifics, but he knew it was bad.
When he arrived at the hospital, Vander Woude hoped for the best, but when he got to his mother, who was standing outside the emergency room, she told him Tom had died.
Vander Woude hugged his mother and wept.
“I was really upset that I wasn’t there for my dad because my dad was one of these guys who was always there for us,” Vander Woude said. “One of my biggest regrets was that I was not there to pull my dad out. The more I heard about the story, I realized it was in God’s plan. It was his time to go, but as a son, I wanted so badly to be there for my dad in his moment of need, It wasn’t meant to be.”
The death of his father forced Vander Woude to go even deeper in his Catholic faith.
“I took my relationship with my dad for granted because I lived next door,” said Vander Woude, who along with his wife Maryan and their five boys reside on the family’s 26-acre farm that his father divided up into plots to give his sons the option to live there if they wanted to. “For dad to die suddenly and for that to be taken away, the change has forced me to accept God’s will. That’s what dad always taught us that God’s will is the most important thing and the more we accept God’s will, the happier we’re going to be in life.”
The turnout for Tom’s wake on Sunday, Sept. 14 at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Gainesville was tremendous. It was scheduled to run from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. and then 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. with an hour break in between, but the wake stretched to 11 p.m.
Tom’s funeral service the following day at Holy Trinity was just as powerful as an estimated 1,800 people filled the 1,400-person sanctuary.
In a touching tribute, his son Tom, now a priest at Queen of Apostles Parish in Alexandria, gave the sermon at the service. It is worth noting that their father’s various career paths and priorities were all on display that day through the presence of the Vander Woude boys.
There was the military connection in the form of sons Bob and Pat, one a cargo-plane pilot in the Marine reserves, the other a helicopter pilot in the Marines.
There was the construction connection in the form of Steve, who is a project manager for a company in Maryland.
And of course there was the coaching connection in the form of Dan and Chris and the family-first connection in the form of Joseph.
“In every walk of life, he was there helping and encouraging, but never pushing,” Dan Vander Woude said.
***
After graduating from Christendom, Dan returned to Seton as a teacher and coach in 1992.
Since coming back to his alma mater, the Conquistadors have enjoyed plenty of success, winning eight regular-season or district tournament titles and posting only one losing season.
Dan, though, doesn’t get too caught up in the team’s accomplishments. He is hard-pressed to even tell you his win-loss record, which doesn’t bother him in the least. His father never cared about that either. It was always about the values he taught his players.
It’s that humble spirit that underscores the way Dan views the other significant roles in his life.
As a husband and father, he is there for his children and for his wife so that they may never question his love for them.
And as a man of faith, he puts God at the center of all that he does.
Just outside Dan’s office at Seton, there is a framed photo of his father that rests on the second row of a shelf that includes plaques honoring some of the school’s top athletes throughout the years.
The inscription inside the picture reads “No Greater Love …,” a reference to a Bible verse that needs no elaboration, given Tom’s ultimate sacrifice to save Joseph’s life.
Even though he misses his dad tremendously, Dan finds peace and comfort in those words.
It’s a daily reminder to keep on his own intended path, helping as Tom did before him, to live as a servant-leader.
It’s the best way he can think of to honor his father here on earth, while also living out the life his Father in Heaven asks of him: to demonstrate that love is everlasting and unconditional.
In the end, there is no better gift to give or receive than that.
“Ultimately it is about living for the Lord,” Vander Woude said. “And dad taught us that through his final act.”
David Fawcett is the sports editor of the News & Messenger. Reach him at (703) 878-8052 or at
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