GROSSE POINTE NORTH HIGH SCHOOL

NORTH POINTETHURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2013

S I N C E 1 9 6 8

Thousands of norsemen have walked Through These doors, jusT like

you, and accomplished amazing Things. six norsemen are being

honored as The second class of

disTinguished alumni on friday, nov. 22, 2013. They Took whaT norTh had To offer and made Their mark. how will

you leave yours?BRIGITTE SMITH

2 – Thursday, Nov. 21, 2013 – North Pointe ALUMNI

TherecipientsofGrossePointeNorth’sDistinguishedAlumniAwardhavetakendif-

ferentpathstosuccess.Ittakescourageandcommitmenttopursueone’sdreams,andthe

NorsemenbeinghonoredasthesecondclassofDistinguishedAlumnipossesstheseattributes.

Courageanddeterminationhaveleadouralumnidowndifferentroads,andwe’vehonoreda

rangeofsuccessfulNorsemenfromformermajorbaseballplayerWilliamBabcocktoBroad-

waystarSandraJoseph.Thisyear’shonoreeshavecontinuedNorth’slegacyinawidevari-

etyoffields–fromgeologytofilmanimationandspecialeffects.AllofNorth’sDistinguished

Alumni,pastandpresent,tookwhatNorthhadtoofferandmadethemostofit.Amember

ofthecommitteeinchargeofchoosingthealumni,JudiPreston,said,“Wethoughtitwould

beniceifthecommunityandthestudents,inparticular,wouldbeabletosay,‘Gee,theseare

somepeoplethatwalkedourhalls.Thesearesomepeoplewhowentthroughthesamethings

wedid,didthesamethingswedid,andwhentheylefthighschool,lookwhattheywenton

todo.’”ThesehonoredalumniaremeanttoserveasanexampleandinspirationforGrosse

PointeNorth’sstudentbodyandthecommunityatlarge.Theydemonstratetheresultof

hardworkanddedicationandshowthatanyoneofuspossessthepotentialtoanimatethe

nextDreamworksfilmorcoachthenextstatechampionshipbasketballteam.

Thisiswhatwedohere.

By Audrey Kam & Gowri Yerramalli assistant editor & intern

“Dull as a rock” has never described geologist David Mogk’s life.

“I was always interested in being outdoors and in science. There were two early influences that influenced me,” Mogk said. “One was that my parents would take me out to places around Michigan, like state parks and beaches. I would always pick up stones on the beach and put them in my pockets. The second thing is that I had a really good science teacher in Brownell who encouraged me.”

Mogk was a part of the first class to spend all four years at North. While here, he was in the accelerated math and science programs. Since there weren’t many diverse science classes at the time, Mogk did an indepen-dent study with biology teacher Jack Edwards his senior year. But Mogk wasn’t motivated to be a geologist un-til after graduation.

“Three days after I graduated from North, I traveled to Jackson Hole, and I took this field course in geology,” said Mogk. “Once I did that, I never looked back. I just found my calling and was a geology major at the University of Michigan. I just kept going.”

After his many successes at Univer-sity of Michigan, Mogk went on to be the Program Director of Undergradu-ate Education at the National Science Foundation(NSF). He was responsible for reading and reviewing grants sub-mitted by faculty around the country.

“The way the National Science Foun-dation works is, the faculty submits pro-posals to do work, like research,” Mogk said. “When faculty submits a proposal, my responsibility was to send it out to other faculty. I would take those recommendations and decide whether or not to fund the proposal.”

The NSF isn’t the only major science organization Mogk has worked with. Mogk has also worked with NASA. At NASA, Mogk worked with ancient rocks found in the mountains of Montana and also with moon rocks.

“NASA was great and exciting. One of the reasons was that I was there exactly at the time of the first shuttle launch,” Mogk said. “I was also working in the Johnson B. Center, right next to where the astro-nauts trained. It was really cool getting to see the

astronauts and all the things they needed to prepare for their mission. There were many other scientists there, and it is always something to ask questions and learn from.”

Apart from his work at these esteemed institu-tions, Mogk has made many other contributions to the geosciences.

“I have done a number of different things. My research is on how continents form and how they evolved with time,” Mogk said. “I have also taken a deep-sea research cruise with the Oceanographic Institute. But for almost 20 years now, I have been

very involved in science education. That is the second part of my career.”

Mogk has received many awards for his contributions. The most pres-tigious award that he has won was the Excellence in Geophysical Edu-cation Award.

“I won this award from the Ameri-can Geophysical Union. This is an in-ternational group that has over 50,000 members, and I was the person that was awarded in that year,” Mogk said. “It was for contributions in Geoscience Education that had a global impact.”

Besides geology, Mogk enjoys run-ning. He was a part of the North cross country team.

“We had a pretty good team. We weren’t state champions, but we al-ways won league championships,” Mogk said. “The work ethic applied by Tom Gauerke (Mogk’s cross country coach) really had the most long-term impact. As a distance runner, we had to work hard and develop a passion for the sport. This kind of asset has turned over into my professional career, both as a researcher and a teacher.”

It wasn’t all smooth sailing, though. Mogk ran into some trouble due to colorblindness.

“Because I can’t rely on color, I have to look for evidence in other ways. Many of my students look at things and say that it is a given color, so it must be a particular mineral,” Mogk said. “Quite often that is incorrect. Color is important, but it is not the only thing.”

Because of how Mogk has helped to advance the area of geosciences, his

dad, Bill Mogk, nominated him for the Distinguished Alumni award.

“I knew one of the recipients that won this award previously,” Bill Mogk said. “I felt that people should know

about the wonderful things he does, too.”Mogk shares some words of wisdom for kids who

are struggling with school or who are unsure of their path.

“Be passionate. It is really important to get up ev-ery morning and have something in your life that you really have to do,” Mogk said. “To succeed, you have to be really passionate about what you do.”

MOGK 3 – Thursday, Nov. 21, 2013 – North Pointe

“Some of the rocks we work on go back as far as 3.6 billion years ago. Our studies reveal that plate tectonics, is how the earth operates today, were operating as far back as 3.3- 3.5 billion years ago. That is pretty cool because you can figure that that is three-quarters of the earth’s history,” Geologist David Mogk said.

David Mogk lets his earthy interests and research lead his career path

Photo courtesy of DaviD Mogk

4 – Thursday Nov. 21, 2013 – North Pointe coutilish

By Izzy Ellerylife editor

If Ted Coutilish’s high school self could have seen his future, he would have been a little surprised.

“I wouldn’t believe it. I didn’t know what to expect when I left high school, but I didn’t expect the life that I have. I thought I would be a professional jour-nalist somewhere, covering sports teams — some-one more like Mitch Albom than where I am today.”

Coutilish always dreamt of becoming a journalist, but plans change. After realizing that sports journal-ism wasn’t where he belonged, he entered the world of marketing. He currently works as Associate Vice President of marketing at Eastern Michigan Univer-sity. There, he has helped launch the “TRUEMU” cam-paign.

“I’m comfortable at where I am today: the univer-sity,” Coutilish said. “I feel I’m in a great position. We are experiencing record enrollment growth for the second year in a row, which is great. Our numbers are great overall, and we’re getting a lot of students to consider EMU, and that’s what you want to from a marketing perspective. That’s my main focus, is to get more students to recognize and consider EMU.”

Coutilish loves the central purpose of marketing and has seen firsthand the effects it can have.

“We enjoy relationships. We enjoy stories, and that’s what marketing is about, sharing the key mes-sages of the university to key audiences in different ways,” Coutilish said. “I’m very proud of the team that I work with and the work that we do, and I think that as you can see with the ‘TRUEMU’ campaign, it’s been very successful on many fronts; certainly prospective students have responded to it.”

Coutilish’s success may seem surprising, consid-ering that he didn’t get a degree in marketing and had never taken a marketing class before.

“I did not get a marketing degree, so I’m almost self-taught, but I’ve had some very outstanding men-tors along the way that help me learn, and I think you can learn things you don’t always have to learn in college,” Coutilish said. “What college taught me to do was learn how to learn. Once you learn how to learn, you can apply that to anything. I always say: never refuse to learn.”

Coutilish has seen success in other areas of his life as well. His son Andrew is affected by Fragile X syndrome, a genetic condition caused by changes in the X chromosome, which results in intellectual dis-abilities, behavioral and learning challenges. Fol-

lowing his son’s diagnosis, Coutilish and his wife Mary Beth have immersed themselves in efforts to raise awareness of the disorder.

“Number one, I think, is just using my market-ing communication skills. I’m chair of the Com-munications Committee for Fragile X Foundation, and the foundation looks to me for guidance on branding, marketing, advertising, communica-tions. I feel that those are important roles I can play in terms of communicating and in position-ing the foundation,” Coutilish said. “The second role I play is a board member to help with gover-nance and critique and review issues that come up and help people and help the board look at dif-ferent ways to communicate and make decisions.”

While Coutilish’s efforts are more focused on the national level, his wife Mary Beth uses her background in counseling to help other families affected by Fragile X Syndrome at the local level.

“You’re signing up to a group that has emo-tional attachments, and a diagnosis like that also comes with a lot of questions,” Mary Beth said. “I know how much I was helped by the first people that spoke with me and gave me the assistance they could. I enjoy helping others through that process. It’s a non-paying job, but it’s a pretty im-portant job.”

Their son’s diagnosis was a curveball for Coutilish and his wife, but Coutilish sees how positively his son has impacted his life.

“My favorite role in life, by far, is father. As diffi-cult and as challenging as being a father to a child with special needs is, I know this was done for a reason, to make me a better person,” Coutilish said. “I think it was all done for a purpose. I work hard in Fragile X Foundation because I wanna help other kids like him.”

In attempting to help others affected by Frag-ile X, Coutilish realized that Fragile X had actu-ally helped him.

“I would not have thought I would have a child with special needs, and the one thing that surprises me is how much patience Andrew has taught me be-cause I was not a patient person growing up, and I would be the first to admit it, and now I’m a much more patient person, and my love for him is beyond what I could comprehend when I left high school,” Coutilish said. “I think President Obama said it best when he said that having a child is like having your heart walking around. That’s what it’s like, and you wanna protect it and see it do well.”

Dividing his time between work, parenting and his efforts at the Fragile X Foundation and Inter-national Association of Business Communicators (where he used to be president and is still a mem-ber) takes a toll on Coutilish. The drive from Grosse Pointe to Eastern Michigan University is an hour long and is especially bothersome in the winter. But he can’t imagine living anywhere else. Grosse Pointe is his home, which is what makes this award so spe-cial to his family.

“He’s been a part of the community since he was just a few years old, and although I didn’t move to Grosse Pointe until I was in my late 20s, I think both of us were definitely eastsiders,” Mary Beth said. “To have a community award like this is a real honor and makes you feel like your family is even more a part of the community.”

I AM TRUGPN.

“He can’t speak, he’s really affected by Fragile X Syndrome, and yet we communicate in many ways, the most impor-tant way we communicate is with love. I have love for him. He has love for me,” Coutlilish said of son Andrew.

CourTesy of CouTilish family

Class of 1982 graduate adapts to the unexpected in his career path and in life as a father

North Pointe – Thursday, Nov. 21, 2013 – 5HARDIN

Alumnus Dave Hardin pursues passion for animation as a senior character animator at Dreamworks in CaliforniaBy Melina GlusaciDeAs eDitor

It took a few insects and some ar-tistic talent.

“We had taken a field trip to go see the movie A Bug’s Life, the Pixar mov-ie. I saw that in 10th grade. Our ani-mation class went on a field trip and saw it. After that, I was like, ‘I wanna go and do that stuff. I wanna do 3-D film,’” alumnus Dave Hardin said.

Hardin is a senior character ani-mator for DreamWorks Studios, the production company behind star-studded hits like Kung Fu Panda.

In his job, Hardin is still pursuing a talent that manifested early in his life.

“Well, I think I used to draw when I was really young,” Hardin said. “I would do little drawings of video games that I liked from Nintendo.”

His mother, North classroom as-sistant Wendy Spreder, remembers her son’s budding aptitude for the arts.

“He drew ever since he was a little child, and he always used to draw like war figures and people getting hurt and injured,” Spreder said. “And he also was really creative in his bedroom – he would set booby traps. You’d open up his door of his bedroom, and this fan would spin around, and army guys would f ly off what would be connected to a string, which would pull another cord, and you’d get hit in the head with some-thing, and then something would get thrown at you. You know, he always had a really creative mind.”

North allowed Hardin the freedom to hone his creative energy with the help of inf luential staff members.

“Mr. (Ray) Marchesi, he was my photography teacher. I learned a lot from him. Mr. (Rob) Thies was my art

teacher; he was great... I really liked taking those classes. And Mr. (Brian) Stackpoole taught me a lot about vid-eo, as well,” Hardin said. “He taught me a lot about stuff that I still use today, about stuff like film composi-tion and stuff like that.”

The variety of art classes offered at North also enlightened Hardin to up-and-coming software.

“I took animation basics, like 2-D and 3-D courses, at North. And there was actually one student named Mike Parker that actually came in and told me about this program called Brice 3-D. It was a 3-D landscape genera-tor. And I remember we were all do-ing these 2-D assignments, and he had brought in this assignment that he had done in 3-D, and it blew my mind.”

This passion eventually led him to the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, the birthplace of his love af-fair with making art come to life.

“I actually wanted to get into visu-al effects, like for film. When I went to college, I actually had no interest in animation at that time because I didn’t really know much about it,” Hardin said. “So yeah, I went to col-

lege for visual effects, doing explo-sions and stuff like that, particle effects – stuff that’s more techni-cal than animation is. But then my sophomore year of college, I took an animation class because it was a requirement for the visual effects field, and that’s kind of when I fell in love with animation.”

After college, Hardin was imme-diately hired by Sony. His career has helped spawn an array of more-than-noteworthy films like Open Season, Surf’s Up, Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs and Kung Fu Panda 2.

“My favorite animated movie, one that I could watch over and over again, would probably be the first Kung Fu Panda. Kung Fu Panda 1 was my favorite film,” Hardin said. “Actually, that’s the reason why I quit Sony and came to DreamWorks, was because of that film. And I actually came [to DreamWorks] and worked on the sequel to Kung Fu Panda, Kung Fu Panda 2. Yeah, I really wanted to be a part of that franchise because I loved the first one.”

Since then, Hardin has most en-joyed creating the drama-free Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs.

“I really liked that film a lot. The end result was really fun; people re-ally responded to it rea l ly wel l,” Hardin said. “And just working on it was great. The directors were really young guys, and they were really laid back. It was their first feature film themselves, so they didn’t have like a hidden agenda, they didn’t have an ego. They were just like super excited to be a part of the filmmaking pro-cess, so it made it really fun for the crew as well.”

Even after all his glamorous suc-cess, which includes being nominat-ed for an Annie Award for his anima-tion in Sony’s Surf’s Up and a Golden Globe for Rise of the Guardians, Har-din still aspires to improve.

“I kind of want to probably get into directing animation as well. Hope-fully that will be before 10 years time. But I think it would be really nice to actually be a director, as well, but I know that you kind of have to go the story route to become a direc-tor for a feature film. So I would have to get into story-boarding and stuff,” Hardin said. “But right now I’m just kind of set with animation. I kind of like doing what I’m doing.”

Living the

ToPNews.iNicoNarchive.com

oPeNseasoN.wikia.com

6 – Thursday, Nov. 21, 2013 – North Pointe HUCKINS

Salutatorian of the graduating Class of 1971, National Merit Schol-ar, top five in the Michigan Math-ematics Competition, U.S. His-tory AP Achievement Award and Daughters of the American Revolu-tion Michigan High School Student of the Year.

This laundry list of achievements marked the beginning of Cheryl Huckins’ journey outside North and into her medical and volunteer work around the globe, earning her a Distinguished Alumni Award.

Huckins moved from St. Clair Shores to Grosse Pointe in 1965 and attended Brownell Middle School. She then attended North when it first opened in 1969.

“I was in the second graduating class. So, we started school on the first day that the school opened. I was in tenth grade, and there was an eleventh grade, and there was no senior class at that time,” Huck-ins said. “So, I remember that it was pretty exciting to be starting a new school and kind of building and de-veloping relationships that—and traditions that—hadn’t existed be-fore,” Huckins said.

During high school, Huckins was a part of the debate and quiz bowl teams. She was also a varsity cheer-leader and candy striper at Cottage Hospital. Candy stripers are hospi-tal volunteers nicknamed for the red-and-white-striped gear they traditionally wore. This guidded her toward the medical field.

“I’m not exactly sure when I wanted to be a doctor, but it has sort of always seemed to be there. I liked science a lot and just kind of kept moving in that direction. I went into college as a pre-med and continued on,” Huckins said.

After graduating in 1971, Huck-

ins attended Wellesley College in Massachusetts and received a Bachelor degree in Molecular Biol-ogy.

“I graduated after three years be-cause I had AP credits from North. So, that bought me a little more than a semester of credit in college, and then I took some winter term class and summer school classes to finish it off. And then I went to medical school at the University of Michigan,” Huckins said.

After medical school, Huckins did her internship, residency (a stage of graduate schooling with training in the medical field) and chief residency at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor.

Since college, Huckins has opened a private practice, worked as a physician in the St. Joseph Mercy Medical Group and Washt-enaw Medicine, PC and started a family.

Huckins has been awarded the Trinity Health Excellence and In-novation Award for Effectively Managing our Portfolio of Resourc-es. She also was recognized in Michigan Medicine magazine.

Huckins has dedicated much of her time doing relief work around the world. She has volunteered at pediatric clinics in Nicaragua, ven-tured on a medical trip to Pakistan and worked at the embassy in Ka-bul, Afghanistan with her husband, all in the past 10 years.

“I have volunteered in Ann Arbor locally at the Hope Clinic, but then after the tsunami in southeast Asia in 2004, I went in 2005 to Sri Lanka, off the Indian Coast and helped on a relief mission, a relief trip, there to help at an orphanage,” Huck-ins said. “It just so happened that they were opening up an elder care

center, and that’s what I do—my medical work is taking care of older people. So, I became very involved in the design and the opening up of (it).”

Huckins has returned to Sri Lan-ka three times, taking her young-est son with her once to aid in the building of the elder care center, which is named after her.

She was nominated by her father, John Huckins, who saw an ad for the Distinguished Alumni program in the Grosse Pointe News last year. He believes that his daughter’s compassion for volunteering and aiding people qualifies her for the award.

“She was very active during high school—she was a varsity cheer-leader; she was on the debate team. She was on all kinds of things. She was a very good student,” John said. “She does things freely because she wants to help people, and I always thought that was outstanding. So, that’s why I thought that, well, she might be a good candidate from Grosse Pointe North. She’s a very caring, caring person. I think that’s all I can say, actually.”

He is also the proud parent of a salutatorian—the senior with a GPA second to that of the valedic-torian.

Huckins encourages students to take what they’ve learned in high school and go beyond their limits. She applied what she learned at North and took her efforts to help people global.

“My advice for students in gen-eral is that: stretch yourself. Don’t accept just that you meet the basic requirements, but push yourself,” Cheryl said. “And challenge your-self—it’s a lot more fun that way.”

By Kayla LuteranINTERN

PHOTOS BY CHERYL HUCKINS

SharingTHe LOVe

Haiti 2013Seeing women patients in Marigone

Sri Lanka 2005-2006 Working at a girls home

Sri LankaVolunteering at an orphanage

Pakistan 2010 Primary care in Ranjapur

North Pointe – Thursday, Nov. 21, 2013 – 7JONES

By Haley ReidASSISTANT EDITOR

“We’ve had scary experiences. We’ve had tornados go right over our heads and touch down on the other side of us while we were out on the water. Sometimes we can’t control what happens out there.”

Unpredictability has been a theme throughout distinguished alumnus Steve Jones’ life. After leav-ing North with the graduating class of 1970, he faced the impracticality of his childhood dream, ruling out fishing as a career.

Jones deals with change on a daily basis as a local fishing tour guide, providing his charter boat and knowledge to the community.

“I’ve always had a love for fishing, but I never thought it would become a career. Never in a million years when I was younger, but I loved it enough,” Jones said. “I had the gear and the tackle, and every chance I got, I would always go fishing, especially for muskies.”

Jones’ mother, Joyce Cook, has seen this passion from a young age.

“I used to sit down at the park while he sat on the edge by the water, before he ever had a boat, and watch him fish. He loved it from the time he was born,” Cook said.

The far-fetched dream diminished when Jones was hired as the manager at several Burger King es-tablishments in the area. Co-ownership of a piz-za parlor with his father also took up much of his time. Both jobs payed the bills but didn’t enthrall him the way casting a line did.

“I kind of got frustrated in not knowing what to do and knowing that I couldn’t re-ally do what I wanted to do,” Jones said.

In his early 20s, after toying with the idea of start-ing a fishing business, Jones equipped himself with a charter license, allowing him to take paying cus-tomers out on the waters, preferably Lake St. Clair.

“While I was in between jobs, I left a stack of cards in a local tackle shop, Lakeside Sporting Goods, and I was amazed at the calls I was getting, and I just met some of the right people that helped get me started,” Jones said. “ I wanted to meet people that had a lot of knowledge, that were reputable in the field as well, so I could pick their brains and kind of see what they do. I would start giving seminars at local boat shows, and I would meet other people

that were nationally known — people to

look up to.”

With a new start and a demanding business, Jones began to sculpt his hobby into a way to provide a charitable service to the community. Opportunities presented themselves, including Joann’s Derby, an annual fishing event that gave handicapped chil-dren a day of activities.

“Joann was a handicapped kid about 12 years old in a wheelchair, and she was a daughter of a good friend,” Jones said. “I would donate my boat and ser-vices, and we would take handicapped kids out fishing.”

In addition to the derby, Jones played a part in auctioning off fishing trips to doctors at Spar-row Hospital in Lansing to help raise money for a new cancer wing.

“Michigan Outdoors, to help sell it for maximum dollar, pledged that if you buy the fishing trip and the money goes to a good cause, not only will you go on the trip, but you will be filmed on TV,” Jones said.

Jones is more-than-familiar with being in front of the camera. With three television guest appear-ances under his belt, he was asked to co-host Fishing Michigan and stuck with the program for two years.

“It didn’t pay, but it was great for reputation and fun to do,” Jones said. “From there, as you get to be known, it kind of snowballs.”

Since the additional publicity, the booming char-ter keeps the fisherman fully employed with no fur-ther need for the fast food industry.

“I’ve always wanted to do something outdoors or at least not be tied up in a building or surrounded by four walls,” Jones said.

Jones said he is rarely found indoors and, al-though he spends each work day chartering, it never becomes a routine drag as his past jobs had proven.

“I’m not doing the same thing on the computer all day. A lot of things can happen out there,” Jones said. “You can go out fishing one day, and it’s terrible, and the next day you can be killing it. You never know what to expect when you go out, so every day that I work is unscripted.”

The fisherman hopes to see plenty more unpre-dictable days out on Lake St. Clair.

“It’s what I’ll continue to do until you have to car-ry me on the boat or something,” Jones said. “Right now, I’m healthy, and I plan on going for a few years still.”

Captain Steve Jones: Reeling in success

STEV

E JO

NES

8 – Thursday, Nov. 21, 2013 – North Pointe bennett

By Anu Subramaniamweb manager

Strong character, perserverant, dependable and passionate are all words that math teacher Cath-erine Clay uses to characterize former teacher and current basketball coach Gary Bennett.

His passion to teach spawned from his experience coaching elementary schoolers his sophomore year of high school. This experience inspired his 30-year career as both a basketball coach and a math teacher at North.

“It was a really meaningful experience for me and I realized then that I wanted to coach basketball at a higher level someday in the future,” Bennett wrote in an email.

Starting off as a sophomore in 1968, when North opened, Bennett made it onto one of three varsity teams at the school. There were no seniors at the school at the time, so the varsity team consisted of only underclassmen. As a young team going up against others laden with upperclassmen, his team surpassed expectations.

“We didn’t have a winning record, but I think we surprised a lot of people by being better than they thought we would be,” Bennett said.

However, during Bennett’s junior and senior years the team won a district championship, and his junior year, they also won a league championship. The wins aren’t what inspired Bennett to pursue his passion, though. It was his coach, Ray Ritter.

“He taught me a lot about basketball, but he taught me so much more about life in general, espe-cially teaching and coaching, sportsmanship, integ-rity, and how to work with and treat people,” Ben-nett said. “My life would have been a lot different if I hadn’t played for and learned from coach Ritter.”

Bennett graduated in 1971, but returned in 1983 to teach math for 30 years before he retired in 2013.

“I feel like a “double alumni” – on the one hand, I am an alumni as a student who graduated from here, and on the other hand, now that I am retired, I feel like I am also an alumni of the teaching staff,” Bennett said.

But during his 30 years at North, Bennett was not only a teacher, but was also the girls varsity basketball coach.

“I’ve always considered myself to be a teacher first and a coach second. That is, I put my heart, soul and time into teaching math here at North for 30 years, into building relationships with new students each year and trying to make math more accessible and easier to learn for students at all levels,” Bennett said. “And in addition to my main job of teaching, I also did some coaching.”

Class of 2013 alumna Stavi Varlamos had Ben-nett as a math teacher her senior year and had him

as a coach from her sophomore to her senior year.

“He applied his morals ... The way he held the team is the same way he held it in the class-room. It was a great experience. He pushed us re-ally hard, but it was overall for the better,” Varlamos said. “I admired his mottos. He would always tell us that it’s not just how good you are at a certain thing, it’s the way you apply yourself. Like if you go in with a good work ethic, you are going to be the best you can be.”

Clay notes that Bennett applied the same meth-ods in his coaching and teaching, in the classroom and on the court.

“Many of these lessons you have planned, but many are lessons from a natural leader who leads by example; someone who is predictable, in a good way, dependable and who has integrity,” Clay said in her farewell speech to Bennett.

Through his 30 years and seasons at North, Ben-nett has developed relationships with students, players and his fellow faculty that were his inspira-tion as a teacher.

“I’m appreciative of the guidance, friendship and inspiration I received not only from teachers when I was a student here at North, but also from the stu-dents I’ve had in class, from the players I’ve had on my teams and from the North teachers and admin-istrators,” Bennett said.

Although Bennett said that he was a coach sec-ond, there was nothing secondary about his coach-ing abilities. In 2008, he coached his team of 12 girls to the state finals and won the championship, a first in school history.

“I think he kind of goes about teaching the same way he goes about coaching, which makes him such a great coach. To be able to have that nurtur-ing aspect and will and the want to help others do their best in whatever they’re doing,” Class of 2010 alumna Ariel Braker said. Braker was a sophomore on the state championship team and had Bennett as a coach for four years – she currently plays for the University of Notre Dame.

“The attitude of whenever you are doing some-thing, be the best to your ability on it. Work hard, not for yourself, but for others also. That is something he taught me my four years,” Braker said.

Not only did his team win the state champion-

ship, but they also won the Michigan High School Athletic Association’s Sportsmanship Award.

“I’m as proud of the Sportsmanship Award as I am of the state championship,” Bennett said.

Despite the gravity of the win, Bennett was prouder of the girls for being a competitive team with team chemistry and morals.

“They had the right mix of talent, but more im-portantly, they did it the right way,” Bennett said.

The highlight of Bennett’s overall career, though, wasn’t the wins, but seeing the groups of players and students that he taught – on and off the court – suc-ceed in what they did.

“I get great satisfaction from teams and individu-als that exceed expectations and accomplish far more than anyone thought they could or who over-come great obstacles or adversity,” Bennett said.

Some of his most memorable games are those where his team lost on the scoreboard but won in the effort and persistence category. During one game in 2010, his team was trailing 26 points behind Renaissance High School in the third quarter and they came back to just trailing by five points.

“The truth is that I felt just as good about that comeback effort as I would have if we had won the game,” Bennett said.

Another one of Bennett’s most memorable games was a district title game when his team won in over-time against rival Grosse Pointe South.

“That definitely takes its rightful spot up there with my most memorable of all time,” Bennett said.

Even though he retired in June 2013, Bennett con-tinues to coach the girls varsity basketball team.

“The highlight of my years as a coach is any time I hear from or see a former player, to hear how they are doing now and to share memories of things past,” Bennett said. “It’s not about the championships won or lost. It’s more about relationships and shared ex-periences among players and between players and coaches that make coaching such a meaningful and memorable profession.”

Coach Gary Bennett, left, stands with his girls varsity basketball team after winning the Class A State Championship in 2008.

PhoTo courTesy of gary beNNeTT

gary bennett, girls basketball coach and recently-retired math teacher, has led his life with the “mentality of a marathon runner” according to former colleague and math teacher Catherine Clay

man of math & maxiumum effort