Losing a family member
Ironically, it was phone calls from Larson to many of these young men late in their high school careers that welcomed them to be a part of the “Hamline football family.”
Steve and Mary Jane Heasley received one of these “welcome” calls around 8:30 p.m. on a cool spring night back in 2001. The call was for their son Josh but he was at work.
The voice on the other end belonged to an energetic and loving 53-year-old man named Donavon Larson. He was so full of excitement that he couldn’t possibly leave a message so he shared the good news with Josh’s parents — Josh had been admitted to Hamline.
“I never really thought about it then, but here was a man, I had met once, coming into his first year at this program and he was going out on a limb for me, just to get me in,” Heasley recalled. “I could have been the worst football player he had ever seen but he didn’t care, he just wanted to give me a chance.”
This was a huge opportunity for Heasley who struggled in the classroom in high school and wasn’t projected as an impact player right away for the Pipers. In fact, his academics almost kept him out of Hamline that first year and eventually led to his removal from school after just one semester.
“Right there, I thought my time at Hamline was over,” Heasley recalled when he found out he had been deemed academically ineligible to return for spring semester. “I went in and talked to Coach about things and he told me to keep my head up.”
Heasley enrolled at Inver Hills Community College near his home and made the extra effort to pull his grades closer to the beginning of the alphabet. A short time later the phone started ringing and a familiar voice was on the other end. It was as if the recruiting process started all over again between Larson and Heasley.
“How are things going — classes, work?” Heasley recalls Larson inquiring. “It amazed me that he still cared and was still curious about my progress outside of Hamline.”
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Heasley re-applied at Larson’s urging but held out little hope that his community college course work would equate to re-admission to Hamline.
Again the phone rang, this time a Hamline associate dean was on the phone with good news — Heasley was once again a Piper.
Sure enough, less than a day later, Heasley received a call from a more familiar voice.
“It was Coach,” Heasley remembers. “He was ecstatic that I had gotten back in and couldn’t wait to start up again in the fall.”
Fast forward to Heasley’s senior year in 2004 and he had high hopes of starting on the offensive line. He had put in the time bettering his mind and his body and truly believed 2004 was his year.
Unfortunately, he landed a backup role at tackle but that didn’t erode his enthusiasm for Hamline football. He knew that lack of depth was an issue on the offensive line and that he could be called on at any moment to play any position.
“I told the coaches I would learn all of the offensive line positions,” Heasley recalled.
He took at least one snap at every position except center on the season and due to injuries started the final five games of his career.
Heasley’s versatility didn’t go unnoticed by Larson. He created the “MVVP Award” for Most Valuable Versatile Player and awarded it to Heasley for learning the different offensive line positions and his commitment to the team.
“He would come up to me almost every day and tell me how proud he was and how I was making my senior year a ‘Piper Senior Year,’ “ Heasley recalled with pride.
On Sunday morning Heasley’s phone rang again. It wasn’t Larson this time but rather Heasley’s roommate and fellow senior offensive lineman Ali Shouman.
“There’s been an emergency and we need to go to the field house,” Shouman said.
Ideas of what it could be bounced through Heasley’s head like a pin ball machine: What stupid thing did someone do now? Did a teammate ruin the reputation of our school?
In the back of his mind he wondered if something had happened to Larson. It couldn’t be. Sunday was supposed to be the day the team and Larson would gather for one last time in the Klas Center ballroom to laugh, eat, present awards and watch the highlight tape of their 2004 season. The team was prepared to present the coach with a No. 43 jersey (his number while playing for Hamline in the late 1960s) signed by everyone on the 2004 team.
Heasley knew Larson had big plans for retirement. He recalls Coach sharing how excited he was to move his son Adam, who he always called Ace, out to Colorado and then move to the warm climate of Florida with “Blondie” — the name his players remember him using in reference to his wife Cindy. He knew Larson planned to return to Minnesota to go ice fishing with his Dad after helping him with the annual chore of cleaning out the garage.
These are the dreams Larson had for his retirement — dreams that will never become reality.
As senior players sporadically filed into athletic director Dan O’Brien’s office, Heasley found out his hunch was correct.
O’Brien and assistant athletic director Jason Verdugo told the seniors that Larson had collapsed in his kitchen and died of a heart attack earlier that morning.
The seniors were shocked. They called the rest of the players to tell them to call their parents and tell them the football banquet scheduled for 2 p.m. that afternoon would be postponed. They asked the players to then report to the field house and O’Brien broke the news to everyone there.
Heasley, who had received so many exciting and enthusiastic phone calls from Coach Larson, found himself making phone calls sharing the worst possible news about Coach Larson. After several calls, Heasley sat there and reflected on a coach who had never given up on him.
“Coach Larson was not an ordinary person at all,” Heasley said. “He didn’t care if you were the starting quarterback or the backup punter, he cared right down the line about everyone. You could walk into his office at any point in the day and shoot the breeze with him.”
As Heasley wiped away a tear that rolled down his cheek, he spoke softly.
“I’m kicking myself for not taking that opportunity more often.”
Others remember a coach, a father figure, a friend
“No matter what the circumstances, on the field or off, he was going to give you the right way to do things, much like a father would. There are guys that have even stated that, “Coach Larson is my dad at Hamline.” He would get on kids about their grades, making sure that they kept up with their work. He made sure kids got straightened out and he never let anything slip past him.
He always spoke of the blue-collar worker and the job at hand. A man doesn't build half a bridge and leave it. He builds the entire bridge to the best of his ability with all of the pride that he has. Anybody can start something. It's whether you finish. Don't half-ass (one of Coach Larson's favorite terms) anything, because that is a waste of your time and the time of everyone else. Coach never half-assed anything, and that earned him the utmost respect. He showed up to work at 4 a.m. and left at 8 p.m. His work ethic was amazing.”
— Dan Ryks, senior wide receiver
“He was a man who always gave 110% to whatever he was doing, and expected the same from those around him. His commitment to his players on and off the field was something I had never experienced with any other coach I had ever known.”
— Mike Downs, senior fullback
“He always knew the right words to say, and the right time to say them. He was often a challenging teacher; he expected your best, and he would get it.”
— Tyler School, freshman defensive end
“He was the epitome of what we called, “Piper Pride”. He loved the Pipers dearly and he would stand up for each and every one of his players. He will be with me, helping me in my teaching and coaching career in the future.
— Andy Gagnon, senior quarterback
“I had a blast playing four years for Coach, but what I'll remember him most for was what he did off the field. It was all of the little things that really endeared coach to the players. He knew every player's family and all of their names; he even called my mom and sang happy birthday to her last year. When I took my medical school entrance exam this summer, Coach demanded that he be the first one after my parents to hear the scores.”
— Mike Walsh, Senior linebacker