Sometimes in life, it takes a while for you to become what you really are. That happened to Rich Haddad this week. The Warsaw School Board approved Haddad as the new Tiger boys golf coach Monday night. It’s a fact that he’s a first-time head coach, but that would be incredibly misleading. Haddad has been teaching the game of golf to people for a long time. People listen, and what he tells them often works. He told me Monday he’s always wanted to be a coach, but never felt like the timing worked out, until this time. “I have been helping people on the range for a long time, and I have always dreamed of coaching but I never felt it was the right time until now,” Haddad said. His resumé is pretty impressive: four-year letter winner at Grace College, four-time club champ at Stonehenge. He carries some clout. Add to that he’s been working with the boys golf team in an unofficial capacity for the last eight years or so, which means most of the guys have heard his voice and know where he is coming from. There won’t be any awkward introductions and there won’t be any dramatic changes of philosophy from the way Ben Barkey ran the ship. Barkey was forced to give up coaching golf when the opportunity arose to step into an assistant principal’s position at WCHS, an opening created when John Snyder left to become the new principal at Whitko High School. Barkey’s run was terrific, and how he did it was even more terrific. He was smart, he was witty, he knew what buttons to push to get the most out of his golfers – all of the things that will make him a tremendous assistant principal, and someday a head principal. He’s the kind of guy that boys of high school age wouldn’t want to disappoint, and there aren’t many of those kind of guys around anymore. He’ll be a tough act to follow, but Haddad is the right guy to follow him. Haddad has been the President of the K21 Health Foundation for the last 10 years. He knows how to lead and he knows how the golf team in Warsaw has been led. There is no way to put a value on those two things. Best of all, when you hear him talk about his new job, you can’t help but get excited about what Haddad brings to the team, not just as a guy who can help 17-year-olds get over the “yips” on the green, but also to what he brings to them as people. “I have received so many blessings from this game through the coaches that I have had in my life,” Haddad said. “I’m ready now to invest in these boys’ lives and help them the way my coaches helped me.” Read that again … then read it one more time. Haddad is the president of a very successful organization and an accomplished golfer, but what he is talking about is paying back a debt he feels he owes to the people who worked with him when he was younger. That means he is not just slipping into a gig for a little cash and to get free reign to boss high school kids around. He is highly motivated to make young people better golfers, and better people. Warsaw’s boys golf program suffered a major loss when Barkey took his last stroll around the course as coach in June, but in Haddad they have someone who gives them the best chance to carry on that winning mindset every day moving forward.
