Tom DeBaets can’t avoid the titles — the coach of Clay High’s 1994 state championship basketball team and a member of the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame.
“Yeah, a week and sometimes days don’t go by when it’s brought up by somebody,” the 76-year-old retired teacher-coach admits. “My friends sometimes like to introduce me with those” accomplishments.
He gets embarrassed — adding a little color to his ruddy face. “It doesn’t really bother me, but I am very humbled.”
And happy. That’s because it reminds him of all the great players he had the honor to coach.
Here’s nine things to know about Tom DeBaets:
1
Tom grew up in Lydick, “a scrawny, red-headed kid” who rode his bike everywhere and had all kinds of fun with his cousin, Ralph Hay, who lived down the road. Often Tom would stick a baseball card in his spokes so he would sound like he was riding a Harley.
He didn’t pay much attention if the card was Stan Musial or Stu Miller (He would now but that will be addressed later.)
Sports was his passion — especially baseball and basketball — and he became a standout in both when he went to LaSalle High School. He played shortstop in the spring and point guard in the winter.
A bit of a firebrand, Tom would have rather been a shooter than a passer but his coach, Bob Rensberger, said his job was to find the open man. “I remember that when I threw the ball to Jerry Remble, I wasn’t going to see it again. We still laugh at that.”
2
When Tom graduated from LaSalle in 1968, he weighed 130 pounds. And now? “I still weigh 130 pounds. But in college (at Olivet College in Michigan where he played basketball and baseball) I made it up to almost 160 pounds.”
Too much pizza washed down by an occasional beer.
He keeps the weight off by eating healthy (just two meals a day) and walking four or five miles with wife, Annie, most mornings.
3
Tom’s coaching career received a jump start when Don Coddens, his junior high coach at Warren School, talked him into coming back from Olivet after three years to be part of his coaching staff at Riley. Tom finished his degree at IUSB while serving as an assistant with the Wildcats.
Coddens and Ray Melichar, another Warren teacher-coach, were big influences on him.
Although Tom was in the mix for the head coaching jobs at LaSalle and Washington at different points, he stayed an assistant for 13 years before being hired at Clay in 1985.
The rest is history. His time at Clay, one year at New Prairie and then back to Riley for three seasons — 17 years in all — earned him 233 victories, five Northern Indiana Conference titles, four conference coach of the year awards, the state championship and Indiana coach of the year honors in 1994 and membership into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame.
4
Tom enjoyed teaching math at Clay and Riley high schools — eventually teaching the Advanced Placement courses of calculus, trigonometry and algebra.
“Bill Robinson, my math teacher at LaSalle, was a great mentor there,” he says. “And he was a coach, too.”
Tom always says, “I was a teacher first and a coach second. But then coaching is all about teaching, too.”
5
It’s been a tough couple of years for Tom with the loss of his mother, Joan; his sister, Connie Varga; his brother-in-law (and former teammate married to Tom’s sister Deb) Jeff Remble; and cousin and best friend Ralph Hay.
A year ago, Jaraan Cornell, the star of the 1994 state champion team, also died at the age of 48. He was the second of the starters on that squad who had died. Chad Hudnall passed away at age 37.
Tom loved both of them like sons.
When Clay had to cut a math teacher, Tom decided to retire from full-time teaching — during his second stint at Clay — so Chad could keep his job and continue as the baseball coach.
Chad had been part of a group of fifth graders that had Tom excited about their future. He gladly took them — including future NBA player Lee Nailon — to camps and tournaments. They were the core of the state championship team.
Then there was Jaraan, two years behind them. In sixth grade, he was already playing tournaments with guys like Hudnall, Nailon, Michael Lee and Charles Bond.
Valparaiso University and former Bethel coach “Homer Drew even politely complained that Jaraan was too young to be playing against older kids like his son, Bryce,” Tom says with a smile.
Bryce Drew was the 1994 Mr. Basketball but his No. 1 Valparaiso High team lost to Clay for the state title, thanks in large part to Jaraan’s three-point, game-tying buzzer-beater at the end of regulation.
Everybody on the Clay team knew that Jaraan, just a sophomore, was the man to take that shot.
6
Tom’s wife Annie, four years behind him at LaSalle, was the perfect coach’s wife. “She pretty much adopted all of the kids,” Tom says. “She actually gets more calls from them than I do.
“Many of them still call her on Mother’s Day.”
Annie was one of Charlene Tobolski’s younger sisters. Charlene was in Tom’s class at LaSalle. He and some buddies used to hang out at the Tobolski house, but Tom really didn’t notice Annie that much.
“She later told me that she had a crush on me and would go to my baseball and basketball games.”
In her late teens, she apparently caught Tom’s attention. In October, they will have been married 50 years.
7
Tom misses the camaraderie he had with his assistants and players but is happy he retired from coaching in 2002 at the age of 52.
“I always enjoyed the practices more than the games,” he admits. “You were in control at practice and could teach the players how to be better.”
He and Annie now spend much of their winters in Florida and also love being on Lake Michigan with their boat they keep in New Buffalo.
He no longer shows his daring side around the water after jumping off a 100-foot cliff in Jamaica not that many years ago and landing on his side, badly bruising much of his body.
“I’m done with that stuff,” he says.
8
Tom is a collector — of baseball cards and Corvettes. OK, he has only one Corvette at a time. But he has about 10,000 baseball cards — including rookie cards of some rather famous players.
Most of them are under lock and key, but he enjoys having them and he just recently bought 1956 cards of Hall of Fame shortstops Luis Aparicio and Phil Rizzuto, known as the Scooter.
No scooter for Tom, though. His current Corvette is a 2024 model with only about 2,600 miles on it. (He usually drives his truck.) “It hasn’t seen rain yet,” he admits. “I’m going to have to make sure I can work the windshield wipers.”
9
When Tom and some of his softball teammates turned 50, they decided to retire from the diamond. They could no longer play like they once did and their knees and shoulders were moaning to them more and more.
Tom and Kevin Powers, mainly playing for the Gophers of “Rick’s Time Out,” decided to make sure they couldn’t change their minds. “We buried our cleats in Kevin’s backyard,” Tom says.
Like most things in his life, he moved on with no regrets.
Bill Moor, who started at the Tribune in 1973, served as sports editor and as a human-interest columnist during his tenure. Contact him at bry14zzo@gmail.com
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: No DeBaets as to whether Tom has lived a fascinating life ∣ Moor The 9
Reporting by Bill Moor, Special to The Tribune / South Bend Tribune
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By Bill Moor, Special to The Tribune | USA TODAY Network
