Dave Currey, a former Division I school soccer coach who went on to spend 25 years as athletic director at Chapman College, died Saturday following an sickness. He was 80.
In a message to the Chapman group earlier this week, college President Daniele Struppa described Currey as “form, warmhearted, humorous, trustworthy to his core, and famously frugal.”
“That sums him up,” present Chapman athletic director Terry Boesel mentioned. “He was all these issues.”
Dave Currey helped convey soccer again to Chapman College throughout his 25 years as the varsity’s athletic director.
(Chapman College)
A former participant at Samford College, Currey coached St. Bonaventure Excessive Faculty in Ventura to a state title in 1968 and was inducted into the varsity’s athletic corridor of fame in 2010. After spending seven seasons as offensive coordinator at Stanford, Currey was the top coach at Lengthy Seashore State from 1977 to 1983 and at Cincinnati from 1984 to 1988, then spent one season as receivers coach at UCLA.
When Currey was employed as Chapman’s athletic director in 1990, the college had solely 9 varsity sports activities with 150 student-athletes and was struggling to compete as an NCAA Division II faculty. By the point Currey retired in 2015, Chapman featured 20 varsity sports activities with almost 500 student-athletes and was thriving as a member of the Division III Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Convention.
“Dave was an amazing fundraiser and pal builder,” mentioned Jim Doti, who was Chapman’s president from 1991 to 2016. “Everyone appreciated him. He had an amazing humorousness, actual up spirit and that’s what makes a distinction in fundraising. We raised some huge cash to construct this program.”
Currey was inducted into the Chapman athletic program’s corridor of fame in 2017 and acquired the SCIAC Distinguished Service Award in 2022.
Mary Cahill, who has been ladies’s volleyball coach at Chapman since 1989, credit “the environment [Currey] created right here within the athletic division” as one of many explanation why she and different coaches have hung round for a number of a long time.
Currey was such a personality that Cahill mentioned he as soon as confirmed as much as a employees vacation celebration dressed as Santa Claus.
“We nonetheless snicker about that,” Cahill mentioned. “You recognize, simply little issues like that made the division particular.”
Chapman College President Daniele Struppa, proper, honors Dave Currey upon the longtime athletic director’s retirement in 2015.
(Chapman College)
Soccer coach Bob Owens, who was employed by Currey in 2006, mentioned he and the longtime AD would typically take five-mile walks collectively earlier than work.
“Health was actually a part of it. And enjoyable was a part of it,” Owens mentioned of the outings. “Typically we had been fixing issues and generally we had been simply having enjoyable and having time. We loved the camaraderie.”
The point out of Currey’s frugality by no means fails to elicit a chuckle from members of the Chapman group. Carol Jue, who has coached the ladies’s basketball crew for 21 years, remembered the time when Currey purchased his spouse, Elaine, one piece of jewellery to function a gift for Valentine’s Day, Mom’s Day and her birthday.
“I mentioned, ‘Coach! What are you saving your cash for?’” Jue mentioned with amusing.
Then there was the time Doti prompt a gaggle of employees members exit for an Italian dinner. Currey made the preparations.
“And he got here up with Olive Backyard,” Doti mentioned. “He mentioned, ‘All these different locations are method too costly. And so they’ve received nice breadsticks — and so they’re free!’”
However, Doti added, Currey’s thrifty nature is among the many qualities that made him nice at what he did.
“Why waste cash on a dinner when you may be saving it for extra essential issues like paying your coaches an honest wage, having nice tools, getting that further piece of apparatus in our health middle?” Doti mentioned.
“Individuals knew he was frugal, in order that they had been extra inclined to provide him the good thing about the doubt and supply that sort of philanthropy and monetary assist as a result of they knew it will be nicely taken care of and wouldn’t be wasted.”
Currey is survived by his spouse of 18 years, Elaine; son John-David, daughter-in-law Michelle and their kids, Jenna and Ben; and daughter Tracey Riness, son-in-law Clayton and their kids, Owen, Phoebe and Piper.
