Thirty-eight years ago in the 4200 hallway coach Kent Overby and computer science teacher Kevin Behmer met. Behmer was still only a senior in college getting ready to be a student teacher at Huron. Overby had already been coaching for about 20 years, and the new student teacher had decided he might give coaching a try. This led to Behmer being Overby’s mentee. That is how it was for Behmer’s first couple of years at Huron. That is how the relationship between the two evolved over decades of time.
“I learned a great deal from him as an assistant and as a newbie,” Behmer said. “Then I coached in another place where I taught for three years before I came back to Huron. I was then his assistant for a couple years, so I was kind of in that role. And then I became the girls head coach for track, while I was also an assistant coach for football. So I became peers with him. Then in 2000 I became the head coach of the girls cross and girls track. So I was still a peer with him, but we learned, I think we both learned stuff from each other.”
Behmer initially decided to retire from coaching in 2011. After seven years of focusing on teaching, in 2019 he decided to come back to coaching. This time, he would coach with Overby for the first time with the men’s cross country team. This would cause their relationship to grow even stronger.
“Our relationship has evolved from teacher, mentor, mentee to peer to professional friend to a highly valued friend,” Behmer said.
With Overby’s influence, Behmer had a similar ideology as the head coach. Both coaches want the runners to improve and push themselves as much as they can. Additionally, Behmer believes in good sportsmanship.
“We’ll go to a meet where there’s 2000 runners and only five people or six people win a race. So you have to find other ways for people to be successful,” Behmer said. “That personal growth is good, continuing to analyze your progress, and move your goal as your abilities get bigger. Additionally, personal responsibility of keeping your schoolwork current, and being a good teammate, how to handle losing or not reaching your goals and reaching your goals in a good way.”
The computer science teacher also found his challenges and how he could overcome them. One of his biggest difficulties while coaching was finding the right balance between coaching, teaching, and his family. It took time for him to get used to this overwhelming career, but, like his runners, he grew and overcame these obstacles.
“Being a coach in any sport is challenging, especially with teaching, because it’s already highly emotional and you invest a lot of time and energy,” Behmer. “When I’m in the off season, I am getting more sleep than I get in season. And then with my coaching planning, I would come down to trying to set a plan for the week. “I am an assistant, so that is a little bit different. But as a head coach, just like a teacher, you look ahead at the week and you say, ‘this is what I want to do.’ You do a lot of advanced thinking so that you have a plan, because it’s easier to tweak a plan than it is to invent one.”
These challenges along with other factors would lead to Behmer retiring from coaching cross country the same year as Overby. Overby retiring played a factor in Behmer’s decision.
“Kent was retiring, I started with Kent in the spring of 1988, and then both of my sons who went here, both graduated and are done,” Behmer said. “It was the balance of family and my professional day job, which is teaching, just became more challenging to balance, both from a workload and from an energy standpoint. So I felt it was time to give somebody else a chance to do that. Someone who knew that they would be able to give the athletes more of what they deserve.”
Kevin Behmer will now focus on his teaching for the rest of his career. He will also have to find more time for his family, which he will definitely be able to do. Most importantly, the teacher can now be more relaxed and have less stress on his shoulders during the cross country season.
Some notable awards that both coaches won include AA Huron River Rat Hall of Fame, Michigan Interscholastic Track Coaches Association (MITCA) Hall of Fame, and Michigan HS Coaches Association.
