If you’ve ever wondered if coaching high school track and cross country would help you to take on bigger things in life, just ask Dick Seivert, now retired from coaching at Le Mars Gehlen. Dick was born in Elkton, South Dakota in 1950 and took his first teaching job at Armstrong High School in Armstrong, Iowa, in 1972. In 1976 he began teaching and coaching at Le Mars Gehlen Catholic. In 1983 he added the title of 7-12 Guidance Counselor. Dick coached over 100 seasons at Gehlen, heading up softball, baseball, football, boys and girls cross country, boys and girls basketball and boys and girls track at different times in his career. As a cross country coach, he had many state qualifiers, including the 1986 state championship girls’ team. The girls track team won 13 conference titles, 14 district/regional titles and 3 state titles. In his 34 years of coaching girls track, Gehlen had at least 1 state qualifier each season.
In the spring of 1999 something happened that changed Dick’s life. He helped set up a mission trip to Honduras for one of his students, and as they say, the rest is history. Gehlen Catholic Mission Honduras, eventually becoming Mission Honduras Le Mars was born and Dick is the director. They send medical teams into Honduras in January to perform clinics and student teams are sent in the spring to do water projects. By 2003, Coach Seivert knew he had to make a decision. He was getting overwhelmed with all of the “irons he had in the fire”. Along with teaching, coaching, being the guidance counselor and Director of Mission Honduras Le Mars, Dick added a food packaging program called “Then Feed Just One”. Something had to give. After 20 years of coaching cross country, he stepped down after the 2004 season. Two years later he made the painful decision of resigning from girls track after almost 3 ½ decades.
Since sending that first student on her mission trip, Dick has orchestrated sending 32 mission teams to Honduras; completed 31 water projects, sent 660 people on mission trips, has brought 7 children to the US for medical care and continues to provide medical care for countless others within Honduras. They have distributed thousands of school supply items, clothes, hygiene products, shipped 352 tons of Then Feed Just One food, which is equivalent to 5 million meals. They have funded and continue to fund orphanages, clinics, and malnutrition centers while working closely with four Honduran organizations to help even more people.
In closing, Dick said, “Although I thoroughly loved every minute of my coaching career and wish I could still enjoy coaching track today, I know that I made the right choice in helping our students in another way; by teaching them how to treat the less fortunate, whether they are from our country or a different one. I guess I have stopped coaching sports to coach our young people in life”.