Alan Babbitt:

Welcome to the Hope College Athletics Orange and Blue Podcast. Jere on our Summer 2023 edition we talk to some of the people that make Hope College and Hope College Athletics the special place it is. Not only a special place but a transformative place, a place where you can find competitive excellence and success in the classroom as well. This week's guest is Kevin Wolma, who in June began a new role here at Hope College as Assistant Athletic Director after two years as an associate director in our admissions department. Welcome to the Orange and Blue Podcast, Kevin.

Kevin Wolma:

Thanks, Alan. Appreciate you having me on.

Alan Babbitt:

You came to Hope and are now in this role as assistant athletic director from a unique perspective, having two children here and another one who's going to be starting as a freshman. Tell us a little bit about your family and your connection to Hope.

Kevin Wolma:

I've been married to my wife, Gina, for 25 years this May 1st. We were able to celebrate that. We have three kids, as you mentioned. We have twins. The twins took a unique path, I guess you could say, to Hope College. My daughter, I think only believed that Hope College was the only college in America. She got started at the Dewitt Tennis Center as a tennis player when she was six years old. Just fell in love with the game of tennis. Then through that, fell in love with Hope College. Was the only place that she applied to and is having an absolutely tremendous experience here. She just loves Hope. She's sad it's her senior year because it's only one more year on campus. My son actually transferred into Hope after his freshman year and was looking at actually maybe just going into the workforce, but his sister said, "You got to try it out." And he did. He also has just had an amazing experience here as well.
My daughter's going into sports psychology. She's a psychology major and a business major here at Hope. My son is a business major and a leadership minor. Then just like I said, both had great experiences here and definitely been that transformational experience like you had mentioned in the beginning. Then, my youngest daughter, Kelsey, will be graduating from Hudsonville High School here in May and will be graduating here on Hope's campus, which is kind of cool. She'll be joining the family next year as a freshman here at Hope College. We'll have three kids here at Hope. I've been working here Hope now going into my third year. My wife has worked at Holland Hospital for 25-plus years. We're very much embedded in this community now.

Alan Babbitt:

This role, I should say specifically "Assistant Athletic Director of Student-Athlete Wellness and Compliance". Tell us about that role and how you are aiming to help support the student-athletes here at Hope College.

Kevin Wolma:

The compliance piece, obviously, is a huge part of college athletics. It's something that I don't have a lot of experience in the NCAA part of it, but being an athletic director at Hudsonville and dealing with compliance or rules for the MHSAA is something that's very familiar to me. Thankfully, Caroline Dykstra is staying on board in a limited capacity and will still be heading up some of the compliance pieces and it's just nice to have her resource here on campus in regards to that.
The wellness piece is a little bit new as far as a titled position. We do a lot of great things for student-athletes here at Hope College. How it's just kind of tying a lot of that into one space and to have somebody that will be working with different partnerships on campus and with our coaching staff, obviously, to ensure that student-athlete experience for them, to provide the resources that they need. Whether it's social, emotional, mental, spiritual, or physical wellness. We got a lot of pieces already on campus and just exciting to tie into that and create this mental health experience. Just overall this wellness experience for them that will be transformational for the student-athletes when they leave Hope.

Alan Babbitt:

You also were talking about your family earlier. Bringing that perspective as someone who's a current parent who sees and talks to their children, and knows what they're dealing with, the highs, the lows, the challenges, the opportunities. How does that shape what you're planning to bring? Just knowing you have a unique window, particularly right now, of what college students are experiencing and life on campus in particular here at Hope.

Kevin Wolma:

For sure. There's a lot within that. I wrote a book, I don't know if that was mentioned or if you saw that when you took a look at my information. My experience starts like 12 years ago as a parent of basically eight-year-olds at the time that were getting involved in the youth sports world and just felt like it was kind of overwhelming with all the different things that were afforded to them should we do this? Should we not do this? How much is too much? As a parent, I kind of struggled with being a parent of an athlete at the time. The book to me was basically 30 chapters that I wrote over 10 years when I was an athletic director at Hudsonville High School that kind of went out to a district newsletter just to be like, "Hey, this isn't easy. Our kids are going through some pretty hard things. There are a lot of demands that might be on them. How do we navigate through all of that?"
I've been able to maybe look at it through the lens of yes, a parent having three kids that have been athletes in high school, not athletes in college per se, but understanding that there are a lot of the same stressors that may go along with that. I've been able to look at it through a lens of a coach at the varsity level, at the high school level, and also the lens of an athletic director before coming on here to Hope. I think all of those experiences hopefully will be helpful as we kind of work together with this on Hope's campus to provide this tremendous wellness experience for them while they're here.

Alan Babbitt:

I should mention that book headlined "30 Second Timeout, Navigating Through the Challenges of Youth Sports." Was it just that your own struggles as you mentioned, was that really what inspired you to take a look at that and what do you hope someone that might pick it up today would help them as they try to help their son or daughter?

Kevin Wolma:

Yeah. The hope is to provide a perspective piece. Yes, I mean there were things that I have done and also things that I've observed and seen through those different lenses that I've talked about that were super helpful to me. It almost was therapeutic in a way for me to be able to write these, to be able to say to myself, Hey, it's okay, I'm struggling with this right now. It helped provide some perspective, but really becoming an athletic director is what really provided me with a different lens because now I could see it from a different direction. That was helpful to me as a parent as well. For people to pick up this book is just to provide them with, "Hey, this isn't easy. Sometimes we think we're doing this alone and that the way that we feel is we're the only ones that are feeling this and it's just not true." Hopefully, it does provide a certain perspective going into this journey.
When you finish the journey, here's the crazy part. Here, we're doing this podcast and yesterday was I watched the last tennis point of my daughter's tennis career, which is the last moment of high school sports that I'm a part of. I never want to see people go through what should be this joyous experience to be able to see their children go through one of the greatest classrooms provided and that's sports and being a part of that. I don't want parents to be able to go through this and feel like in the end that it was just horrible.
This should be a joyous experience and how can we enjoy these moments when there seems to be all this external pressure from society for them to be a certain way? A lot of times for parents, it's this hierarchy of where we stand. My kid is really good and they're going to go and play in college and all this kind of stuff. It's like, that's not what this is all about. This is all about providing additional experiences for our kids because they're going to be better people from what they've experienced with high school sports. That's kind of the basis of the book and the goal of writing it.

Alan Babbitt:

Your story, how did you as a youngster get involved in sports? Where did you grow up? What did you play? What kind of helped starting to formulate you where then athletics became a part of your entire life?

Kevin Wolma:

Gosh, I always had a ball in my hands when I was young. I don't know how it started. My parents weren't really directly involved a lot in athletics. My dad was always one to play catch in the yard and coach my little league teams. There would always be games on Sunday or Saturday afternoons, watching Michigan football. We kind of grew up in that environment. My brother really got into athletics. He's five years older than me. I think I was modeling him. For me it just became like, I don't know. I just fell in love with it. I would be the kid that would ride my bike to church with a basketball on my hand and would shoot for two hours in our church's gym every day in the Summer to playing make-believe games in the yard of baseball where we'd have a hedge of bushes and that would be the outfield fence and hitting home runs.
I couldn't get enough of it. It really hit me probably my junior year in high school. It's a weird moment. I got taken out of a basketball game and I was watching my coach coach. I was like, "I want to do that someday. I want to be a coach." It was the love of the sport, but it was also kind of seeing at that moment the impact that coaches could make in the lives of students. Knowing when I went to Alma College during my freshman year, that was the path I knew. I knew I wanted to become a teacher. I wanted to become a coach. I decided at that point to not play college athletics and I got involved in coaching right away. I coached everything that I could from middle school girls' basketball to working Summer camps at the University of Michigan at basketball to helping out the college program. I just felt like I was doing it 24/7, year around, and I loved it. I think that's what kind of jump-started then my career and coaching at a pretty early age when I got into education after college.

Alan Babbitt:

Obviously, you mentioned Alma and you kind of understand the D3 experience as well, having gone through that as a student and then a connection with the MIAA. What makes Division III and the MIAA special to you?

Kevin Wolma:

Well, I feel like it really stresses the student-athlete still. I mean, you can come to a Division III school play at a high level of competition, and yet you're still a student first. If you have a lab that goes until 3:30 and you have to miss the first half hour of practice, then that's what you're going to do because you're still a student first. I've always appreciated that. Just the pure joy that you see student-athletes play at this level. You see it all over, but it's just at some places it can feel more like a job. Here it's more of you can have that balance while you're a student-athlete at a school. As far as the liberal arts education is concerned, it's awesome. You get this breadth of different things that you're exposed to that I think is just super helpful as you go into whatever the next stage in life is going to be. I've always appreciated that as well about a Division III experience.
To be honest, when I did the tour of schools, it really came down to the people and I feel that's what Hope is so good at is that the people here are just absolutely amazing. I felt super comfortable on Alma's campus. I always tell the story, I was coming home from Central Michigan and going back to Granville and my dad was, we just had visited Central. Good education school and I was like, "Hey, my athletic director at Granville High School went to Alma, let's just stop there." My dad's like, "You're not going to a private school." He started talking about the private and, "We're not going to pay for that." And all this. I said, "Dad, let's just stop by." The only place I know where to park is to find where the gym is.
I went to the gymnasium and parked the car there, got out, and it just so happened that Bob Eldridge, the basketball coach was coming out of the building the same time I was walking up the stairs and he goes, "Kevin, what are you doing here?" He called me by name, unplanned. He had been recruiting me a little bit in the basketball world. He spent the next half hour with me just walking around campus. That ended up being like, this is where I'm going to be and this is where I'm going to spend my time. Having the opportunity to just develop relationships with staff and faculty at a liberal arts school like that, I just think is just awesome. Hope obviously does that so well.

Alan Babbitt:

Now you're joining the athletic director team with Tim Schoonveld, director of Athletics, and then others like Lindsay Engelsman, and Courtney Kust. What do you know about them and the kind of team you're joining? You mentioned Caroline Dykstra here as well, and the leadership they provide for the athletic department,

Kevin Wolma:

Simply amazing. You talk about the people of Hope and they are definitely that. They are so student-centered. They want the best. You talk about a transformational experience, every single day that's the conversation. How are we going to provide the best transformational experience for student-athletes so that when they leave here, they're going to be ready to take on the world. They're just amazing. Tim and I, when I was at Hudsonville knowing that Tim was a part of developing a leadership minor here on campus and teaching some leadership classes and I really wanted to start a leadership program at Hudsonville, I think that's where our relationship really flourished because I reached out to him and we would meet fairly regularly and just start talking about the things he's doing here at Hope and things that I was trying to do at Hudsonville.
There came this common theme that Tim loves student-athletes and wants the best for them. I wanted the same thing at Hudsonville. Our relationship developed a while ago. I've respected him as a mentor and as a person for a long time from afar because of the things that he does here on campus and then the talent of Lindsay and Courtney and the enthusiasm that they bring every day to the office. It's just an awesome team and I'm super, super happy to be a part of it.

Alan Babbitt:

Before this role, you were part of a great team as well in our admissions department, part of helping to bring a lot of students here to the campus. Tell us about that experience and working with the group that you did and what you learned from that experience working in admissions.

Kevin Wolma:

I learned a ton. I didn't come to Hope. I've had a lot of connections at Hope over the years just in my athletic world but just to be on the inside of Hope College, learn the different departments, develop partnerships across campus, developing relationships outside of the athletic world that maybe I had before coming here and being able to go and tell students about the experience here. The admission world to me was basically speaking through my kids who are here and experiencing every day. Just developing those relationships with those students, trying to give them what it's going to be like at Hope was super cool, and giving them that personalized experience.
Hope Admissions does it so well. The relational aspect of what they try to do is what we want to mimic on campus. When we talk about students that are having coffee with professors and professors wanting the best for students, we want to replicate that during the admissions process and I love that. It's a great team. You mentioned that over there as well. I'm so thankful that they took a chance on an old guy to take on the role of admissions when I really didn't know much about college admissions. I'm super thankful for them. Super thankful for the friendship that's over there. I'm excited to just be a part of the Hope team and to be able to support admissions in this role here. I feel like I can still do that in some different ways. Just super thankful for them and what they bring to this campus. It's a really hard-working group of individuals.

Alan Babbitt:

You mentioned earlier that experience with a coach where you thought, "I want to do this." Before you came to Hope, 25 years between Roscommon and then Hudsonville. When you actually got to teaching and actually got to coaching, what did you find about it that was rewarding for you and inspired you to do that and dedicate so much of your time and energy, and resources to that profession?

Kevin Wolma:

For sure. It's probably my junior year in tennis. Tim Buck was the tennis coach at Granville High School. For the first time, I had somebody outside of my family that poured into me in a way that made me believe in myself when I didn't even believe in myself. That was powerful, and it really made me realize that the impact that that profession can have is amazing. That's all I wanted to do. That's all I've ever wanted to do is just create platforms and opportunities to be able to impact people's lives in a certain way. Along the way, I've had some coaches that haven't been great and I've learned from them as well, things not to do and to be able to build into the things that really are important and really can be difference makers in the lives of students.
I would say, yeah, and I would say a lot of people when they get into this profession that somebody poured into them at one point and they want to give back that same way. It's almost the pay-it-forward mentality. I felt that with my coaches. Tom Briggs was my basketball coach at Granville too. Both of those guys I have relationships with today. Tim Buck, thankfully I've still been heavily involved in the tennis world because my kids played tennis when I was at Hudsonville, I was in charge of tennis in the OK Red. I've maintained relationships with people that I've had for over 30 years now. Tim is somebody that has been a huge part of my life, not just when I was in high school, but even as an adult and going into coaching tennis. When I started doing that, he was the first person that I kind of reached out to. Athletics is an amazing way to be able to shape people's lives and I just wanted to be a part of that.

Alan Babbitt:

Then after teaching and coaching, you moved, as you mentioned, into an athletic director role and you were at Hudsonville for 10 years. What inspired you to make that step? What was it about being an athletic director and serving in that capacity that appealed to you and you wanted to pursue that opportunity?

Kevin Wolma:

A different platform. I absolutely loved coaching. I loved teaching, but I felt like it was my classroom of kids and then it was the kids that I coached. I was like, is there more that I can do? Is there more that I can do maybe in the role of athletic director, maybe that platform can create a different opportunity to impact in a different way, is it a way for me to pour into coaches and be a mentor, especially to our younger coaches who are new, getting in the profession can have an impact in that way. Can I provide some programming in this role that maybe can impact more kids in a different way? For me, it was another opportunity that I felt maybe I could have an impact in the lives of others that was different from what I was doing in day-to-day.
I don't know. There was always something about becoming an athletic director, because again, when I was at Granville, I had an athletic director that kind of poured into me. I always thought of this job as being super cool. I think when you're 18, you don't really realize everything that goes on in being an athletic director. For him, obviously, he had an influence on me. I got my master's pretty early on just being like, "I don't know." The timing was right but wasn't right. I didn't want to be an athletic director anywhere but Hudsonville. Absolutely loved that place. Rooted there. Again, talking about the people that make it super special and I didn't want to go anywhere else. When George Murphy resigned from the athletic director position back in 2011, my kids at the time were like eight years old, and I'm like, "Is this the right time?"
The twins are eight, my youngest is four. Is this the right time? I've had an extraordinarily supportive wife who's just said, "Go live your dreams." She created the pathway for me to even think about it being something to do. It was probably the best 10 years that I've had. The most challenging for sure. Sleepless nights for sure, but unbelievably rewarding and I wouldn't want to have done it any other way. Yeah, the athletic director role at Hudsonville was an amazing experience. Interesting because then when I did retire, I thought to myself, "How's it going to feel?" When you go into an admissions world of not having athletics as kind of a day-to-day thing, what I found is I was still involved in athletics. I'm still helping run the leadership summit for the OK Conference. I'm working with schools, coming in, and talking to parents. My love for athletics has never faded, and then when this position became open, I was like, "I still love athletics and it's still something that I want to be a part of my life." Yeah, it kind of gives you that journey.

Alan Babbitt:

You mentioned earlier about you and Tim connecting on leadership and trying to build that at Hudsonville. Where was the root of that that you wanted to be beyond just teach, help support coaches and help student-athletes do their best in competition in the classroom? What was it particularly about leadership that inspired you to create that? If I have it down correctly, you implemented a leadership curriculum for ninth and 10th graders and then 11th and 12th graders. Tell us a little bit about what you tried to teach with those.

Kevin Wolma:

Yeah, it really came about probably, I don't know, 2010, 2011, right before I became an athletic director. I just remember sitting around with coaches and we would often just talk about the trials and tribulations of the season. If we didn't perform well, we'd blame it on our senior leadership. I think it just dawned on me, it's like, "Okay, we continued to maybe complain about our senior leadership when things aren't going well, but what are we doing intentionally to actually teach leadership?" I just started pouring into leadership, reading everything that I can imagine with leadership. John Gordon was probably the first author that he came to Hudsonville and spoke at a professional development. I just started reading his books on positive leadership and all of that. Then, anything I could get my hands on, any coach that was creating a great culture I wanted to learn more about.
When it came time and I had these ideas, I was like, I think it's time to go to our administration and our school board and say, can we develop a new class? I'll teach it. I want to teach it. I want to be a part of it. It's not just a class for athletes, it's for every student. It's an elective course at Hudsonville because people say you can't teach leadership and that's completely false. It can be taught. Here's a way that we can do it. We first started with 11th and 12th grade. We did almost set it up like a college course, it was blended. Monday, Wednesday and Friday, we would meet in the classroom and we would basically talk about different leadership principles. I used the curriculum of Tim Elmore and the Habitudes. That was the curriculum that we kind of based off of.
Then on Tuesdays, and Thursdays, they do a lot of journaling and a lot of reflection. We also had a project called the University of Giving, in which servant leadership is a big part of leadership. I wanted our students to be able to have an opportunity to be able to do that. They would really find their passion areas in local nonprofits and things that seemed of interest. Maybe it's something that happened in the family, maybe it's pediatric cancer, maybe whatever it is. I wanted to find a passion area. Then these students would then connect within their passion areas and then they would go out and find a local nonprofit, that local nonprofit then they would totally immerse themselves in for that trimester. We would actually do almost a shark tank type thing in class where they would present on their local nonprofits.
It gave us exposure to what is out there for us to be able to support. High school students don't have a lot of treasure, but they have time and talent still. We talked about that. Then in the end, it was really cool. We partnered with the University of Giving program, which is a local nonprofit area, which basically gives a school like Hudsonville and our class $6,500. We would give, at the end, the students would vote on what they felt were the top three local nonprofits. Those students on that day and time would bring them in, they would do their last presentation, we'd vote on it, and then they would be able to hand a check off to $5,000, $1,000, or $500. Even though it wasn't their treasure, they were able to give them a treasure to go along with it. They just felt it was such a great experience for them to be a part of and to kind of immerse themselves and see the world through maybe a little bit different lens than maybe what they had coming into the class.
That was the 11th and 12th-grade class. The 9th and 10th-grade classes came a little bit later. That class was really big into developing who you are as a person, who are you and what values do you have and what do you stand for, and what are those fundamental values and how are you going to live into them. That was very much value-based. We would pick a different type of value or leadership characteristic like trust or responsibility, and we would really talk about that for the entire week and go through it that way. That class met every day. Yeah, it's cool to see that those classes are still going on today at Hudsonville. I think it's important. I think kids love it. I think kids want to become better leaders, but a lot of times don't know how. This gave them the avenue to be able to do that.

Alan Babbitt:

Well, one of the things I find with leadership is that there is not one path to do it, especially in sports. Not everyone's a rah-rah person. Some people are a little quieter and maybe want to lead by example. I would imagine that's what you found with different students at Hudsonville, that they were able to find their way to lead that was authentic. I imagine authenticity is a key part of leadership.

Kevin Wolma:

Absolutely. The very first book that Tim Elmore created for this curriculum that we used is, you have to learn how to lead yourself. You have to learn about yourself first before you can lead others. It really tapped into exactly what you're saying is there's this misconception that you have to be the rah-rah person. You got to be the best at speaking. You got to have the most friends. It's like, no. Every single person is a person of influence. You don't understand that every day you have a million decisions that you have to make. From those decisions, there comes an action. From that action, there's an attitude. That attitude that you display at that moment in time is actually going to be your direct influence in that situation. We often will start out talking about the power of influence because we all have that.
We get a little scared when we hear the word leadership because then we're like, "I don't know. I'm not capable. I'm not a leader, I'm not a captain on a team." It's like, no, everybody's got the ability to influence. You do it every day. We talk about the simple ways that you would do it. You're walking down the hallway and some kid drops their book in front of you. Do you just walk past there or do you pick it up for them? There are so many simple ways that we can do this. You go to the lunchroom and there's a new kid that's come to school and he's sitting by himself, what do you do? Do you sit with your friends where it's more comfortable or do you reach out and bring that person in or go sit by them? We talked so much about the little things that you can do that can be a power of influence in the people's lives around you.

Alan Babbitt:

Then I know that spread into an OK Conference leadership summit. How did that develop and come together where, I know Hope has had an opportunity to host that summit as well, where you bring some leaders from across the different high schools. How did that idea come to fruition?

Kevin Wolma:

Yeah, almost the same type of thing as the leadership class is ADs sitting in a room and talking about some of the negative stuff that may be going out there in the world and talking about leadership, talking about sportsmanship. It just became one of those things. Again, it's like, can we be more intentional about this? Can we get leaders in the same space, in the same room, to be able to start having these conversations and start taking the information from the summit back to your school and to be able to formulate some things that can maybe make your athletic program, make your community better within your school, whatever the case might be?
It's been a ton of fun, to be honest with you, to see this grow. We started in the auxiliary gym at Hudsonville High School back in like 2017 where we could maybe have 8 to 10 kids per school that could be a part of it to having it at DeVos here the last couple of years and being able to say, "I don't care if you bring one bus, two bus, or three buses, you bring as many kids as you can. We can fit 3,500 people in this space." The last couple of years to have a thousand students to be able to come and learn and share and bring some of that back to their schools is awesome. There's just more work to do. I'm just excited to still be a part of that because this is just a huge passion of mine.
We want to beat each other up on the playing field as much as we can, but at the end of the day, we're all in this together. From what we do, again, having a platform as a student-athlete and in high school, the platform that you have can make a difference in your community and how can we best do that? How can we best serve others and how can we get along? We do some diversity and inclusion things where we bring different schools together and be able to have some conversations in regard to race and things. Really, it kind of stemmed from some racial slurs and different things that were going on in the athletic field, which was like, what do we need to do? I said, "We need to bring people together. We need to bring people together." This is a way that we felt that we could do that and pour into them and give them this leadership message at the same time.

Alan Babbitt:

Lastly, and this will be obviously connected with you because you have, as you mentioned, a third child coming here to Hope. We might have some new incoming student-athletes or returning student-athletes listening to this. What would be your advice to them as they go through this Summer to be ready when they come on campus in the fall to make the 2023-'24 school year the best that it can be for them?

Kevin Wolma:

Yeah. Well, first I would say enjoy the Summer. Enjoy the Summer. You're coming to Hope College. You've had an admission team that's working beside you and will continue to work alongside you as you make that transition to being a college student. But then when you get on campus, just get involved. The people of Hope are what makeS Hope special. And we've said that a number of times during the course of this podcast, but it's so true. And so if you can just embed yourself with different communities, different groups, get to different clubs, different organizations, and just meet people, have your dorm room open.
Have the ability to meet people while you're here because this community is super special and they're just waiting and wanting to pour into you in so many different ways. If you're a student-athlete that's coming onto campus, be ready to work. As you said, there's competitive excellence that's here we want to be really good at what we do, but we also want to do it the right way. We're also going to provide you with a transformational experience. Be open and ready FOR that. I can't wait for you to be on campus. It's a great place to be and you're going to love the experience while you're here, as long as you are ready to just be a part of campus.

Alan Babbitt:

Well, you enjoy your summer, Kevin, as well. I know it'll be a time of transition too, but an exciting time and we appreciate you giving us some time today for the Hope Athletics Orange and Blue Podcast, and we'll have another episode in about two weeks. Hope everyone has a great Summer. Thanks for joining us today, Kevin.

Kevin Wolma:

Thank you. Appreciate you having me on.