The story of a coach, a team, brothers, a family—and the love that grew in 8 days
Head coach Dan Wagner shares a moment of joy with the players on the girls’ varsity basketball team of Bishop Chatard High School in Indianapolis during the 2023-24 season. (Photo courtesy of Angie Tragesser)
By John Shaughnessy
There are times when death comes to a family member or a close friend—and a part of you dies too.
There are times when the people you have strived to build up, to help them reach their potential, become the people who lift you up, who are there for you as you struggle with your pain, your loss.
Dan Wagner experienced both of those times during a span of eight days in February, starting with a phone call that brought devastating news.
On the early afternoon of Feb. 5, Wagner—the head coach of the girls’ varsity basketball team at Bishop Chatard High School in Indianapolis—was preparing strategies for his team’s upcoming regional game against Indian Creek High School in the Class 3A state tournament when his cell phone rang.
The face of his phone showed that the call was from one of his older brothers, Steve, a brother with a gift for making Dan laugh, especially when Steve shared some of their childhood moments.
Yet when Wagner answered the call with an enthusiastic “Hello, Steve!”, his brother wasn’t on the other end of it. Instead, it was Steve’s wife, Nancy, and there was a deep sadness in her voice. She told Wagner that Steve had died unexpectedly earlier that day.
When the phone call ended, Wagner’s wife, Joyce, was there by his side, sharing in the pain.
“At that point in time, there really weren’t any tears,” Wagner recalls. “It was shock.”
In the eight days that followed that shocking news, Wagner would be overwhelmed by two realities: the impact of his brother’s life and death on him, and the love and the strength that the girls on his team gave him during a time he needed those gifts most.
A gift amid a time of heartbreak
During the afternoon leading up to practice on that Monday, Feb. 5, Wagner learned some of the details of Steve’s death from one of Steve’s sons, Ben: How a mail carrier discovered Steve’s body slumped against the steering wheel of his Volkswagen Beetle in the family’s driveway, how the mail carrier called 9-1-1 and performed CPR on Steve, and how the efforts to revive him were unsuccessful.
As he replayed the details about his 70-year-old brother in his mind, Dan also thought about the
ever-prevailing heart issues that have haunted their family for generations—with his father, his grandfather and his great-grandfather all dying of heart problems.
During that afternoon, Dan also thought about the girls on his team—how this upcoming game was so important to them, and how he wanted to help them keep their focus on it and not on him. He made the choice to not tell them about his brother’s death, revealing a reality that often surfaces in times of loss and shock—we overlook that the people we’ve always tried to be there for, want to be there for us in our times of need.
“I did communicate to my coaches by way of text what happened, and that I didn’t intend to tell the girls,” Wagner recalls. “We had practice that night. At the end of practice, one of my assistant coaches, Grace Dury, did the right thing. She whispered in the ears of our captains about what was going on.”
Tri-captains Anna Caskey, Addison “Addy” Duncan and Mary Mason stayed in the gym after their teammates left. Approaching their head coach as he put equipment away, they shared with him that they knew he didn’t want them to know about his brother’s death, but that Dury had told them. What happened next still leaves him overcome with emotion.
“A lot of hugging, a lot of crying, a lot of good words from them. A lot of assurances about their support, that they’ll have my back,” Wagner says. “We all agreed I should let the rest of the girls know.
“I sent them all a text. Immediately, I got all kinds of phone calls and text messages. The next day at practice, a lot of hugging and a lot of tears at the beginning of it. Then there was the assurance from everybody that we’re going to win this game. Our practice was really good. After practice, they had a bouquet of flowers and a big envelope with notes in it. All the kids had written me a note. I read those all night when I got home. Their genuine love for me came through so clearly.”
The notes were the players’ way of letting their head coach know how much he means to them, Mary Mason says.
“He’s a father figure to us,” Mary says. “Seeing him suffer was really, really sad, so we wanted to do something special for him. Our team is a family. When someone is suffering in our family, you support them in any way you can. His struggles were our struggles.”
Instead of being a distraction, all that emotion fueled the team’s focus. It also uplifted the head coach.
“Through the week, we continued prepping,” Wagner says. “We didn’t talk about what happened except in our prayer after practice when we always gather in prayer and go through our intentions. Everyone was saying, ‘for Steve,’ for me.”
The emotion pours from him again as he adds, “It was very therapeutic for me to be there all week. The girls were very caring.”
It all led to an unusual and emotional scene in the locker room that Saturday afternoon of Feb. 10, as the team went through its last-minute preparations for the game against the favored, sixth-ranked team of Indian Creek that had beaten Bishop Chatard in 2023 by a score of 76-47.
A team on a mission
Before the game that day, the Bishop Chatard girls followed a ritual that had been part of every game during the season. They each wrote “Grit” on one of their wrists, a reminder about the tough-minded attitude that had guided them to this moment. Then the girls added a touch that left no doubt about who were the two people they were playing for that day.
They also wrote on their wrists, PFS—shorthand for Play For Steve, and PFW—Play For Wagner.
Their head coach also had Steve in his thoughts, remembering how his brother had driven three hours from his northern Indiana home to watch the Bishop Chatard girls play in their regional state tournament game in 2023. Wagner also recalled a photo that had been taken that day of him, Steve and their sister, Dianne Wagner—the three siblings close together and smiling.
All those emotions lead to the unusual pre-game talk that Wagner shared with the girls in the locker room just before they went out onto the court—a pre-game talk about love.
“I’ve heard so many of you say how special this team is to you,” the head coach began. “Last night, you heard from each other how much you like each other, how much you respect each other, and what makes each other good teammates. But most importantly, I’ve heard you say how much you love each other.
“That’s the secret sauce in what we do. We not only respect each other and like each other, but we truly love each other. Love is a powerful emotion. You showed me that earlier this week. Show how powerful that emotion is today.”
The players and coaches then paused for a pre-game prayer together, followed by the mother of a former player making the sign of the cross on the foreheads of the girls with holy water. From there, the team rushed onto the court, on a mission.
“Mary promised Coach Wagner that we would win the game for his brother,” Addy says. “We know our love for him, and we know he loves us. We all knew this game was important to him and his family. We really wanted to do it for him and also for us as a team. That’s what drove us to fight so hard.”
The game came down to the frantic, nail-biting, final seconds with the talented, well-matched teams both having opportunities to win. In the end, the Lady Trojans of Bishop Chatard made the plays to earn the 64-60 victory.
As the girls hugged, danced and celebrated on the court, Wagner hugged one of his assistant coaches, Bob Susemichel, both of them crying. After getting long hugs from other assistant coaches, the tears continued to flow for Wagner when his wife Joyce raced down the bleachers and into his arms.
Following that embrace, Wagner focused on the girls on the court, watching their celebration.
“The love they had for each other was palpable,” he recalls. “That love was palpable all week. It was palpable in the locker room. All the kids and parents and everybody knew about Steve. It was just a very, very strong emotion for me. And that’s how I was looking at them—with a lot of love.”
Memories of a brother, a tribute to a friend
The next morning—Sunday, Feb. 11— Dan and Joyce drove to the northern Indiana community of Bluffton for Steve’s viewing that afternoon and the funeral Mass on Monday. On the two-hour drive, emotions and thoughts swirled in Wagner’s mind—about the game, the team and especially Steve.
He thought about the road trips that he and Steve—and sometimes their sister Dianne—had made to Ohio to visit their brother, Donnie.
“Every time we got together over the years, nothing but laughter,” Wagner says. “Steve’s got an incredible memory for the most minute of details as far as our lives together—as kids in particular. We would tell stories from our childhood, goofy stories about what we did as kids. We’d just laugh.”
He also thought about how Steve was an all-state football player at Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School in Indianapolis in the early 1970s, how he continued playing that sport at Wabash College, how he met his wife Nancy, how they had four sons together, how he was a high school biology teacher, how he and Nancy built their family and their lives on the foundation of their Catholic faith.
When he and Joyce reached the funeral home in Bluffton, it was their first time since Steve’s death to share, in person, their love and their grief with Nancy and the four sons that she and Steve had—Josh, Ben, Peter and Sam.
While Donnie wasn’t able to come to Steve’s farewell because of health issues, Dan and Joyce were also soon reunited with two of his siblings, Dianne and Rick Wagner. All of them watched in appreciation as the funeral home soon became packed, with people waiting two hours in line to share their respect and sorrow with Nancy, her sons and with them. A strong contingent from Indianapolis came, including girls from the team, their parents and friends.
The crowds returned the next day, packing St. Joseph Church in Bluffton, where Steve and Nancy grew the roots of their faith.
There wasn’t a eulogy shared as part of the Mass, but a longtime friend of Steve, Ken Ballinger, wrote a touching tribute that served as one. They had been teachers together at Bluffton High School.
“I met Steve as a fellow biology teacher in 1976. We were immediate friends,” Ballinger noted in one part of his tribute. “When we discovered that our new wives were both artists, soon to be forever joined at the hip, we knew our tenure as friends was to be long. Forty-eight years as it stands.”
Ballinger continued, “So how do you get hundreds upon hundreds of people of all ages and economic stripes, many from long distances, to come to your funeral visitation and wait in line over two hours to spend one minute of shared grief with his wife and family? Be like Steve.
“His style was as simple as it was unintentional. Treat everyone you meet with dignity. Listen as they speak. Respond with kindness. Maintain the common touch.”
Wagner thought it perfectly captured the essence of Steve.
‘Love makes you better’
The reality for nearly all sports teams is that their seasons rarely end in moments of pure joy and celebration—when all the hard work, all the sacrifices, all the commitment end in lifting a championship trophy.
Only one team gets to know, to experience that feeling.
And that reality struck hard for the Bishop Chatard girls’ basketball team when the Lady Trojans lost a semi-state game the next Saturday—Feb. 17—to the team from Danville High School.
Still, there’s another reality that can hold true for sports teams, for all varieties of families, for our lives: our bonds can endure, our shared experiences can create something powerful, meaningful and lasting, beyond our heartbreaking losses.
Wagner spoke of that reality when he returned to a familiar theme in his pre-game talk in the locker room before the Danville game, after going over the team’s offensive and defensive strategies again.
“I said it last week that the love you have for each other is the most important intangible we have,” he told the girls. “We talked about love being a powerful emotion. Love makes you laugh. Love makes you cry. Love makes every emotion stronger.”
The love between teammates, between a coach and his team, between siblings, between friends, between a mother and her sons, between an extended family—they’re all the ways that love grew during a stretch of eight days.
“You can’t manufacture love,” Wagner says. “You can only give it and receive it by being real, and genuine, and vulnerable, and empathetic, and good to each other. Love makes you better.” †
