‘He’s missed greatly by everybody’: Late Fremd coach Dave Yates continues to inspire

Dave Yates may no longer be with us physically, having died from brain cancer on June 11, 2024.

Yet the hall of fame Fremd girls basketball coach endures in the people, places and events he touched, such as the third Windmill City Weekend Shootout basketball event at Batavia High School, June 12-14.

The event was all because of Yates, said Batavia’s 15-year head coach, Kevin Jensen.

“I wouldn’t even have come up with the idea of trying to do this, but he got the ball rolling in the right direction and basically kind of gave me a path to continue it,” Jensen said.

Yates already was running the Chicagoland Invitational Showcase at Fremd in December, but once NCAA rules allowed a live recruiting window in June for prep girls, he pursued a summer event, Jensen said.

“He had a lot of the college contacts and everything,” Jensen said. “What he didn’t have was space.”

This year, with 120 teams from throughout Illinois playing on seven courts in Batavia’s gymnasium and field house, even Batavia needed help from Geneva to hold games last weekend.

Windmill City is a smooth operation but takes months of preparation. While Yates and Jensen were organizing the inaugural event, in April 2023 Yates was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme that 14 months later would take his life.

“He’s missed greatly by everybody,” Benet coach Joe Kilbride said last Friday at Batavia. “Girls basketball is a very small, little subculture, and Dave was one of the really, really good people in that subculture, and we miss him a lot.”

Following his diagnosis, by necessity Yates took a background role that first year. However, when Windmill City arrived he was there coaching Fremd.

Jensen said Yates even apologized for not being able to help as much as he’d hoped.

“I’m like, ‘Dave, for crying out loud,’” Jensen said.

There certainly was some of that. Even while Yates continued to coach Fremd to a 30-7 record in that final season of 2023-24, which included a supersectional win over Batavia, and a third-place Class 4A finish.

“He’s always been a great person, he’s treated me phenomenally. This wouldn’t have existed without him,” Jensen said last Friday.

His use of the present tense was no mistake. Dave Yates, in a way, was in the building.

The Thurnhoffer method

Scanning NCAA Division I Championship track and field results is a good time.

We saw that Rosary graduate Annie Molenhouse, a sophomore at Colorado State, placed 12th in heptathlon, a second-team All-American.

Then, retired Glenbard East assistant football and track coach Tim Weber told us about Bob Thurnhoffer, Rams Class of 1999.

Now living in Walton, Kentucky, Thurnhoffer is the jumps coach at the University of Louisville. He coached the national champion in women’s long jump, Synclair Savage.

“It was absolutely wild. I felt like I was living in a movie or something,” said Thurnhoffer, who added a 13th-place women’s triple jumper in Louisville’s best NCAA finish.

Thurnhoffer started coaching in 2004 as an assistant at University of Illinois-Chicago, where he had been a horizontal jumper.

Loyola’s head coach from 2016-21, he really kicked it in as an assistant for sprints, hurdles and jumps the next two years at New Mexico, the 2022 Mountain Region outdoor men’s assistant coach of the year.

At last week’s NCAA Championships in Eugene, Oregon, Savage was the eighth seed but based on her training Thurnhoffer felt she could finish as high as fourth.

That’s where she was before her sixth and final jump, more than 4 inches behind the leader.

“You’re in the NCAA final, and you can win this thing,” Thurnhoffer told Savage.

Savage got a clap going from the Hayward Field crowd, and went 22 feet, 0¾ inches. It held up as the championship mark.

“There was an audible gasp in the crowd when she landed the jump,” Thurnhoffer said.

He said that since he was a boy he’s wanted to maximize physical, mental and emotional potential through study and “copious attention to detail.”

At Loyola he communicated it to former Glenbard East athletes Antwon James and Lauren Fogarty, and Glenbard West graduate Vince Divenere — each of whom attended Thurnhoffer’s 2023 wedding.

“I think first and foremost I love connecting with athletes, it’s something I’ve always been passionate about,” Thurnhoffer said.

“I think my passion for the sport and a drive to have a mastery over my profession, that’s something that motivates me a lot. To be as good as I can possibly be.”

doberhelman@dailyherald.com