Dave Schnell was named the number one High School football recruit in the country in 1985 by Sports Illustrated. Just about every major power recruited him.
“Howard Schnellenberger (former University of Miami and Louisville Head Coach) was in my house three times,” said Tom Kurth, Dave’s former Head Football Coach at Elkhart Central High School. “All of the major schools wanted him.”
Students would hear that Joe Paterno was in the school building. Coach Kurth had chairs outside his office so the college coaches could wait to deliver their recruiting pitch.
Dave died early in the morning of May 22nd after a hard fought battle against cancer.
He was just 44 years old.
Though many knew he had been sick since 2007, it is still hard to believe. Think about that High School sports icon in your community, that larger than life figure. You think they are invincible and can’t be brought down.
Dave Schnell, nation's #1 Football Recruit in 1985 according to Sports Illustrated
After Dave died, I called Coach Kurth to reflect on his former players life, the impact College Sports had on Dave, and reflections on recruiting.
“I was very proud to be his High School coach,” said Kurth, “and very proud of what he did as a College Quarterback, but I am most proud of the concern and love he had for his four children as a parent. He was always deeply concerned they do the right thing.”
At Elkhart Central High School, Dave was a six foot three inch and 218 pound quarterback who never carried himself as if he were better than others. After he passed away, this was one of the many posts on his facebook page:”With all his success and records he set, Dave always remained humble and made time for others.”
He also maintained a work ethic that the great ones have if they want to truly succeed at the next level. He had the God given size and strength (some say they never saw a human being throw a bowling ball so hard…) yet he didn’t rest on his laurels.
“Dave and I would go into the High School gym late at night in the winter,” reflected Kurth, “and do a series of drills. We would get in there as late as 10:00 and then go over 3 step drops, 5 step, 7 steps. He would pass into a basket from various angles. He would run, do step drills, jump rope. He was coachable there and on the field. He never once complained about anything I asked him to do to get better. I would take him around to coaching clinics and we would show them the drills we had set up.”
The major D1 schools recruited him relentlessly. As it wound down, Kurth continued to emphasize the importance of finding a place where he would be more than just a football player, and that sports was a vehicle to get an education. He chose in-state Big Ten school Indiana University partly because Kurth knew many of the coaches there and knew he would be taken care of, and that he would get an education. He did, going on to be the owner of Berkey Insurance in Elkhart.
“That he signed with I.U. shocked some people,” said Kurth. “He turned down Miami, Penn State, Michigan and many others.”
Sadly, the day Dave signed his National Letter of Intent during his senior season of High School, he and his family buried his Dad, Spencer.
“I never will forget,” said Kurth, “that I.U. Head Football Coach Bill Mallory came all the way up for the funeral. Then, when Dave got real sick this past week and the end looked like it was near, I called Coach Mallory again (who is now retired) and he immediately dropped what he was doing and came to visit Dave in the Hospital during his final days. He will be back for the funeral.”
When Dave was too ill to accept his induction into the Indiana Football Hall of Fame last May, Coach Mallory was there in his place. With him was Anthony Thompson, Dave’s teammate who was the 1989 Heisman Trophy runner up as a running back. Mallory gave a powerful, emotional acceptance speech on behalf of Dave.
That is the bond that forms when a young person finds the right fit to be a college student-athlete. They bond for life. Dave always said that Coach Mallory was that father figure he needed so much after his own Dad died. All recruits should put a major emphasis on making sure the coach they play for in college is a person of integrity and character like Mallory.
Dave Schnell in the Big Ten
He led I.U. to their first win over Michigan in twenty years. He was the QB when I.U. beat Ohio State 31-10, the first time I.U. had defeated Ohio State in thirty six years! It was a game that Buckeyes Head Coach Earle Bruce called the “darkest day” in Ohio State history.
In that game, which was in Columbus on Ohio State’s home field, the score was tied at ten early in the second half when I.U. got the ball on their own three yard line. The Buckeye fans got loud. Dave, in an act that is still talked about, walked back from the line of scrimmage and turned to the Ohio State fans. He started waving his arms for them to get louder. The fans were stunned, and promptly got a lot louder as he kept waving his arms. He then drove his team right down the field 97 yards for a touchdown like a knife through warm butter. He later told friends his offense was so confident and in such sync that they knew the Buckeyes could not stop them. That’s what every college athlete strives for, to have a team in such harmony that it really doesn’t matter what the opponent does.
Coach Mallory (a conservative coach who probably had 10 1/2 heart attacks when Dave was egging on the crowd) later told the Indiana Daily Student that Dave walked up to him after the score, poked him three times in the chest, and said, “Coach, you gotta have poise!!”
“That was Dave,” Mallory told the newspaper. “He was a winner and that was how he led.”
To this day that is the only time Indiana has won at Ohio State in over half a century. He became the only quarterback in I.U. history to beat Ohio State and Michigan in the same season. He was part of three straight Bowl teams, including throwing for 378 yards in a MVP effort in the Liberty Bowl against South Carolina. His best game was his last, the Liberty Bowl. What a way to go out as a college athlete!
Like many star recruits, he could have gone to an established program and been a part of championship teams. Instead, he made his mark on a program that was up and coming at the time. Indiana was 4-18 the two years before Dave. Many recruits would have wilted under going into such a challenge. Not Dave. He wanted to be a difference maker. Recruits have to consider that – do they want to help maintain a program, or build one. It is personal to each recruit.
Even though Dave was the nation’s number one High School football recruit, he didn’t think it was “a given” that he would be a NFL player. He got his education in college. The Buffalo Bills got him out of college but with their superstar QB Jim Kelly there, Dave’s pro career did not last long. With his education and the network you establish as a college athlete, though, he was able to establish a successful business.
I last saw Dave in January of 2010. He came out to hear NCSA’s College Recruiting Simplified at his alma mater, Elkhart Central. We had a big turnout in the cafeteria. The photo below shows Athletic Director “Buck” Buckley speaking at the event. Ironically, one of his goals as A.D. is to bring Elkhart Central back to the mental and physical toughness they had in the 1980′s when the likes of Dave Schnell played there.
NCSA's College Recruiting Simplified at Elkhart Central High
Dave came up to me afterwards with that special smile of his and talked about how he wanted to learn more about recruiting today. His four kids are pretty darn good at sports, and he figured the more educated he was on recruiting in today’s world, the more opportunities for them. He wasn’t like some former bigtime athletes that think they have recruiting all figured out and don’t realize how much it has changed since they played.
He got sick again that year, but you never would have known it with his “never give up” attitude. One of the things college sports teaches is to always battle back. When he was a quarterback in the Big Ten, those fast, strong defensive lineman and linebackers would knock him backwards. He would get right back up! In life, it was the same. Dave was twice diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia starting in 2007 when he suddenly got real sick. At one point after chemo he was in such bad shape that they read his Last Rites to him. He would not give in and beat the first wave into remission. Afterwards, he said this to the Indiana Daily Student:
“All the running and mental stress that I went through at IU made me mentally tough,” Schnell said. “Then I got sick, and I said, ‘Wow, all that really helped me through both of my bouts with cancer.’”
For Schnell, refusing to give in doesn’t require physical strength or prowess, but rather the right mind set.
“When you’re fighting cancer or any major illness, it not only takes a toll on you physically, but mentally as well,” Schnell said. “You have to be mentally tough and you never give up. You say you’re going to beat this thing, and that’s the way it is.”
He had a relapse of the leukemia in 2010 and fought it until the very end. It was so bad that at times he had to sit in his Hospital room without being able to see his family because of infection risks. His longtime friend Robert Buss told me of the final fight.
“Twelve hours before he died,” Robert reflected, “I was with him. He was asking the nurses to get him up so he could walk around and get better. He got up Saturday morning with no nutrition in him. It had been a week, maybe two since he had eaten. He couldn’t hold eight ounces of water….but he drank a whole Ensure and had another for lunch. He was always so positive and was even joking with his mother about a thousand dollar bet on him being able to go home, but he died at 3 in the morning…he had the heart of a Lion.”
“At IU he was known for being so clutch and having such poise,” Robert said. “He didn’t understand you were supposed to lose certain games, which is why he beat Ohio State and Michigan. He changed the rules, and we thought he could change the rules on this, but at the end it was too much.”
His High School Coach, Tom Kurth, and I talked for a long time two days after Dave’s death about Dave, and then about the recruiting process. Now retired, Coach Kurth talked about their bond, and about how years after playing at Elkhart Central Dave would come back and watch High School practice up on the hill. Coach Kurth would go up and sit down next to him and they would talk.
“He was my friend,” said Kurth. “I am really going to miss him.”
Retired Elkhart Central Head Coach Tom Kurth
Tom Kurth was one of the High School coaches that played a very active role in helping his athletes find college scholarships. It was easy with Dave because he was the number one rated High School football player in the country according to S.I. But as recruiting expert Tom Lemming says, if you are not one of the top 100 or 200 in your sport, you have to be proactive in recruiting. You can’t wait for college coaches to come after you.
“I observed my Dad when he was coach at Hobart High,” said Kurth. “He really wanted kids to better themselves and go to college. He said the greatest reward you could get as a High School coach was when they said, ‘Thank you.’”
Kurth was the head football coach at Elkhart Central from 1966 to 2001 and the Track and Field coach longer than that. He helped 97 kids get full Division One athletic scholarships and countless others to all levels of college football and track and field. His football program was so strong Alabama signed three of his kids. Bear Bryant used to be a regular visitor to Elkhart Central.
Kurth was ahead of his time because, even then, he knew it was best to start the process early.
“I always told the players if you want to go to college we would start when they were sophomores by writing letters. In a nice way I saw the kids as commodities and to sell a commodity you have to get it out there. The reason I wrote letters early was to create awareness and when the kids got good the college coaches knew about them. I still have letters I wrote to Bill Walsh when he was at Stanford. They all wrote me back.”
“A lot of the kids all wanted to be at D1 schools,” said Kurth. “I didn’t want some of them over their heads. I always said what you want to focus on first is a place where you can find your area of interest in education. I constantly preached to use athletics as a vehicle to an education. Second, I encouraged them to go where they could play. When you get there, it doesn’t matter if there are 5,000 people in the stands or 100,000, what you care about is if you play! I had a really good player named Mike Stock that took visits to D3, D2, mid major D1 and bigtime D1 programs. He ended up signing with Alabama, but he wanted to see all levels to make sure he found the right fit.”
“Families need guidance,” said Kurth. “Charlie, that is why it is so important what you and NCSA do. I admire what you all are doing because they just don’t know. For example, there are more single mothers today than ever before.”
Kurth was a High School coach that considered it his responsibility to help athletes find college scholarships. “I was in coaching to help kids,” he said. “I was not a great coach. I had great athletes and great assistant coaches. It has always bothered me that a lot of High School coaches are not involved in the process. Some think that when the kid is done with High School, they are done with the kid and that it is not their responsibility. I cared so much that I always made it a point to go see my kids play in college, whether they were at Alabama or Northern Illinois or Franklin College. It meant a lot to them to see their High School coach in the stands.”
Kurth was motivated to help kids become college athletes because he had a remarkable experience at Wittenberg University, where he played football. Was it the SEC or Big Ten? No, but he loved it.
“If the good Lord would give me any four years of my life to live over again,” said Kurth, “I would pick those four at Wittenberg in a heartbeat.”
That is why if you have the God given ability to be a college athlete, don’t let this once in a lifetime opportunity slip away. You may not be recruited by every college in the country like Dave Schnell, but there is a place out there for you if you are committed, have the athletic ability, and the academic ability.
Dave may be gone, but he will live on as a role model to all alums of Indiana University, Elkhart Central, the Northern Indiana Conference, Elkhart County, and most importantly to his family and friends.
“Dave was the best Dad I ever saw,” said Robert, his longtime friend. “His kids, Spencer, Sam, Vinnie and Brooke, were always number one. He lived for them.”
If you go to facebook and search Dave Schnell you will see the endless heartfelt writings about the impact a college athlete can have on others, including these:
“Dave, you leave behind a legacy not only of your greatness on the field, but the greatness in which you treated those you knew.”
“With all the success and records he set, Dave always remained humble and had time for others.”
“When I lost my job Dave Schnell asked me what he could do for me. I will never forget that.”
“I used to dream of being David as a kid playing street football on Roys Avenue.”
“From Hebrews: ‘With so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every burden and the sin which so easily ensnares us and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.’ You endured through this long and difficult battle with leukemia. And always will you live on in your sweet children and in all those who were luck enough to know you. Peace, friend ….. peace.”
At the Viewing for Dave, his I.U. football jersey was draped over the casket with a framed picture of him under pressure in the pocket, firing a pass downfield for his Hoosiers.
Memorials can be given to the St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church or David E. Schnell Football Scholarship through Key Bank, 1842 E. Bristol St. Elkhart, IN 46514.
For more on his battle in his final hours read Columnist Bill Beck’s touching story in The Elkhart Truth
Charlie Adams, former WSBT TV Sports Director
NCSA Athletic Recruiting Network Educational Speaker
cadams@ncsasports.org To Bring Recruiting Education to your School, Club or Event
NCSA Athletic Recruiting Network Speaker Charlie Adams
