Alums earn highest mark
Notre Dame adds one-time pro basketball player, Pan Am rower to athletic wall of fame
Dan Sandel, a former professional basketball player who instead of collecting points now spends his time gathering clues, and Karen Smyte, a world-class rower who went on to excel as a coach before pursuing a writing career, are the newest inductees to the Notre Dame College School Wall of Fame.
Sandel, now a detective with the Niagara Regional Police, was a standout on the court for the Fighting Irish from 1986 until 1991, when he earned a four-year scholarship to play hoops at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, N.Y., under current University of Michigan head coach John Beilin.
The one-time Tribune Boys Basketball Tournament MVP topped Le Moyne in points as well as in rebounding in his four seasons there, and his success as one of the top rebounders in the U.S. and an all-American nominee did go unnoticed.
Sandel went on to enjoy a 10-year pro career in Luxemburg, leading his teams to titles and championships.
He said the years spent at Notre Dame were important in his development in sports as well as in life.
“It was very important,” the 45-year-old Fort Erie native said. “Basically, it shaped me totally as a person.”
Basketball was great to me over my career, the coaches were great. I learned a lot and developed a hard work ethic that has carried me on throughout me life.”
Knowing how to work as part of a team in basketball continues to help Sandel in the working world.
“As a police officer it’s a team atmosphere, so being part of a team on a basketball team is almost the same thing,” Sandel said. “You always try to watch each other’s back, and you’re always there for the next guy.”
The late Ralph Nero and Mike Rao, his successor as head coach of the senior boys basketball team at Notre Dame, played instrumental roles in Sandel’s development, on and off the court.
“They coached me from Grade 9, they put tons of time into my whole career,” he said. “I owe a lot of it to them.”
“It was almost like they were fathers to me.”
In their coaching, neither Nero nor Rao stressed victory above all else. Wins, Sandel said, was a byproduct of season- and career-long process. “Work hard, improve, become a team, and victories will come.”
Smyte, class of 1984, was a multisport athlete during her five years at Notre Dame. She ran cross-country and went out for track and field, but the Welland native was by far the most dominant on water as part of the high school’s rowing crew.
She won numerous accolades and awards competing at the high school and club level and, most importantly, the sport carried her to Princeton University in New Jersey where she became part of several NCAA championship crews.
Smyte also rowed nationally for Canada and won medals at the Pan Am Games and at the world championships.
She went into coaching after she stopped rowing competitively, and while at the University of Michigan was credited with helping build a program that over the years has become a powerhouse. Smyte went on to coach rowing at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., before returning to Michigan to concentrate on her writing. She is currently working on a novel.
Her years at Notre Dame were among the most important of the Welland native’s life.
“Notre Dame was foundational to my sense of self,” she said during a visit to her alma mater for the induction ceremony.
“I think it was here that I was able to learn the habit of being fully present and aware in a moment, partly through athletics.”
Notre Dame’s “sense of service” likewise left a lasting impression.
“All my life I have made decisions and certainly that has been a guiding force for me: how best can I serve in the world,” Smyte said. “I do feel this place helped instill that that was a valid way to make decisions to move through the world.”
Competing on the track and on the water for the Fighting Irish in the 1980s she remembered being respected as an athlete and encouraged to challenge herself, “to dream big, to take risks.”
“That’s not a given, so I greatly appreciate that I was in an environment that pushed me, challenged me, but that was really positive and that really supported me and my dreams.”
“It kept telling me I was stronger than I thought, that I could do more.”
Smyte, 51, lives in Ann Arbor, Mich., where she writes and works with incarcerated individuals and their families around literacy.