Wheeler coach calls emergency play
Hudak on decision to return to nursing full time during pandemic: ‘It was a no-brainer.’
Wheeler football coach Adam Hudak couldn’t resist the call to help.
He had to return to work full time as an emergency room nurse for Franciscan Health in Dyer during the coronavirus pandemic.
The staff members needed him, and Hudak had to be there for them.
Hudak loves the adrenaline rush. Nursing and coaching football are his vocations.
“It was a no-brainer,” he said. Now Hudak runs every morning to “wash the virus out.”
He doesn’t have it, but he lives with the fear of getting it in a real way. Working three 12-hour shifts a week, Hudak arrives home exhausted when his shift is over.
“I wonder if I’m going to wake up with a fever,” Hudak said.
These are unsettling times, and no one knows better about the havoc that COVID-19 can cause than Hudak.
He’s experienced it firsthand. “This virus is scary,” he said. “We don’t know who gets it and why they get it.”
Hudak has a message for young people who might think they are invincible: Stay home. Don’t believe it can’t happen to you.
In Illinois, an infant died from COVID-19. Teenagers have been diagnosed with it.
The mortality rate is just under 2.5% in the United States, according to worldometers.info, and doctors still don’t know why some healthy people seem to get more sick than others.
The randomness is frightening. Hudak’s advice: Listen to health experts.
“I think some kids think just older people get sick,” he said. “It’s not true. We haven’t tested enough. Don’t believe everything you see on Twitter.”
Hudak, who graduated from Lowell in 1998 and played quarterback and kicked for Kirk Kennedy, never thought he’d be coaching, teaching and working as a nurse when he graduated from Valparaiso University. Hudak was a kicker for the Crusaders.
In 2013, Hudak went to Lake Station to help a former Lowell teammate, Rich Lunsford, who was the Eagles’ coach.
Lunsford left after the 2014 season.
It’s always a struggle to fill the Lake Station job, and Hudak knew that.
Again, he had to be there for the players.
“I knew those kids wouldn’t have anyone if I didn’t stay on,” he said.
Hudak coached the Eagles for two seasons before taking the Wheeler job.
He worked full time as a nurse until last year, when it became impossible to juggle football and nursing.
So Hudak taught sixth grade in the Wheeler school system, and he worked two days a month as a nurse.
When Indiana transitioned to e-learning, Hudak returned to nursing indefinitely. But he still is teaching too.
Hudak loves nursing. But sometimes he’d work a midnight shift, sleep a few hours and then go to practice.
“It affected my coaching,” he said. “I’d be exhausted and shorttempered on some days.”
He said he likes being a nurse in the emergency room because when you walk in there, “you never know what’s going to happen. Every day is different. It’s a fast pace.”
Nursing in an emergency room setting is comparable to game day because the urgency is real.
“I think when you are putting an IV in a baby and a mother is breathing down your neck (to get it right),” he said, “that it’s no different than kicking a field goal. You only get one shot to get it right.”
Hudak, who has four kids, plans to keep coaching, teaching and nursing as long as he can. He’ll return to part-time nursing eventually.
“When I was 25, I never thought I’d be a coach now,” he said. “I can’t imagine not doing it now. It’s awesome being around the kids and the game.”