SUSAN ODENBAUGH
Lewis-Palmer coach honored
To Susan Odenbaugh, retirement is a relative term. The longtime Lewis-Palmer head volleyball coach who led the Rangers to four Class 4A state titles in 15 seasons — including a dominant undefeated campaign en route to the championship last fall as the team finished fourth in the MaxPreps national rankings — stepped down from teaching and coaching in May to conclude a 34-year career.
“I’m officially retired, but I couldn’t just walk away completely,” Odenbaugh said. “I just love being around my students, so now I’m teaching part time.”
Such is the academically oriented sentiment that has come to define Odenbaugh, the 2017 winner of the Dave Sanders Colorado Coach Award, presented annually by The Denver Post to a teachercoach who has demonstrated longevity and success in teaching and coaching girls athletics.
After all, it could be argued that Odenbaugh, 58, has plenty of volleyball seasons left in her — and more championships. LewisPalmer, now under the direction of longtime varsity assistant Wade Baxter, is an early favorite to repeat in 2017, and the competitive Odenbaugh knows this — but she’s content with her decision to redirect her efforts.
“A lot of my students would come in and they’d seek extra help, and I was never available because of my commitment to coaching after school,” Odenbaugh explained. “When you look at the reality of things, most students aren’t going to make their careers playing volleyball, and I think now I’ll have a larger impact on helping students with their academic careers.”
And beyond the classroom, the “retired” Odenbaugh also is stepping into a new role with the Rangers’ athletic department. She will leverage her coaching background to oversee the school’s participation in the Positive Coaching Alliance and the Shift Why initiative.
“It’s important, with the way youth sports are progressing right now, that people don’t stray away from the true meaning of sports,” said Odenbaugh, who also won two state titles as a Rangers assistant coach. “Sports are a medium to teach character and character development, and we shouldn’t put our emphasis on winning at all costs. Winning should be a byproduct of the commitment to that development.”
It’s a mind-set that Sanders, a renowned softball coach, basketball coach and teacher who gave his life to save students during the 1999 Columbine shooting, certainly shared.
“Dave would be proud of anyone who was a teacher first and then took all those attributes that great teachers have and applied them to whatever sport they coached,” said Rick Bath, Sanders’ best friend and the 2002 award winner. “It’s about producing the same excellence in the classroom as you do on the court, and Odenbaugh does that.”
Odenbaugh’s players recognized and respected her didactic tactics, which proved consistently successful as the Rangers won 347 matches to just 89 losses during her tenure.
“She would always bring a quote to practice the day after a game, and that quote would apply to how we had played or something that had happened in the game,” said Elizabeth Reich, a captain on the 2016 title team who now plays at the University of Portland. “We would break down the game that way, and that not only made us better, it made us closer. It’s those personal touches that you don’t get from other coaches.”
Those touches translated to lessons on writing essays and dissections of literature, as Odenbaugh — who has served as the English Department chair for 18 years and will continue to do so — brings her competitive mind-set to her students, determined to make them more than college-ready.
“She wants every kid to succeed in their own way, so she pushed me a lot,” said Alexa Smith, a captain on the undefeated 2014 title team that finished ranked first in the nation. “She lets people know what she expects, and she holds people to that very high standard. Her players and her students have always respected that, and that’s why she excels in what she does.”
It’s been a long road for the Gilcrest native and 1977 Valley graduate, who, as a junior, was a member of the Vikings’ Class 2A state championship volleyball team in the first year the sport was sanctioned in Colorado — and who, as an adult, transformed prep volleyball, a feat that’s not lost on even her foremost Pikes Peak League rival.
“Every time we played each other, the gyms were packed, it was loud, it was crazy — it was everything you want high school volleyball to be,” Cheyenne Mountain coach David Barker said. “There’s no one else I’d rather face, though, because her teams come prepared and they’re always very competitive. That’s because she’s very competitive, yet also still has the great sense of sportsmanship that high school sports is supposed to look like.”
It’s a legacy that’s only set to increase with Odenbaugh’s new role in the athletic department.
“As much as her retirement is a loss for the volleyball program, the fact that she can have an impact on our entire athletic program is a huge opportunity for us,” Lewis-Palmer principal Sandi Brandl said. “We jumped on that right away knowing she’s going to have time to mentor other LewisPalmer coaches. What she offers to them as a sounding board and as an adviser is incredible, and her greatest impact on our Rangers may be yet to come.”