So Long, Dave
Gateway High stunned by loss of its popular A.D.
27 Jan 2005
By Ken Jackson and Rick Pedone
News-Gazette Staff Writers
A stunned Gateway High community is struggling to accept the death of the school’s popular athletic director, David Ridenour.
For a decade he was the face, voice and architect of the Panthers’ sports program.
Ridenour, 38, died Saturday at his St. Cloud home. He was discovered in the garage area by his wife of three years, Ginger Ridenour, late that afternoon.
An autopsy was conducted Monday by the Orange-Osceola Medical Examiner’s Office, but the cause of death may not be determined until a toxicology report is completed in four to 12 weeks, said a department spokesman. The St. Cloud police department said the investigation remains open.
Ridenour was alone on Saturday afternoon when friends speculate that he may have climbed into the garage attic to disburse pesticide.
Friends, colleagues and Gateway students remember a man who was an advocate for his coaches and student-athletes since taking over the job in 1995 when former A.D. Vic Lorenzano resigned and moved to St. Cloud High. Lorenzano hired Ridenour to be the school’s baseball coach in 1993. He quickly became an integral member of the faculty.
“I remember when I hired Dave. He was a young guy (26) more or less just out of college, but the thing that I noticed right away about him was that he was a good guy, a real hard worker.”
Ridenour was a pitcher at Melbourne High, where he graduated in 1984. He later pitched at Palm Beach Atlantic University. After graduation, he was a teacher at Conway Middle in Orlando for several years and volunteered with the Boone High baseball program.
Lorenzano said Ridenour’s dedication to the Gateway job was admirable — and exhausting.
“Over the years, the AD job can wear you down, and Dave always gave a lot of himself,” said Lorenzano.
Ridenour’s premature death left Lorenzano, like many others, in disbelief.
“We had been spending a lot of time together over the past couple of years, having lunch together after AD meetings and things like that,” said Lorenzano. “I would have loved to have him come over here (to St. Cloud), but he felt like he needed to be where he was. People who didn’t get close to him missed out on a lot.”
Ridenour’s record in eight seasons as the Panthers baseball coach, from 1994-2001, was 74-157. He twice led the Panthers into the regional tournament as a district runner up in 1995 and 1999.
Ridenour helped pitcher Joe Torres blossom into one of Florida’s outstanding baseball talents, becoming the 10th overall pick in the 2000 Major League draft by the Anaheim Angels.
He met his wife through their pastor at First Baptist Church early in 2001; their relationship grew quickly and they were married in August.
“We just met as two single people, it wasn’t by any design,” said Ginger Ridenour. “It was definitely God’s plan to bring us together.”
She said that their home was a retreat from school, the paperwork and game details, a place where he could focus on his family.
Ginger Ridenour has three children: Katie Henry, 14, Nick Henry, 15, and Rachel Henry, 19, who attends Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville. Ginger was visiting Rachel in Gainesville when her husband died.
She said Ridenour considered her children as his own.
“He wanted to be part of a family for so long,” Ginger Ridenour said. “He loved all three of them and they all knew it.
“David was funny, his sense of humor is what I fell in love with. Just the way he’d use jokes to break up the day.”
Ginger became a member of the Gateway family, working the gate at football games.
“He asked me to do it, and I saw it as a way of spending time together. Little did I know how little there would be,” she said.
GHS students put together a package of flowers and letters that school administrators delivered to her this week. “It was beautiful and touching,” she said.
The last Panthers baseball game Ridenour attended last May was a regional quarterfinal that followed the school’s first district championship since 1989. The last football game he attended was the Scholarship Bowl, a 28-25 win over Olympia that concluded the school’s best football season ever.
“He was proud of those things,” Ginger Ridenour said. “But he never wanted or took the credit for that. It was all for the school.”
Rob Frasca played (1994-96) and coached (2000-03) under Ridenour at Gateway.
Frasca led Gateway to the District 6A-5 title last year in his third season as the head coach.
“I played for him and I coached with him. He gave me my chance to coach in 6A at 22. I consider him a mentor,” Frasca said. “When I took over, he told me he was going to take a back seat and let me distinguish myself. I told him, ‘You better come when we play for a district championship.’ After we won the district title, he was the second person I looked for after my dad.”
Frasca, who took the St. Cloud baseball job last summer, witnessed the tireless effort that David Ridenour devoted to Gateway’s athletics.
“All of the programs at Gateway improved while he was there. He did a lot without a lot of help. And he was all about doing things to better the kids he worked with and to better Gateway,” he said. “The school had a certain reputation when he got there because you only heard the bad things that came out of that school.
“Everything seemed in place for him there, finally. He had a principal he enjoyed working with.”
Panther football coach Gene Mitchell came to Gateway as an assistant in 2001 and became the head coach after Karl Schroeder resigned after the 2003 season. He is helping Ginger Ridenour cope with her loss, along with many other friends and family members. He said a void exists on the campus.
“There are many people who came to work on Monday and there was no Dave Ridenour there, and they’d never experienced that. He was Gateway,” Mitchell said.
Harmony athletic director Chuck Hitt went to Gateway on Monday to help Mitchell, who is assuming the athletic director duties temporarily
“Dave was always trying to do what was in the best interest of their kids,” said Hitt. “He’s also been running the conference for the last five years, which is a huge chore in itself. I don’t know how he found time to do it all.”
Joe Day, president of the Osceola Family Sports Association, will present a plaque to Mitchell which is to be delivered to the Ridenour family.
“Dave was the driving force of us starting our program,” Day said. “He let us use the facilities for free. It helped keep a lot of quality kids at Gateway.”
Principal Terry Andrews is on a trip until Monday and could not be reached.
Ridenour is also survived by his parents, Curt and Virgie Ridenour; his brother, Keith Ridenour; and his sister, Melinda Gerding, all of Melbourne.
There will be a viewing at Grissom’s Funeral Home from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday. The funeral will be 11 a.m. Saturday at the First Baptist Church of Kissimmee.
Ridenour made GHS what it is
27 Jan 2005
Rick Pedone Sports Editor
rpedone@osceolanewsgazette.com
Darn it, Ridenour, I didn’t get the schedules.
Right about now, I’d be on the phone harassing him.
I liked David Ridenour for many reasons. He was knowledgeable, funny, self-deprecating, honest and direct.
I also liked him because, after a decade of working with him, I finally had him broken in.
Our conversations sometimes lasted five seconds, and they’d go like this:
“Athletics.”
“Schedules.”
“Got it.”
Click.
When he had some free time, we’d spend a half-hour or so talking about God knows what. Usually he was venting about the frustration of presiding over an athletic program that once ranged from listless to awful.
More than once, he wondered aloud, “What am I doing here?”
As it turns out, Dave was doing a pretty good job.
The once laughable football program is turned around. Ridenour saw Gateway beat favored Olympia for its first-ever Osceola Scholarship Bowl championship. His friend, Coach Gene Mitchell, put together the school’s first winning record in 16 years, 6-3.
Last spring he watched with pride when one of his former players, Rob Frasca, coaxed Gateway to the district title for the first time in 15 years.
Ken Jackson, who covered that game, said Ridenour was so excited that he babbled like a Philadelphia Eagles fan in the late innings.
The Panther athletic program grew respectable. It was the conference all-sports runner-up last year to St. Cloud, an achievement once unthinkable.
Ridenour’s character was evident long before the recent success, especially one day about nine years ago after his baseball team experienced a meltdown in the district tournament at St. Cloud.
The Panthers led 10-0 after four innings. That’s when I had to leave the mid-afternoon game to pick up my son from school. Figuring a Panthers’ win was a lock, I called Ridenour later to pick up a few details.
Except, Gateway blew the lead and lost, 11-10.
“You’re kidding,” I said.
“I wish I was.”
Ridenour, then only about 29, accepted the ugly turn of events with the wisdom and good humor of long-time Dodger skipper Tommy Lasorda. Rather than to chastise his team for the mistakes it made, or perhaps blaming umpires for calls gone the other way, he instead gave credit to the team that beat him. Here’s what he said:
“We did some things that helped them get back in it, but they mostly just started hitting the ball where we weren’t. I feel so bad for our kids because they are a good group. They could have come into this tournament with their heads down because Titusville had beaten us twice earlier in the year, but that’s not the way it was. It’s just one of those things that happens.”
Some will remember Dave Ridenour as a Don Quixote, often railing at the injustice that he perceived befell his school and his athletes.
“All I want is an even playing field,” he said on many occasions. “I believe everyone should be held to the same standards.”
He was outraged last year when one of his coaches was injured during a brief fight among Osceola High basketball players at the Gateway gym.
“Somebody has to get a clue around here, you know?” he said.
Whatever the Gateway athletic program is today is a testament to his determination, vision, patience and toil.
Did the pressure of running a Class 6A athletic program for a decade contribute to his premature death Saturday at the ridiculously young age of 38? That we don’t know.
There’s no doubt that his marriage of three years to his wife, Ginger, and his faith added to the time we had with him.
It was time well spent for all of us who call Dave a friend.
It just wasn’t long enough, was it?
I've bawled plenty of times throughout life and not just at funerals either...it's GOOD to show one's emotions, whether female or male!!
