Fan for all seasons: This year, every Hawkeye had this man for a fan

Dan Schleisman decided to celebrate his 50th year as a University of Iowa graduate by attending 2021-22 Hawkeyes sporting events in Iowa City. All of them.

“About 175,” he said.

After 47 years of coaching and teaching at Shelby-Tennant and Treynor high schools in western Iowa, Schleisman moved to Iowa City two years ago. “I always wanted to retire here,” he said.

He couldn’t attend sporting events his first year in town because of the pandemic, so he made up for it this school year.

“I graduated 50 years ago (this week),” Schleisman said, “so I kind of figured out a way to celebrate the whole year. I decided I would try to make every athletic event, and it worked out that I didn’t get sick or anything. Nothing stopped me from going so I went to every event.”

That spanned nine months and 20 different Hawkeye teams. Some days were challenges.

“One day I had tennis, softball and soccer,” said Schleisman. “Softball and baseball play so many games on the same day. They have three-game series on the same weekend, so I had to go from one to the other.”

Schleisman, 72, coached several different sports in his career, but found himself enjoying some with which he had been unfamiliar.

“The field hockey team, they’re just amazing,” he said.

“Gymnastics, I think I had seen one other time. That was really exciting because that team is so talented.”

He said what a lot of other coaches would say. Which is, he would have enjoyed coaching Iowa basketball players Caitlin Clark and Keegan Murray.

“Both basketball teams were unreal,” Schleisman said. “What I liked about both (Clark and Murray) is they’re very unassuming players. When they got interviewed, they were very unassuming people.”

Schleisman may be the best kind of fan. He enjoys and appreciates the effort and devotion of the competitors, and doesn’t get wrapped up in complaining about athletes, coaches or officials. He says that on occasion he changed his seats at games to escape fans who were doing just that.

He wanted to be a Hawkeye athlete himself as someone who was a freshman at the UI.

“I walked on here in ‘68,” he said, “and I just wasn’t good enough to make the baseball team that eventually went to the (1972) College World Series.”

After college, he went to now-defunct Shelby-Tennant High and began helping coach football and basketball, then volleyball, track and field, and softball. He was the athletics director there for 10 years. He moved on to Treynor. He coached track there until his retirement in 2019.

Schleisman wouldn’t mind un-retiring.

“I’ve been trying to find somebody to help, but haven’t yet,” he said. “Track and softball, those two mainly. And basketball. Those are the three sports I think I’m most knowledgeable about.”

There are worse places to retire than a college town, where you’re surrounded by different people and events.

“I live a mile from Kinnick (Stadium),” Schleisman said. “Iowa City’s bus system is really good. It stops right by my apartment.

“I would recommend living here to anybody, but I’m kind of biased.”

If there’s one soul in Iowa City who attended nearly as many Hawkeye sporting contests as Schleisman in the past year, it’s a fine feathered friend all Hawkeye fans know.

“Herky, I practically ran into him every week,” said Schleisman. “I think by the end of the year he probably knew who I was.”

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