Delano coaches the men’s club soccer team this fall. Courtesy | Graham Delano

Graduate student Graham Delano has taken an unconventional path to Hillsdale College. One that saw him leading a team of dog sleds in the Rockies and teaching middle school in Nashville. Today, Delano is pursuing a Master of Arts in Classical Education and, this fall, he accepted another role on campus: men’s club soccer coach.

Soccer has been a constant in Delano’s life. His brothers introduced him to soccer when he was young, and it became a passion.

“I have two older brothers and I am probably the most competitive one. I always needed to beat them,” Delano said.

As Delano matured in the game  in high school, he decided he would try college soccer. Colorado Christian University reached out with an invitation to a camp, later extending an offer with a scholarship for soccer, and Delano found himself braving the altitude of Denver and the Rocky Mountains for his college career.

“After I toured I knew I needed to be at CCU,” Delano said. “I think it was the providence of God because it ended up being a great fit for me.”

Delano discovered an unexpected perk of Denver when he began to attend CCU, he said. The mountains fed his lifelong love of skiing and the outdoors. But college wasn’t all powder and skis for Delano. He said CCU played some of the best soccer teams he had seen up to that point in his career. Thanks to the level of play, he was able to improve his game as well.

“My freshman year was rough. We played in a good conference and took some heavy hits as a team,” he said. “But by my junior year we had improved.”

Delano attributed the success he found later in his career to Gary Evans, who played professional soccer in England and America before joining the CCU staff. The two have maintained a good relationship since Delano started his graduate work at Hillsdale.

“I still get lunch with Gary every time I am in Denver,” Delano said. “I always appreciated that he focused on the fundamentals of the game, but beyond the game he has been a great mentor since my time at CCU.”

After graduating with a degree in health sciences, Delano spent some time working with a company that gave leadership lessons to schools in Denver. He then returned to CCU and coached until 2020. COVID-19 upended CCU’s season that year, so Delano matched adversity with adventure. He built out the back of his Ford Ranger with a truck tent, a stove, and a few shelves of food and drove north. The road took him across Colorado, through Montana and Wyoming, and eventually into the Canadian Rockies.

“I’ve never totaled the miles I drove but the trip took me about three months,” Delano said. “The American west is majestic. Beautiful. To live like that for a while was a dream.”

Delano moved to Idaho for a brief time to run a mobile coffee shop before settling in Nashville for a middle school teaching job. He began to think more about his love for athletics and how that might relate to his newfound interest in classical education.

“When I was teaching, I noticed that many of the boys had a hard time sitting still. I thought ‘there has to be a better way to educate these kids,’” Delano said. “Over the past couple of years I’ve been thinking about what it looks like to tie in the physical component of education to set up a system based on the gymnasium.”

In his research, Delano discovered Hillsdale College’s 1776 curriculum. It was not long before he applied to the Diana Davis Spencer Graduate School of Classical Education.

This fall, Delano became the men’s club soccer coach.

“Jacob Beckwith asked me in the spring if I would like to coach the club team and it has been nice to knock off the rust,” Delano said. “I hadn’t coached in a couple of years, but I came in with the goal to bring a new perspective to the team.”

The men’s club soccer team posed a unique challenge in coaching that Delano had not encountered at CCU. He said he has been trying to find the right balance between intensity and fun in coaching a student-led team. He recognized that asking his players to devote their whole semester to the team would not work but he wanted to set the players up for success.

“The team is lucky to have a coach with Graham’s background along with the physical capability to show his players what he wants,” senior player Max Aylor said.

Although the team’s record this year was 3-6-1, Delano said he plans to return and looks forward to growing with the team.

“We lost a few close games to some good teams this past year,” Delano said. “We know we have potential.”

Luke Martin ‘17, assistant coach for the men’s club soccer team this year, said Delano’s character gives the team confidence moving forward.

“Since I have known Graham his kindness and humility have stood out,” Martin said. “Plus I know with his skill, passion, and experience he has what it takes to lead a team to success.”