Duty. Honor. Country.
For Parke Heritage head football coach Dan Rector, those words carry deep meaning. But he could easily add another — sacrifice.
Rector missed the 2024 season after being deployed to Iraq with the Indiana National Guard. He returned just three weeks ago, and immediately jumped back into preparing the Wolves for the new year.
“When you are called, you go and do your job, but at the same time, I definitely felt a great sense of responsibility for that,” Rector said. “Regardless of the circumstances, the results are what they are. When you take the head coach and offensive coordinator out of there, that leaves a big gap. The rest of the coaching staff did a phenomenal job, and I will be eternally grateful to those guys for stepping in. But it is a lot to handle. I hate that disruption happened for last year’s seniors because I think under other circumstances, last year could have ended differently.”
Parke Heritage went 1-9 last fall, but Rector sees a silver lining in how his team responded.
“A positive is the resolve this year’s kids have to get back on track,” he said. “I am a big believer in multisport athletes, and I’m really glad a lot of our kids had those rough moments in the fall, then through basketball, wrestling, baseball, or track had some success later in the year. I think that was really positive. With our strength and conditioning program, we had a lot of kids reach personal milestones. There were other ways our staff and community provided opportunities for our kids to get better, still experience success, and put them in a really good spot so when I came home, they were ready to go.”
That resolve will be tested as the Wolves look to rebound from an opening-week loss to Crawfordsville with a road matchup at West Vigo.
Even from overseas, Rector’s influence remained on the program. He entrusted his staff to run the offseason but stayed connected through constant communication.
“We communicated a lot through this whole process,” Rector said. “They ran the summer program exactly how I asked them to, so we were able to hit the ground running when the first day of official practices started. I got off the plane at Indianapolis International on a Thursday, took three days with my family, and the next Monday school started and official practice began. With the Remind app, I was able to communicate with kids when I was gone, and with my coaching staff. This being our fourth year, they know the drills we run. It isn’t the way you want to do it, but we were able to make some chicken salad.”
For Rector, stepping back on the sideline is a moment he’ll never take for granted.
“Over there on deployment, you’re working seven days a week, 12-plus hours a day, and some of those were bad days, high-stress days,” he said. “Going back to my room at the end of the night, pulling up Hudl clips, doodling a game plan, and texting with the kids — next to talking with my family, those were the two things that kept me forward-oriented and not bogged down by what was happening in Iraq.”
Rector experienced the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, the 12-day war, and ongoing conflicts with ISIS during his time in Iraq. Now back home, he admits he has a newfound appreciation for the simple things.
“It was a grind. To be back here with my family and my football family, I can’t put words to it,” he said. “I told my wife coming home from church, when you look around here, there is so much green. I hope people don’t take that for granted. In Afghanistan or Iraq, all you see is brown — brown everywhere. You don’t see green. The fields and the agricultural community here are so different. Everywhere I went in Iraq for nine months, I carried a weapon. Here, you drive down a country road and wave at everyone. To be with my family every day and do my passion every day with the greatest game ever, I love it.”