For all the push-ups completed, for all the running drills endured and for all the yelling received during his days playing high school football at Sherman Oaks Notre Dame High in the 1990s, Dan Keeler is getting the last laugh later this month when he takes command of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in Coronado.
“Now I’m going to have to salute him,” former Notre Dame coach Kevin Rooney quipped.
Keeler, who graduated from high school in 1994 and went on to the Naval Academy, is taking command of one of the Navy’s most prominent ships.
The USS Abraham Lincoln arrives San Diego in 2020.
(Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune)
“It is incredible that he has earned this responsibility,” Rooney said.
Keeler was a defensive back and track athlete for the Knights and is one of five siblings who attended Notre Dame. Track coach Joe McNab, who just won his 11th Southern Section championship, was his defensive backs coach.
“Good kid,” McNab said.
“He’s a guy who fit all the boxes in terms of being a great kid and doing things right,” Rooney said.
Rooney, McNab and former football assistant Jeff Kraemer will make the trip to the San Diego area for the change-of-command ceremony. For some reason, Keeler invited his former high school coaches after all those days of sweat and tears in Sherman Oaks.
“If I had known he was going to be so powerful, I wouldn’t have made him run so much,” Kraemer said.
Keeler isn’t the first Notre Dame graduate to rise in the Navy ranks. Retired Adm. Mike Mullen was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2007 to 2011 and graduated from Notre Dame in 1964. Mullen once came back to his alma mater to address the student body.
Rooney, who retired in 2019 after 40 years as football coach, said his goal was always to “help kids become great people and do things right.”
Coaches know that the best day of all is when a graduate comes back to campus and tells them how they are doing and explains how lessons learned as teenagers really made a difference in their life.
As summer begins and graduates move on with their lives and the class of 2029 arrives, it’s a good reminder to everyone that it’s not wins and losses that matter most in high school. It’s teaching life lessons and preparing students to become adults, good people and good community members.
To see a former Los Angeles-area high school football player take charge of an aircraft carrier is proof that all that running to gain stamina, all that preaching to work together as a team, all those lectures that practice makes perfect … it’s true.
You only need to listen, learn and dedicate yourself to reaching a goal.
A salute to all the coaches and teachers who understand their real job is to create opportunities for their students to succeed through wisdom and inspiration.
Capt. Keeler, Bravo Zulu and Anchors Aweigh. Be safe.