Goltz strives to help student athletes work to reach potential
Story by Dennis Kellogg, director of communications
FALLS CITY (SNR) - As a high school athletics coach, success can be measured in different ways: Wins and state championships. Career longevity. The lifelong impact on players.
By each of those standards, Doug Goltz of Sacred Heart School in Falls City has already had a tremendously successful coaching career. And it’s not over.
Goltz is in his 37th year at Sacred Heart, where he doesn’t just coach one sport, he coaches three: football, boys basketball, and track and field. His dedication, though, extends beyond athletics.
“I was a teacher my first 17 years, our school’s principal the next 17 years and now in my third year as superintendent,” Goltz said. “I have been the athletic director for 36 years and have always coached all three sports all these years. That’s 109 sports seasons.”
That’s not exactly how he saw his life playing out. As a graduate of Sacred Heart himself, he went on to get his teaching degree from Peru State College in 1986. He then decided to go back home to begin his career as an educator.
“I returned home to my own high school, Falls City Sacred Heart, planning to be there a year or two and then move on to bigger and better things. Thirty-seven years later, I am still at Falls City Sacred Heart,” Goltz said.
That first year as the school’s boys basketball coach, Goltz took over a team that had only three wins the year before.
“So expectations weren’t super high, but we had a lot of success right off the bat. We made it to the district final,” he said. “You could just kind of tell that the whole attitude of the school kind of changed in a more positive way. I think when you have good athletics and good activities, the morale of the school kind of follows that.”
The next year, Goltz started coaching football and track as well, and became the athletic director. Success in athletics has never been a problem. Goltz has coached 30 total state championship teams – 11 in basketball (a Nebraska state record by an individual boys’ coach), eight in football, seven in boys track and four in girls track. He is the all-time winningest coach in Nebraska high school boys basketball history. His teams have won 718 games going into this season.
While those numbers are impressive, Goltz said it can be just as satisfying to him to help his student athletes work to reach their potential, even if the season doesn’t end with a trophy.
“Just getting kids to realize that we want to improve each week, each practice, each game. I can see that is really the whole key of why it’s so important that we have things like sports,” Goltz said. “I think it’s no different than how they’re going to have to live their lives... You got to be on time, you got to work hard, you go to do your job. That’s the kind of thing that I try to get our kids to understand. The things you’re learning now, these lessons are going to carry over to your real life when you’re an adult.”
It’s not just life lessons sports can teach students, but also lessons about their Catholic faith. At Sacred Heart, Goltz said, students are expected to perform at a high level and to be good Christian men and women.
“There’s just so many ways that I think you can show your faith through things like sports, sportsmanship, all those things are a part of it,” Goltz said. “And I think that a great way for athletics to be a part of your faith is just that commitment to each other, just as we have a commitment to our faith.”
Goltz called it the “Sacred Heart Way.” He said the students know the formula well – work hard and treat others as you want to be treated. Goltz said the good student leaders in the school now learned it from those who went before them.
“Because we’re a K-12 school and all of our kids are in the same building, our seniors are walking down the hall, walking by the first- and second-graders and those little kids look up to these high school kids,” Goltz said. “And they know that, and I think that kind of holds these kids to a high, high level that they represent our school.”
Prayer is also as much a part of the formula as learning the plays and working through the drills.
“We pray quite a bit. We actually say a prayer every time we break the huddle. As a team, we pray when we drive into the town that we’re going to play; we always pray when we arrive back in Falls City. We pray before the game, we pray at halftime, we finish with a prayer. Every practice, we finish with a prayer. It’s just kind of ingrained in what we do. The kids expect it. They know it,” Goltz said.
Goltz said he thinks it’s great to see more and more teams pray together after games, on the field or on the court, including public school teams. He said he didn’t see that in his first years of coaching.
Goltz said it’s satisfying to him at this point in his career to be able to coach the kids of the first kids he coached several decades ago. That’s been the situation for Steve Simon. He graduated in 1991. During his four years in high school, he was a part of eight state championship teams coached by Goltz – four in basketball and two each in football and track and field. Goltz also coached Simon’s sons, including one who is a junior this year.
Simon said Goltz cultivated a winning tradition at the school and instilled confidence in those he coached. He said Goltz always put in the work, and so did his players.
“He watched a lot of film and we knew what other teams were going to do.... We knew we were prepared before going into every game on the football field,” Simon said. “Practices were always very regimented.... Everything was prepared out. You never had to guess. We were confident.”
Simon, who now sells insurance and real estate in Falls City, helped coach the junior high basketball team at Sacred Heart for several years. Goltz said the contributions like that from alumni are a testament to what the school means to families generation after generation.
“Sacred Heart, we’re small enough that it really takes a lot of work, a lot of volunteerism, for our school to succeed,” Goltz said. “And even in sports, it kind of takes the same kind of work ethic. And I think that’s kind of poured out into other things that we do to keep our school going.”
In addition to all of the wins the teams he has coached have earned through the years, Goltz has also received his share of honors. He was named the 2022 Boys Basketball National High School Athletic Coaches Association (NHSACA) Coach of the Year, and twice previously was a finalist for that honor in both basketball and football. He has also earned statewide honors as Nebraska high school coach of the year.
In October, Goltz was inducted into the Peru State College Athletic Hall of Fame, not as an athlete, but for all he has accomplished in athletics after graduating.
“Peru is in many ways like Falls City Sacred Heart,” Goltz said. “It’s small. It’s really kind of a family atmosphere and I think that was great for me.”
In his acceptance speech at Peru State College, Goltz thanked his wife Janice and their children Alicia, Matt and Maggie, for all the support they’ve given him through the years. Janice is a graduate of Hartington Cedar Catholic. Goltz said they both came from strong Catholic families and they wanted their children to attend Sacred Heart from kindergarten through their graduations, which they all did.
“When you really believe in your school, you want your kids to be in your school,” Goltz said.
He said his wife and children all made sacrifices through the years to allow him to pursue coaching.
“That means missing many family milestones or planning family events around summer camps, games and practices,” Goltz said. “My success would not be if not for having a supportive and understanding family.”
And by any definition of success, Goltz has achieved it. The wins, state championships, career longevity and the impact on the lives of those he’s taught and coached for nearly four decades. And like the “Sacred Heart Way,” Goltz’ way has been very similar.
“If anybody’s seen me coach, I’m not a yeller and a screamer,” he said. “I’m just kind of a guy that’s, you go about your business and if you work hard, things are going to go well.”
And they have. For 37 years and counting.
