Dan Irwin has been coaching football for over two decades, the last 18 of those at Hahnville Highschool. Coach Erwin has been with the team through thick and thin, leading players and even other coaches on and off the field. This year was no different, until suddenly in the height of a very successful season, he found himself lying in a hospital bed.

Giving a brief summary of his career, he said, “I’ve been coaching for 25 years, I started in 1993 at L.W. Higgins High School. I was an assistant football coach on the offensive line, I was an assistant wrestling coach, and also an assistant softball coach for 2 years. I spent 4 years at Higgins, then I went to East St. John and spent 3 years there. Then I came here[Hahnville] in 2000 and i’ve been here ever since, so this is my 18th year at Hahnville High School. I’ve been the offensive and defensive line coach, I am currently the defensive line coach. ”

When it comes to football, Coach Erwin has quite a bit of experience. At Hahnville alone, he has a state championship, multiple state runnerups, and countless playoff and regular season victories under his belt. This year, his defensive line played a major role in Hahnville making it the dome.

But football is not the only sport Coach Irwin is involved with, in fact, he nearly single handedly restarted the wrestling program. When asked about the wrestling program, Coach Irwin had this to say: “I am also the wrestling coach at Hahnville High School. We started the program in 2000, this is the 18th year. We have eight straight district championships, 10 district championships overrall- we’re looking for our 9th straight this year.”

Coach Erwin has coached 3 wrestling state champions in the past five years, and dozens of district champions. The hahnville wrestling program is arguably the best of any public school in the state, and it’s all because of the dedication of Dan Erwin.

Rarely do we see high school coaches with this kind of commitment, So what keeps someone coaching for so long? He says, “it’s the kids”. “My favorite thing about coaching is the kids. The kids bring a joy. I get to see young men grow into men, and later on in life we foster relationships- still to this day I keep in contact with a lot of football players and a lot of wrestlers. 

Devyn Ortalano, a football player at Hahnville High School, said “He’s worked us to be men. I mean, we work hard every day at practice, he gets on us all the time, and he just helps us out- kinda’ guides us through everything.”

This year, hahnville athletes and staff took a blow to the heart when they were informed Coach Erwin had been hospitalized, for what was thought to be a heart attack.

This is how he [Irwin] described it: “Earlier this year, on October first, I got a little scare- I thought I had a heart attack. A couple doctors told me I had a heart attack. I went to the hospital, stayed overnight. The next morning they wanted to run some tests and do a stress test on my heart. One of the older doctors said, ‘well I think you had a heart attack, let’s go do an angiogram.’ Well, they did the angiogram and thank God I did not have a heart attack. It was mainly my blood pressure- went out of control. I’ve been on blood pressure medicine for a long time, because of my weight- as you know i’m a happy fat guy. So it was a blood pressure control thing. They put me on different medicines, five to be exact. I tried to come back to school on thursday, and my blood pressure was 90 over 60. The administration sent me home. That Friday I had to go to the doctor- that Friday, the following Monday, the following Wednesday, and the following Friday they had to adjust my medication. Now i’m back to normal, i’m back to 128 over 82. and, I feel great!” “I had to miss two football games this year- i’ve never missed a football game. I even coached a football game with pneumonia a few years ago. It was really tough to miss a football game, to miss the kids you work with every day. Coming back, this first team we played with me back was East St. John and it was a shutout. It was a great feeling. And we’ve been on a role ever since. The kids work hard, they do whatever we ask them to do, and now we’re in week 15. That’s what we work for, we’re in the Super Dome.”

Devyn commented: “It was heart-wrenching, I mean, whenever you get a coach-especially someone that plays that big of a role in your life and in your team- you get worried. But, we didn’t stop working. We knew he wouldn’t want us to stop working so we worked hard. We played some of the best games I think we played all season while he was gone just because he was there, still.”

Despite the difficulty and stress that comes with coaching, Coach Erwin doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon. He will finish out his career at Hahnville high school pursuing his passion, knowing it could be the very thing that kills him.

With Press Play Productions, I’m Korbin Bryan. Thanks for reading.