Bodiker Named Goshen Champion of Character

GOSHEN — Former Bethany coach and athletic director Dan Bodiker will receive the Dr. Roman Gingerich Champion of Character Award from Goshen College Maple Leaf Athletic Club during that institution’s homecoming ceremonies in October, according to a brochure from the college. Bodiker served as coach of Bethany’s boys and girls basketball, boys soccer, boys and girls track, and baseball during his tenure from 1964-1997. In the fall of 1997, he became Bethany’s athletic director, a post he held until retiring in 2007. After his retirement, he has served as an assistant boys basketball coach for the past two years.

During his 34 years as a coach, Bodiker won over 900 games and had an approximate varsity winning percentage of .560; records from the soccer team’s early years are incomplete. While the baseball sectional title in 1987 was the lone sectional title he won in IHSAA-sponsored competition, the Bruins were voted state champions in 1971 and 1972 by the Indiana Soccer Coaches Association and advanced to the semifinals of that association’s tournament in 1986.

Bodiker was inducted to the Elkhart County Sports Hall of Fame and the Indiana Soccer Coaches Hall of Fame in 2007. Since the spring of that year, the soccer, softball, baseball, and cross country teams have called home the Bodiker Athletic Fields on the school’s campus. Bodiker is joined by eight other Bethany representatives in the Hall; he coached six of those eight, with one person playing for the Bruins after his retirement from coaching.

The Champions of Character awards were created in 2006 by the Maple Leaf Athletic Club to honor Goshen alumni who “exemplify … the core values of Goshen College, the National Association for Intercollegiate Athletics, and the Mennonite Church.” Bodiker graduated from Goshen in 1964, lettering in baseball and soccer. He would be followed to his alma mater by his sons, one of whom was a two-time NAIA All-American soccer player and coaches high school boys soccer in Ohio.

Dan Bodiker (Elkhart County, Indiana Sports Hall of Fame)

Champions of Character (GoLeafs.net)

(Photo: Elkhart County Sports Hall of Fame)