COLUMBUS (OH) — After nearly 30 years at my current employer, I faced a rather difficult decision. Should I stay in Ohio, where I have lived my entire life or should I move to Arizona for a better job, more money and less snow? If it wasn’t for my family, friends and the Dayton Flyers, it would have been an easy decision. Yet, those side issues crept into the decision. I ended up deciding to go, but it wasn’t easy.

I was in my basement Saturday night trying to get it respectable enough for someone to buy the house when my cell phone rang with Tim Horsmon on the other end. Tim and I had become friends after meeting four years ago when I did an article about him and the rising Flyer volleyball program. Because of my need to get the house ready in a hurry before reporting to the new job I had entered a media blackout, not even knowing that Tim had resigned the day before.

In some ways I was surprised, in others ways I wasn’t. You don’t go 33-2 and not get noticed. Horsmon truly loves UD despite the fact that he will be leaving. It isn’t often that you have an opportunity to work at a place like the University of Dayton. It is a place of great tradition and great people and that isn’t lost on Tim.

Yet it was a decision that made a lot of sense. Maryland is his home territory and friends and family are hard to replace. Although he put off the officials at Maryland for several days, the lure of going home was too much. They say you can never go home, but this was his one opportunity to do just that. Just like my leaving only the second real job I ever had, when you are my age, you only get so many opportunities. In Horsmon’s case, they usually don’t give you a second chance when you turn them down the first time.

My wife and I made the trip to Arizona for the interview, just hoping that I would get an indication that there was enough interest that we should look at the real estate market. Things did go well and I knew before I got home that I had a job offer in my grasp. My biggest concern at that point was how my son, Justin, would take the news. He will be a senior in high school next year and I knew that it would be devastating for him to hear the news. Although I wanted to avoid the conversation, I knew it needed to be done. By the time we were through, the inventory of Kleenex in the house had shrunk significantly.

When Horsmon sat down with his team, he told me there wasn’t a dry eye in the place. I’m sure his was among the wet ones. This was an extremely hard decision for a young man that has become heavily invested in both the job and the people. Aside from his fellow coaches, there probably aren’t a whole lot of people that he feels closer to than his girls. When you are a young guy with no family in the area, the team becomes your family.

Yet, it was a decision that both of us had to make. For me it was career and the chance for my two sons to play baseball 12 months of the year, for him it was family. It is a decision that is easily second-guessed and it doesn’t matter how good the opportunity is, you still want to question if you made the right choice. I felt some of that on the phone with Tim and I really had to fight the urge to try to convince him to stay. He is a great person and a great coach that will not be easy to replace, but it was something he needed to do..

Tim is the kind of guy that really has it all. A great looking guy that probably has the moms wanting their daughters to go to UD just so they can get their picture with the coach. He has a great personality that could warm up dry ice. He has the work ethic of the kind of guy that you love to have working for you and he is the kind of coach that can make a B player an A and good team a national contender.

I wish him well with little concern that he will succeed. I feel certain he made the right decision for the right reasons and I hope he can move on and not look back.

On the other hand, Ted Kissell has a difficult decision to make. Does he bring in an experienced coach with a good track record or does he keep one of Horsmon’s assistants, Tami Ores or Jason Oliver. In the past, this might not have been a difficult decision in that both are excellent coaches that had a great deal to do with the success the team has had during Horsmon’s stay. Now, however, UD is just too good to hand it over to someone without needed experience. The staff has done such a good job of making Dayton a power; it might have aced one of them out of a promotional opportunity.

Kissell is a smart man and he certainly had a list of potential replacements from the moment the last point was scored in the MSU NCAA Tournament game. His problem will be finding a replacement that can continue the potential juggernaut that Horsmon has put in place. The team coming back is almost certainly going to be better than the team that lost just 2 games, yet duplicating that type of a season will be almost impossible. I wish whoever takes over the best of luck because they will have one heck of a large set of shoes to fill.