A Northwest Indiana Life in the Spotlight: Dave Bock

For Dave Bock, English teacher and head coach for Girls’ Varsity Soccer at Crown Point High School, the passion he holds for his career comes from the large web of educators that has surrounded him since birth. His mother worked as a teacher, as well as his maternal aunts. Many of his cousins have teaching and coaching backgrounds.

When it came time for him to choose a path, it seemed inevitable that he would end up in the classroom.

“I guess I came by it naturally,” Bock said.

Bock began both his coaching and teaching career in 2012, just after his graduation from Benedictine University. After he landed an interview with Wheeler High School, he received a job offer and began working as an English teacher and the head coach for the Boys’ Varsity Soccer team.

“There was definitely some trial and error. It was a lot of taking my lumps and learning as I went, but we had some good success,” Bock said.

Bock’s career has spanned across many high schools in the Northwest Indiana Region. Bock stayed with Wheeler High School for five years before he began employment with Portage High School. He taught English and coached boys’ soccer there for two years before moving to Boone Grove High School.

While at Boone Grove High School, he made a connection with Chris Mikrut, head coach of the Crown Point High School girls soccer program. Subsequently, Bock began teaching for Crown Point in the fall of 2021, and following Mikrut’s departure from the Girls’ Soccer program a year later, Bock took over as head coach.

Over the past decade, Bock’s mentorship has received the space to grow into an approach that places much of the emphasis on making students feel welcome and supported.

“There’s a lot of lessons to be taken from the classroom and the way that you want to make students feel when they’re in there,” Bock said. “You want to push them to be their best. You want to make sure that you do everything you can to go out of your way to try to help them reach their goals.”

Bock similarly focuses on involving his students on the field, too. Prior to graduating university, Bock attended a coaching course where he interacted with coaches from various backgrounds, including coaches for college and national teams. Here, he discovered the concept of house games, a unique approach to boosting team bonding and familiarity.

Bock’s version of house games relies on a draft to kick off the year, focusing on distributing each team member to a house. From there, students receive the opportunity to score points for their house in many different ways. At the end of the season, the winning house receives a small prize.

Through house games, every student gets the opportunity to allow their contributions to shine, either on the field or in smaller challenges, such as trivia. Students gain familiarity with one another and build camaraderie with fellow house members, working together to tally points before the end of the year. In cases where some players might not otherwise be involved in a game, the house point system pulls them in and connects them to the players on the field. This incentive keeps players engaged with the sport and each other.

“Our mission statement is to be the best place to play high school girls soccer in Indiana. It doesn’t necessarily mean we’re gonna win the state championship,” Bock said. “We’re more driven by ‘Are we creating an experience where students will walk away and have great memories of their time in the program?’ We want students to be able to look back and say ‘That was a great four years.’ We want to give them experiences and memories that they’ll hold onto forever.”

This desire to give students positive memories has made an impact on previous students who keep Bock updated in their lives. He enjoys being able to see them grow.

“I still have good relationships with a lot of the guys from long ago,” Bock said. “ I really appreciate that I’m still in contact with them and that I get to see a lot of them already becoming men. I just went to the wedding of one of my players from Wheeler High School. He was a senior in my second year of teaching.”

While Bock has impacted many, he wants to emphasize that the joy he gets from being a mentor to students is not rooted in a desire to be revered. For Bock, the biggest draw to his work is operating as part of something larger to help his students get to where they need to be.

“I feel like the longer you’re in it, the more you just realize that it isn’t about you, and it’s not supposed to be,” Bock said. “There’s just so many people that are involved in the success we’ve had as a program. Our staff, from a coaching standpoint, but in the classroom as well. Everything that I do and succeed with is stuff I’ve learned from somebody else. I see my position as being a step on somebody else’s path.”

Bock further emphasized the people around him that have made his approach as a coach possible.

“I’m the figurehead, but there’s a lot of people working behind the scenes,” Bock said. “We’re a big school. I really think that everything we’re able to do is possible because I have a bigger staff who all, in their own way, help make things run.”

Beyond the Crown Point High School staff, Bock cited the importance of his support system at home that has continually pushed him to grow as both a leader and a person.

“My wife is the assistant principal at the middle school at Taft in Crown Point. She is a very ambitious, driven, and hard-working person. I have been so inspired to try to be great because of her. Similarly, my two kids have totally changed my life in terms of how I approach everything over the past couple years,” Bock said. “I think I have always given everything I had, but they allow me to do everything with a purpose.”