Few coaches have had a survivor story quite like Nicholls’ Podeyn

When you coach teams at several different levels in college athletics, you usually have a survivor story or two to tell.

No one has a survivor story quite like Robert Podeyn

For the third-year Nicholls women’s soccer coach, his tale dates to 2009.

After leading Northwood of Texas to the NAIA national tournament, Podeyn accepted the position as head coach at Southwest Baptist, a Division II school in Missouri.

“That was a complicated situation,” Podeyn said in one of the all-time great understatements.

The story revolved around Podeyn’s predecessor at Southwest Baptist.

“There was a coach that was in charge of the program. He was the head coach, who had a very enigmatic personality. He was charming. He was one of these personalities that people either really just loved and adored him, or just couldn’t stand him. He had that bipolar effect on people,” Podeyn related.

Immediately upon accepting the position at Southwest Baptist, Podeyn received a call from a coaching colleague concerning the guy Podeyn would be replacing. Podeyn recounted the exchange, starting with his friend’s inquiry:

“Do you know what you’re walking into?”

“This is another program I need to rebuild.”

“It might be a little more than that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’m sure you’ve watched the TV show Survivor?

“No.”

“Watch this season of Survivor. Go on whatever it is NBC or CBS or whatever it is, I don’t even know what it was on and watch the first season of that show. That’s the guy.”

That guy was none other than Benjamin Wade, the coach at Southwest Baptist. Podeyn’s friend was aware of Wade since he had coached a girl in California who had played for Wade on a club team.

Wade was quite a character, Podeyn was about to learn.

“He was one of these guys that wouldn’t be out there with the team warming up. The assistants would have the team warming up,” Podeyn explained. “They would bring him out on a golf cart, and he would have to play a certain song when he was coming out. He had snakeskin leather boots. He wore an Armani suit. That was his game-day outfit. He had the long hair and the bun in the back and everything. He had a presence, and it was about him.

“When I applied for the position, I didn’t know any of this stuff.”

Wade left Southwest Baptist in the middle of the 2019 season. He told school officials and his team that he was going to a hospital in California to undergo tests for a possible brain tumor.

“Nobody knew except two (assistant athletic directors) and his assistant coaches,” Podeyn recounted. “But the assistants didn’t share it with anybody, so the team didn’t know and they’re fund-raising money and they raised, like, I don’t know, $8,000 for him.

“He came back in like, I don’t know, November, and basically said, ‘yeah, I didn’t have a brain tumor. I didn’t have brain cancer. I was on a TV show.”

Wade participated in Survivor: Tocantins, during the 18th season of the show in 2009.

He insisted his castmates on the show call him “Coach” before he morphed into the self-proclaimed “Dragon Slayer.” He ended up with a fifth-place finish on the show.

In a conversation with Andy Dehnart of the website realityblurred.com that was conducted before the Survivor: Tocantins episodes aired in 2009 but not available to the public under after the fact, Wade revealed his scheme:

“I haven’t let the cat out of the bag. And I could and maybe should with my girls who think that I’m in a hospital somewhere dying, essentially,” he said. “I had some tests done on what they thought was a brain tumor last year, but it wasn’t, but I did (have the original tests done), so I told them I was going back in for testing. I said I’m going to have a lot of testing and evaluations; that was when I flew out there the first time, to L.A. So this time I said I’ve got to go back out, get some testing done, and be away for two months.”

Upon his return to Southwest Baptist, Wade was fired by Brent Good, the school’s athletic director.

“He said he was going to be gone for a week. And the week went beyond that, which went beyond that, which went beyond that,” Good told the Springfield News-Leader at the time.

The escapade sealed Wade’s fate.

Coach Wade’s a good coach,” Good went on. “I think the choice he made to do what he did was not done in the right way. With that, there’s a consequence with it. Unfortunately, that consequence is that his contract is not renewed, and he’s no longer here.”

Wade’s departure left a house divided on several fronts, starting with the school’s administration, according to Podeyn.

“The two women (athletic department administrators) that knew what was going on, one of them was made co-interim A.D., who didn’t want the guy fired and thought the guy should have stayed. The program was built, and he walked on water. The other A.D. that knew about it, was in (the) compliance (department). You’ve now got the co-A.D. and the compliance (administrator) want to find a way to get the other guy back. The other co-A.D. is partnered with them,” Podeyn explained.

The new coach also had a divided locker room.

“I get resistance from the administration, who love the other guy. I have a team split down the middle that loved and adored him to absolutely he was vile and hated him,” said Podeyn.

Changes in the roster needed to be made, Podeyn realized, but he was not allowed to do more than tweak it a bit.

“I would have had to get rid of that half (of players loyal to the previous coach), but I couldn’t do it,” Podeyn said. “They wouldn’t allow it. I had to keep those kids and bring in some other kids.

“The problem is, is that when you have within a team, you have drama. When you have a cancer on the team, that affects the team, and it really kinds of destroys the chemistry. I had that within the team and I’m bringing in other kids to try and change that, but some of those kids are going to get affected by that and then they leave.”

Podeyn’s squad managed to eke out seven wins that first season.

“How we won seven games that year, I don’t know,” Podeyn said.

The affects of the drama had hung over the program, leading Southwest Baptist to seasons of six and four wins over the next two seasons.

“Finally, Podeyn said with a sigh more than a decade later, “(the athletic administrators) both got fired. When they did, then I was able to make a large change and that’s when we went to seven wins, 14 and then 16 (over the next three years).”

The 2013 team went 14-5-2.

“I had a set of twins on the team that were sophomores that year. Their freshman year they were 7-9-3. Those players and these players were all freshmen and sophomores,” Podeyn said.” We had the right senior leadership in the mix.

“The middle of the season we were doing OK, but we hadn’t really clicked yet. About the middle of the season, things kind of clicked and we went on a run where we won nine games in a row. It literally just vaulted us to the top.”

Southwest Baptist advanced to the NCAA Division II playoffs, falling to Winona State in the first round.

“We went to the national tournament and actually had the game won, but we let up a late goal and we lost on penalty kicks. So we were actually eliminated from the national tournament without losing,” said Podeyn.

A year later, the team went 16-5-1 despite several key injuries and faced a rematch with Winona State, again in the opening round of the playoffs.

“They weren’t season-ending, but it was enough that it kept kids out at the wrong time” Podeyn said of the injuries. “We ended up losing the conference tournament championship game. We were down our starting goalkeeper, we were down a kid who was a Freshman of the Year, All-Region player and we were down another kid that was second team All-American.”

Despite all, the team reached the postseason for the second year in a row.

“We were down two starting defenders,” explained Podeyn. “We had to piece things together to play in the national tournament. We got back our starting goalkeeper, but she wasn’t quite 100 percent yet.

“We ended up again playing the same team that we had played the year before. We were up with four minutes left in the game and gave up a late goal. We survived through overtime because they really were putting it to us, but we didn’t give up a goal. We lost on penalties again.”

The two playoff appearances, Podeyn said, provided similar endings, but different seasons.

“I felt like we were a stronger team the second year,” said Podeyn.

Just for the record, the team that knocked Southwest Baptist out of the tournament two years in a row – Winona State – was not called the “Dragon Slayers” but the “Warriors.”