Editor’s Note: Toelle and the Gerald Lilly Award winner, who will be announced Monday, will be honored at the Jerry Jones Athletic Hall of Fame Induction and Alumni Awards Saturday, Oct. 19. Tickets are available here.
David Toelle ’01, ’08 did not play golf for coach Randy Bemiss during their time together at Kansas Wesleyan.
Bemiss’ affect on him, though, was and continues to be enormous.
“He was one of those guys who had a positive outlook on everything and, especially, in his situation,” Toelle said. “Just to be in the same sentence as that guy is an honor itself.”
Toelle, KWU’s associate athletic director for athletic communications, is the 2024 recipient of the Randy C. Bemiss Coyotes Lifetime Achievement Award. It honors individuals who have made an impact on the KWU athletics program over an extended period of time.
Bemiss coached the Coyote golf teams from 2011 to 2017, the same year he passed away.
Toelle, who earned degrees from KWU in 2001 and 2008, began working in the Athletics Department in 1998 doing statistics for basketball games. He has been sports information director since 2001 and was named Kansas Conference’s SID of the Year in 2012, 2020 and 2023.
Toelle was promoted to associate athletic director in 2022, the same year he was inducted into the Jerry Jones Kansas Wesleyan Coyote Athletic Hall of Fame.
“I think it’s just professional growth, becoming more mature, settling into a role,” he said, “not just being the guy who does stats and all that stuff, but an administrative role allows me to do those things that help (Director of Athletics) Miguel (Paredes), help (Deputy Athletic Director) Richard (Speas), help (Assistant Athletic Director for Developmental Programs) Meagan (Contreras). We’re one big team.”
Toelle has overseen sweeping changes in the way the department communicates and the way events are presented, most notably online.
“I think the change is from seeing less traditional methods of things being done to more creative content, videos and creative posts … I call it new media,” he said. “It’s some of the traditional things that we’re used to doing — the writing and story posting and doing stats and doing them the right way.”
Toelle has been an integral part of the department and university’s expansive growth of late.
“When I started, we had 13 sports, and now it’s 26, with women’s wrestling coming,” he said. “Then you have to add in another 20-some developmental teams, so it’s really like we have almost 50 teams that we have to take care of, just with the explosion of it and the enrollment growth.”
Toelle has fond memories of working with Bemiss.
“Just the way he connected with the kids and he always pushed them to be their best, day in and day out,” he said. “He took programs that were in a good place and made them really good, really quick. He laid the groundwork for our women’s team to be very good and continues to be very good. He won the conference his first year leading the program.
“His positive outlook on life, overcoming mountains of (health) odds, and the stories he would tell about all that stuff sitting on the bed of his truck while he had a cigarette is one of the things I remember the most.”
Toelle values one particular piece of advice Bemiss offered.
“I’m not very good at it, but it’s not letting things bother you to a big extent,” he said. “He told me, if anything, don’t worry what other people think. Just do it and keep going and it will all get better eventually.”
Story by Bob Davidson
