Due to all the push-ups that have endured every day screaming of high school football at Sherman Oaks Notre Dame High in the 1990s, Dunkiler gets his final laugh later this month, taking command of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in the Coronado.
“Now I have to salute him,” former Notre Dame coach Kevin Rooney said.
After graduating from high school in 1994 and attending the Naval Academy, Keeler commands one of the navy’s most prominent ships.
“It’s incredible that he is responsible for this,” Rooney said.
Keeler is the Knights’ defensive back and track athlete and is one of five brothers who joined Notre Dame. Track coach Joe McNab, who just won the 11th Southern Section Championship, was his defensive back coach.
“Good boy,” McNab said.
“He’s a great kid and a guy who fits all the boxes in terms of getting things right,” Rooney said.
Rooney, McNab and former football assistant Jeff Kremer travel to the San Diego area for command replacements. For some reason, Keeler invited his former high school coach after every day of sweat and tears at Sherman Oaks.
“If he had known he would be very powerful, he wouldn’t have run that much,” Kremer said.
Keeler is not the first Notre Dame graduate to rise in Navy ranks. Retired, Mike Mullen, was chairman of the Co-State Chief of Staff from 2007 to 2011, and graduated from Notre Dame in 1964.
Rooney, who retired in 2019 after 40 years as a football coach, said his goal is always to “help children become great people and get things right.”
Coaches know it’s time for graduates to come back to campus to share how they’re doing and explain how their lessons learned as teenagers have made a difference in their lives.
When summer begins, graduates move on through their lives and the class of 2029 arrives, it reminds everyone that wins and losses are not the most important thing in high school. It teaches life lessons and prepares students to become adults, good people, and good community members.
Watching a former Los Angeles area high school football player in charge of aircraft carriers proves that everything running to gain stamina, everything that preaches to work together as a team, everything that practice is perfect… that’s true.
Just listen, learn and devote yourself to reaching your goals.
Salute to all coaches and teachers who understand their true work is about creating opportunities for students to succeed through wisdom and inspiration.
Captain Keeler, Bravo Zulu, Anchor Awee. It’s safe.
