‘We’re missing one’: The Schutte family’s road through grief to glory
The buzzer sounded, but Halstead girls basketball coach Derek Schutte didn’t hear it. Not really.
All around him, players surged, fans screamed and the Dragons celebrated a 13-point comeback to win the first girls high school basketball state title in school history. His daughter, Dalaina, was a senior starter on the team.
And yet, Derek stood frozen. Then came the hug. Dalaina found him in the swirl of celebration and wrapped her arms around him.
“I blacked out,” he told her. “What just happened?”
What happened was the kind of fairy-tale ending most families couldn’t dream up. A husband-and-wife coaching duo, raising eight kids in a small Kansas town, each winning a state championship in the same school year — with their daughter starting for both.
In the fall, Diana Schutte coached Halstead volleyball to a 43-2 record and the school’s first state title. In the winter, Derek’s basketball team followed suit, going 25-1 and bringing home another first. Dalaina was at the heart of both.
But beneath that joy pulsed a deeper current. One seat in the stands still felt empty. Twelve years earlier, the Schuttes had lived through every family’s worst nightmare.
‘We’re missing one’
Before the state titles, before the move to Halstead, Derek and Diana Schutte were just college basketball players falling in love at Bethel College.
They bonded over pick-and-rolls, late-night gym sessions and the shared belief that sports could teach life’s most important lessons. They married in 2006, started their coaching careers in Jetmore, a small western Kansas town, and eventually moved to Halstead in 2012.
It felt like a new beginning: a new chapter together in a new town with new teams.
Then came January 3, 2013.
Diana was driving near Maize with two of their children when their vehicle was involved in a devastating crash. Their 3-year-old son, Dyron, didn’t survive.
It was the first day back from winter break when a police officer arrived at the high school to inform Derek of the accident. Principal Joe Gerber drove him to pick up Dominique and Dalaina, then just a first-grader and kindergartner, and rushed them to the hospital.
“I knew something wasn’t good,” Derek said. “Then we got to the hospital and they told me they were OK, but Dyron wasn’t.”
The season stopped. Time stopped. Derek was in the middle of his first year coaching in Halstead and had a game the next night. He missed that first game back, but returned to the sidelines for the rest of the season. He wanted to keep going — he had to.
Derek and Diana were no longer just coaches or parents. They were a family submerged in grief, trying to keep three young daughters afloat.
“It was really hard to deal with as a family, but my parents handled themselves with so much poise,” Dominique said. “They always put us first, instead of themselves. Family isn’t just a word to us, it’s an action.”
For Diana, the thought of ever returning to the gym was unbearable. It was Dyron’s second home. He was always there, sitting next to Derek, clapping in the stands, cheering like he was part of the team.
Still, that August, she tried. She was unsure if returning would bring healing or heartbreak. Before the first match, Derek brought the kids like always. Diana scanned the bleachers, instinctively counting heads — something she had always done.
Then she froze.
We’re missing one, she thought.
She already knew, of course. But the sight of that empty seat shattered her.
“I had to try to keep it together for my girls,” she said. “But it hit me so hard.”
More than a decade later, one of those players — Starr O’Neal — is now Diana’s assistant at Halstead and a mother herself.
“It was such an incredible comeback at the time, but now, knowing everything she went through, it’s even more amazing,” O’Neal said. “She is so strong and resilient and is such a big role model as a mom and as a coach for me.”
Diana found unexpected purpose in returning.
“Those girls probably saved me,” she said. “Your whole day was just thinking about your kid and thinking about your loss, so coaching gave me a little part of the day where I could focus on something else. It didn’t let me lock myself in the house like I wanted to.”
All in the family
Life inside the Schutte household rarely slows.
Eight kids — Dominique (19), Dalaina (18), Drihanna (13), Daya (12), Durant (9), Desmond (6), Darnell (4) and Dean (1) — two coaches and a calendar packed with practices, carpools and chaos. Most days feel like a 1,000-piece puzzle, but they’ve managed to fit the pieces together.
“The miracle of getting all of our kids to games is probably more impressive of a feat than our coaching,” Diana joked.
Their life runs on a kind of controlled madness. In volleyball season, Diana corrals the kids, drops them in Derek’s classroom and grabs a schedule he has printed out for her. At home, it’s a lot of sticky notes and crock-pot meals left behind by Diana. Come basketball season, they trade roles: clipboard for carpool.
Dinner as a full unit is rare. But when it happens, the table turns into a coaching clinic.
“Sometimes it can be hard to get a word in at the table at our house,” Derek said with a laugh. “Everyone thinks they are a coach and thinks they are right with their way.”
Dominique and Dalaina now run their own version of Uber, ferrying younger siblings to practice. Holidays take two cars — minimum. Somehow, it works.
It works so well, in fact, that the couple was recently honored with a special award by the Greater Wichita Sports Commission — a rare night out that prompted Derek to joke it was the first date night they’d had in 20 years.
“Everyone always thinks being in such a big family is so insane, but to me, it’s just normal,” Dominique said. “It probably is chaos, but it doesn’t seem that crazy to us. It’s way more fun than chaotic.”
Derek and Diana coach the same way they parent: with intention, humility and a focus on the bigger picture. Wins are nice, but character matters more.
From the start, both have emphasized team-first values — not just with their own kids, but with every player who wears a Halstead jersey. That’s how the Halstead girls basketball team won state without a single player averaging more than 10 points.
“My parents really are superstars,” said Dalaina, who will play volleyball for Bethel. “I’ve seen the late nights, I’ve seen the long weekends and the busy weeks. It really is incredible to see how they pull it all off.”
Their own children have grown up hearing the same message: it’s not about how many points you score — it’s about how you show up for your teammates.
“We try to hammer that home,” Derek said. “How did the team do? How many high fives did you give? How much did you talk to your teammates? That’s what we care about.”
Their children don’t compete for attention. They’re taught to chase their own paths, not their siblings’ shadows.
“My parents do such a good job about making sure we each have our own personalities and our own things that we do,” Dominique said. “They leave it up to us and don’t put us in a bubble. If I was on the forensics team instead of basketball, they would support me just as much.”
Now, the same signs that Dalaina and Dominique once held in the stands — “The coach is my mom” or “The coach is my dad” — are passed down to younger siblings, who cheer just as loudly.
When Dominique, a college basketball player at Ottawa, plays near home, her student section wears her last name — and shares her DNA.
The years go on, but the family identity stays the same: together, always.
“I just hope it stays that way forever,” Diana said.
A dream fulfilled, a seat that stays empty
On the first night of the Class 3A state volleyball tournament, Dominique Schutte stayed up past midnight in a Missouri hotel room, watching her mother and younger sister punch their ticket to the semifinals.
Her own college game was hours away, but sleep could wait. Family came first.
Back in Halstead, Diana Schutte didn’t walk through the door until 2 a.m. But there was no time to savor the win. She was still a coach, with a looming championship run later that morning, but also still a mom — with a baby to nurse, laundry to fold and a house that never really sleeps.
Twelve hours later, she and Dalaina were celebrating the school’s first volleyball state championship. Another Schutte family dream realized.
“I would do anything to wear a blue and white uniform again,,” Dominique said. “Watching them live out the dream that we all talked about for so long felt like a Hollywood movie.”
In the final seconds of both championship games, Derek and Diana focused where they always had: on the players, the moment, and each other. But just beneath the joy, one question always lingers.
What if Dyron had been here?
“You definitely still feel the hole,” Dominique said. “My sister and I talk all of the time about how he probably would’ve been in our same friend group.”
The younger siblings never met Dyron, but they still ask about him. Darnell, the youngest boy, looks like him. Acts like him, too.
It’s impossible not to imagine the life he would’ve had.
“He probably would be playing basketball and would have run track with us,” Dalaina added. “That’s still hard to think about.”
To this day, family members still wear a blue bracelet that reads “Dyron, my little superhero” — a nod to his love for superheroes, especially Captain America, his favorite Halloween costume.
Every January 3, they try to return to the crash site. They place a Captain America mask in his honor. The night before, they eat at Applebee’s, another Dyron favorite. When his birthday comes around in February, Diana still likes to decorate the house with balloons and wrap presents.
Time moves on, but the grief remains. In some ways, Diana says, it intensifies with every missed milestone. The birthdays. The firsts. Those moments are when his absence feels loudest.
“My mind still wanders to tucking in our sweet Dyron for the last time,” Diana wrote on Facebook. “How I would give anything to go back to that night just for a minute, 30 seconds, just even a brief moment.”
Her heart aches for all the things Dyron never got to experience — and all the moments the family never got to share with him.
Even with a storybook season, that ache remains. No championship can replace a child.
“He would have been a sophomore this year, so I still wonder what it would be like if he was here,” Diana said. “Would he have been in the student section cheering us on? I still think about that.”
This story was originally published July 9, 2025 at 6:01 AM.
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