MONTAGUE – Dave Dusenberry is still playing high school football at the age of 57 – at least in his mind.

In the fall he spends every Friday night in the bleachers at one field or another. Sometimes his wife Barb is with him, sometimes not, but he admits that makes little difference.

“She says I don’t talk to her during the games, and I don’t,” Dusenberry said. “I might be there sitting with her, but mentally I’m on the field.”

There was a time when he actually played the sport, as an undersized but shifty running back who once scored four touchdowns in a varsity game.

These days he’s a passionate fan of three local teams – Montague, where is youngest son will be a senior this fall; Whitehall, where his real estate office is located, and Reeths-Puffer, where he was a player back in the 1980s.

As the managing broker at Coldwell Banker Woodland Schmidt, he sponsors media coverage for all three teams through MuskegonSports.com, because he knows what it means for young players to have their accomplishments recognized in the community

More than anything, he very grateful that he’s still around to enjoy another high school football season.

Dusenberry suffered a scary “widow-maker” heart attack 2 ½ years ago, meaning his main artery was 100 percent blocked and the outcome could have been tragic.

Luckily he survived with limited damage, learned his lesson and started pursuing a much healthier lifestyle.

“It was Jan. 25, 2020, right before COVID,” Dusenberry said. “My wife was gone with my daughter in Arizona, and I was outside shoveling in a little area. I went back inside, I just didn’t feel right, and it wouldn’t go away, so I told my son, who just had his driver’s permit for two weeks, to drive me to the medi center.

“I told the lady at the counter where my discomfort was, before it knew it I was in a room with a doctor saying ‘Sir, you’re having a heart attack. I was like, I’m only 55, no way. So they rushed me by ambulance to Mercy Hospital, where I learned I had 100 percent blockage in my main artery, and they inserted a stent.”

Dusenberry said the heart attack was a “huge wakeup call” about his diet and lifestyle.

“I work out five to six days per week,” he said. “I’m on the treadmill an hour per day, I’m working out with weights again, and I’ve totally changed my diet to plant-based foods. I feel great. I feel better than I have in years.”

‘We are brothers’

Most young football players take to the game because of parental influence, often because their dads played themselves or are big fans. That wasn’t the case for Dusenberry when he first signed up for youth league football.

“I was five years old, and you were supposed to be six to play, but they didn’t look at birth certificates back then,” he said. “My parents weren’t into sports at all. I was just hyper-competitive, football was my first love and I wanted to play.”

He played in the old West Side youth league for a few years before his family moved to the Reeths-Puffer district when he was in the third grade. Then he played in the old Laketon youth league before finally working his way up to the ninth-grade team at Laketon Junior High (now Reeths-Puffer Middle School).

He broke into varsity as a junior, became a part-time starter, and had the game of his life that season, rushing four touchdowns, including a 47-yard romp, in a 35-6 road victory over Muskegon Heights at Phillips Field.

It was the type of performance that old football players like to talk about decades later – and Dusenberry does.

“I actually should have scored five touchdowns,” he said, explaining that he broke loose on one play, and was about 15 yards from the end zone, when a referee inexplicably blew his whistle and ended the play. “It should have been a 60- or 70-yard touchdown run. I was gone. I was never touched, but they blew the whistle.”

Dusenberry was a fan favorite at Reeths-Puffer during those years, mostly because he was a plucky little runner who gave his all, despite his 5-foot-6, 160 pounds frame.

“I was just quick,” he said. “I’ve always been kind of strong, but I wouldn’t say that I was able to run anybody over. I would dodge them instead.”

The Reeths-Puffer varsity experience didn’t end for Dusenberry when he graduated in 1983. He has remained lifelong friends with dozens of his former teammates and rattles their names off without stopping to think.

“I would say I’ve kept in contact with a really good share of then, guys like Jim Webster, Tom Deephouse, Tin Fairfield, Dana Olsen,” he said. “We are brothers. I was just saying that to Jim Webster the other day, how we spent all of that time together, through blood sweat and tears.”

Dusenberry had a jarring experience about a year ago when his best friend from that Reeths-Puffer team, Gary Hines, passed away at a tragically young age.

Hines moved to the area from California in the early 80s, quickly became friends with Dusenberry, and they were both running backs for the Rockets. Hines even lived with Dusenberry and his family for a time during their senior year of high school.

“I was there the night he passed,” Dusenberry said. “For me, watching the hurt on his kids’ faces and his wife’s face was the hardest thing. That was tough. I just wanted to make sure I was there for them.”

Youngest son overcomes knee nightmares

Dusenberry played one year of semipro football for the old Muskegon Bears after graduation, then hung up the cleats for good when he enlisted in the U.S. Marines.

He eventually became the father of four sons, which allowed him to keep his hand in football for a long time. He helped coach several of their youth teams over the years, but none of them stayed in the sport long enough to play varsity.

Dusenberry’s best hope of having a high school football player in the family was his youngest son, Skeets Dusenberry, who played the sport through the seventh grade and had every intention of sticking with it. But terrible knee problems knocked him completely out of sports for nearly three years.

The issue first surfaced when he was preparing for his eighth-grade football season.

“He was supposed to start on his eighth-grade team, then one day he was running up a hill and said his knees hurt,” Dusenberry said. “We found out it was a condition where the cartilage catches and tears, so much so that in one case he disclocated his knee and they had to take cartilage out of one leg, grow it in a lab in Boston, and put it in the other knee while they reconstructed it.

“He’s had five surgeries, all at the University of Michigan, including two knee reconstructions and surgery on his elbow. He’s gone through hell, but he handled it way better than I would have.”

Skeets Dusenberry finally returned to sports with the Montague junior varsity baseball team when he was a freshman, then played another year of JV as a sophomore.

He played varsity baseball this spring, which finally gave Dave Dusenberry the chance to be a varsity dad.

The Wildcats started the season slow, with an 1-3 record, but then started playing great and won the West Michigan Conference championship and a district title before bowing out of the state tournament.

“What a great group of kids there were on that team,” Dusenberry said. “They played a lot of schools two and three and four times bigger than them, and they did very well. Skeets played first base and outfield and pitched a little bit, too. He’s a lefty.”

Skeets mentioned the possibility of playing football for Montague this season, since it’s his last year of high school, but that idea did not fly.

“His mom and I said no,” Dusenberry said. “It’s just not worth it. There was a time, not so long ago, when we were not sure he was going to be able to walk, let alone play sports.”

Ready for another prep football season

While he never had a son play varsity football, Dusenberry has remained very close to the sport.

As a huge Montague fan, he watched with pride as the Wildcats dominated most of their opponents over the past four of five seasons. He also suffered with them through a few painful disappointments.

He was in Clare in 2019 when the Wildcats led Maple City Glen Lake 24-10 in the fourth quarter of the state semifinals, before Glen Lake stormed back and tied the game and forced overtime.

Montague scored first in OT but missed the extra point. Glen Lake got the ball and scored on a fourth-down pass that everyone thought was out-of-bounds, then made the extra point and won 31-30.

“That was horrible,” Dusenberry said about the controversial TD call and the outcome of the game. “I think we would have won the state championship that year.”

A year later he was delighted to see the Wildcats waltz through an undefeated season and win the Division 7 state title.

He watched the championship win over Clinton from home, even though he wanted to be in the crowd at Detroit’s Ford Field in the worst way.

“I wanted to be there very badly, but with COVID and my heart condition, I decided to watch it on TV,” he said.

Dusenberry was close friends with former Montague head coach Pat Collins and was saddened when he resigned after the 2020 season and moved to Holland West Ottawa.

“I was very bummed, but I suspected it might be coming with Drew (Colins’ quarterback son) graduating that year,” he said.  “I wasn’t surprised when he went to West Ottawa. I believe that’s where his wife is from, and I think both of them taught there in the past. He’s just got a huge passion for coaching and he loves kids.”

Dusenberry was quick to embrace new Montague head coach Justin Dennett, who came from Greenville High School and took over the job last season.

“He’s a good guy,” Dusenberry said. “I reached out to him very early. Barb and I took him out to dinner.”

Dusenberry thinks Montague will still be very good this season, despite the loss of most of the players from the 2020 state title team.

“They are still loaded,” he said. “Isaaki Jarka is a great athlete, Adam Baird is one hell of a running back, Owen Peterson is an above average talent, and Chase Gowell is a gamer – that kids just makes things happen.”

Dusenberry admits that he favors Montague over rival Whitehall, but says Whitehall is the team on the Wildcats’ schedule he fears the most.

“They are loaded, as well,” he said about the Vikings. “Kyle Stratton (Whitehall’s junior quarterback) is the ultimate gamer. He just comes to play.

“I think that Montague-Whitehall game is going to be the hardest fought game of the year for both teams. It always is. Those kids grow up together. I still have a picture of Kyle Stratton sitting on my couch with my daughter when he was about five, and she was rubbing his head. I probably know most of the kids from both teams.”

Reeths-Puffer has struggled in recent years, but Dusenberry thinks the school made a great move by hiring Cody Kater, a former state champion quarterback at Montague, to be the head coach.

“I think it was a great hire,” he said. “Cody is bright and he’s going to connect with those kids. I think he’s going to be very good for that program. I have to think there is a ton of talent walking though those halls. They just need the right person to develop them.”

Dusenberry never waits for the games to begin to dive into a new season. He stops by practices and watches for hours by himself. He talks to coaches and players whenever he gets the chance. He even watches game film online.

The fact is that he’s never really stopped being a high school football player. He just happy to let the young guys do the hard work while he sits and enjoys the spectacle.

“I think I live vicariously through those kids,” he said. “It’s special because of the kids. It doesn’t have the money aspect, like college or the pros. Most of them just play for the love of the game.”