A 27-year veteran of Hahnville High School, Denyse Keller is no stranger to helping kids excel in the all important final years of secondary education.

However, something she is not used to is being called “coach.” But that is what students call her after her appointment to Hahnville’s football program as an “Academic Coach.”

“I get a kick out of that,” Keller said. “I hear ‘Coach Keller!’ in the hallway and it is kind of funny to me. But whatever it is that is fine.”

Keller was appointed as Hahnville’s academic coach after a coach who was new to the school district asked her to help one of his students navigate the graduation process. That is when she caught the eye of Hahnville head football coach Nick Saltaformaggio.

“I stepped in and said, ‘send him to me,’” Keller said. “I met up with the kid after school and helped to revise and proofread a paper, and Coach Salt came to me and said ‘Thank you. Because that kid would have gotten lost in the shuffle.’”

It was not long after that experience that Saltaformaggio asked Keller to take on a role as an assistant football coach focused solely on players’ academics.

“Everybody who plays football goes through her,” Saltaformaggio said. “Everything goes through her. You scheduling ACT prep, she handles the study hall for us and she has everyone’s email and emails the parents. She is in charge. If she tells me a kid has to miss practice, then so be it. I’ll take care of it on my end, but she does everything for us academically. She is really the one responsible for getting him eligible.”

Saltaformaggio said Keller has brought a different element to his team by focusing more on academics.

“That is the most important thing I do,” Saltaformaggio said. “Not every kid is going to play college football, but every kid can go to college.”

According to Saltaformaggio, adding Keller to his roster has been one of his most important moves since arriving at the school.

“She has been as important to my football program as anybody I have in it,” Saltaformaggio said.

In essence, Keller’s job is to make sure everyone on the team is on the right track academically.

“For most of these kids, it is not even studying with them, it is organization,” Keller said. “It is setting priorities and helping give them the resources they need to be successful. It is very difficult to be an athlete and a very good student unless you have somebody there. It is just guiding them and offering support and even just patting them on the back.”

For the spring game, Keller saw her first big moves as academic coach when Saltaformaggio asked her to hold kids out of the game who were not showing satisfactory progress in their academics and were not on track to pass the semester.

“He held kids off the field to send the message that obviously academics are more important than athletics,” Keller said. “You need one in order to get to the other. If you are going to be successful on the field, you have to be successful in the classroom.”

Keller is not only a veteran teacher but also a mother to two student-athletes — both baseball players.

Older son Dylan Keller is the former starting quarterback at Hahnville and is now playing college baseball at Louisiana College in Pineville.

Keller said the position comes natural to her. Most of Keller’s success relies on keeping kids on track on a day-to-day basis.

“Some of these kids don’t have that and I think just the fact we are holding them accountable has made a difference,” Keller said.

As part of that goal, she tracks the grades of football players, contacts their parents if they fall behind in class or have discipline problems and just looks out for them as a whole. Whatever she is doing, it is always to serve one goal — that of using athletics as an incentive for academic success.

“Sometimes athletics are the reason a kid wants to come to school,” Keller said. “So if we can tie in the opportunities education can provide for these kids, wow! Maybe someone hasn’t even told them.”

Keller also sets benchmarks for her players. In fact, before the fall football season began, she met with each senior football player to assess their academic performance and determine how she may be able to better assist them.

So far she has seen success and has helped at least one football player raise his grades and ACT score enough to be able to accept a scholarship at a Division I school. While part of her job is finding scholarship opportunities and communication with college coaches, for Keller and the rest of the coaching staff, the overall job is not as much about getting football players to play in college, but to help them set and achieve life goals.

“We want to see athletes experience success in the classroom and at the next level,” Keller said. “Even if it is not division I, II or III. What if just taking the skills they got from being on a team to the next level. Being able to collaborate and come up from adversity. That is life skills, and we can help them find those skills they need to become successful.”

Overall, Keller said she cherishes the work she is able to put into student athletes because she knows it helps the community as a whole.

“The best part of my job is the reward in knowing that at the end of the day I have helped a player get one step closer to reaching his goals,” Keller said. “These are great kids who want to succeed and may just need some support to get there.”

–By Kyle Barnett