Steve Ward

Wow, look at all the pictures of guys with long, bushy sideburns from 1971. I couldn’t grow them then and I still cannot grow them now, but, I still do have a full head of hair today. Life is full of trade-offs!

The summer after O’G graduation I met a girl named Marni two weeks before heading to the University of Nebraska Lincoln to pursue my dream of playing college tennis. Nebraska was a great experience but after one semester I traded in my partial tennis scholarship for a girlfriend scholarship and transferred to South Dakota State. I completed my college tennis career at SDSU and graduated in 1975, but more importantly, Marni and I got married after our junior year at SDSU. 47 years, 4 kids and 4 grandkids later we are now embarking on the next phase of life as I retired in April of this year.

Our oldest son, Matt is in the real estate business in Sioux Falls. Our daughter Shannon and husband Eric (and 4 grandkids) live in Chanhassen MN – Shannon is taking a break from being a high school special ed teacher and Eric is in finance with Wells Fargo. Our middle son, Mike is a tennis coach and teaching tennis professional in Brookfield WI. Our youngest son, Tom, is a 4th grade teacher in Minneapolis. We are extremely proud of all of them.

After SDSU graduation I took a sales job with Burroughs/Unisys Corporation. Over the next 18 years I held a variety of sales and sales management positions living in Rapid City, Sioux Falls and Eden Prairie MN. In 1993 we took the leap and I accepted a business development job with Fiserv, Inc. in Brookfield WI. During the next 28 years I held a variety of business development, business management, and sales leadership positions, retiring after leading a team for the last 7 years that was responsible for the business negotiation of the largest and most complex commercial contracts with our banking clients.

Over the years I developed a passion for coaching youth sports and coached baseball for 15 years, football for 10 years with some basketball and soccer thrown in as well. For the past 16 years I have returned to my sports roots and coached boys varsity tennis at Brookfield East HS, one of the strongest high school tennis programs in Wisconsin. I retired from coaching tennis as well after this spring season – going out on a high note as our team was undefeated and won the Wisconsin state championship. I feel good about this timing as our son Mike is taking over my position after working as one of our JV coaches for many years.

In 2018 we turned our vacation home in North Captiva Florida into our primary residence and made our home in Brookfield Wisconsin our vacation home. We spend about 8 months in Florida and 4 months in Wisconsin – you guess which months.

Wishing everyone health and happiness.