UNDAUNTED

PARALYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST Nate Hinze looked right at home in his new office at Port Washington High School, where he is athletic director and assistant principal. Photo by Sam Arendt
Nate Hinze picked a challenging time for his first high school athletic director and assistant principal job.
Thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, how students will attend school in fall is still being figured out, not to mention how they will be able to participate in prep sports.
“It’s quite the first year for it. I’m somebody who likes to shake hands and give high-fives. I don’t think I can do that,” Hinze said.
He looks to better times ahead as the world gets a handle on the virus. “I’m an optimist. This will hopefully be the worst year,” he said.
Hinze, 32, has been through worse years. His outlook has helped him get to where he is today.
Hinze is an athlete whose career at Cedar Grove-Belgium High School was cut short after he contracted osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer.
He missed his junior track and field and baseball seasons, and all of his senior year of sports, including football and basketball.
He ended up having part of his right leg amputated.
“There’s not really a good word besides it sucked,” Hinze said.
“I graduated high school thinking I was done (with sports) forever.”
But at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Hinze discovered its well-known wheelchair basketball team. He worked to adjust to this new type of game, which turned into an avenue for his competitiveness. The team won the college championship in 2007 and 2009.
Hinze became such a good player that he was selected for the U.S. Paralympic basketball team. He is one of the team’s two big men, although his coach wants to see him try his hand at outside shooting.
“If I’m shooting threes, we have a problem,” Hinze said with a laugh.
He helped the team earn a bronze medal at the 2012 Paralympics in London and brought home gold in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro. Paralympics are held after the Olympics in the same city.
Hinze said the Rio games faced a similar but less-serious challenge than the upcoming games in Tokyo. In 2016, fears about contracting the Zika virus, primarily transmitted by mosquitoes, was prevalent. Hinze’s family didn’t attend because of it.
Now, Hinze is doing weight and cardiovascular training for the next Paralympics, which has been postponed to 2021.
Hinze helped the U.S. take silver in 2018 World Wheelchair Basketball Championship, and he hopes to bring back gold from the games in Japan.
“I like our chances. We have a good core group of guys,” he said.
Hinze also plays for the Milwaukee Wheelchair Bucks, a coed team that includes Becca Murray, a Richfield native who Hinze regards as the best woman’s wheelchair basketball player in history.
Hinze considered going pro after college — Europe has professional wheelchair leagues — but said paychecks and health insurance weren’t guaranteed overseas.
He had earned a degree in education — his first summer job teaching children swimming lessons inspired him to enter the field — and in 2011 he took a job in Ripon as middle school physical education teacher and athletic director.
His physical challenges weren’t over. In 2013, less than two weeks after he was married, Hinze had a knee replacement after learning his artificial one had snapped. That canceled his and Ashley’s honeymoon in Jamaica.
In 2017, Hinze became the Sheboygan School District’s middle school athletic director, a position funded by a Physical Education Program grant. The district’s three middle schools didn’t offer sports at the time. Hinze led the charge to offer seven sports.
“We built it,” he said of the program.
In 2019, when the grant ran out, he found a job teaching physical education in the Mequon-Thiensville School District. It was the first time he wasn’t an athletic director.
Hinze was named Port High athletic director and assistant principal last month after Thad Gabrielse was promoted to be high school principal.
Hinze is grateful to be back in athletics full time and is awed by Port High’s facilities, including a turf football field, new gym, wrestling room, cafeteria and classrooms.
“You don’t really feel like you’re at a high school. It’s awesome,” he said. “I’m pretty spoiled for my first high school athletic director position with what we have.”
Hinze is thankful to be able to work at one school in one building with one set of coaches and one school culture, and he is happy Gabrielse is down the hall if he needs any help.
Hinze said he hopes to use his personal experience to help Port students cope with whatever they may be going through, such as an ACL tear during their senior season. “I think I can relate to them and help them see the hard work and dedication,” he said.
Hinze will be seen at many games — he said his wife Ashley, director of special education for the Oostburg School District, is a “rock star” in taking care of their two young daughters when he puts in long hours — but he won’t be the guy in the wheelchair.
At 6 feet, 3 inches tall with a lean and muscular build, Hinze looks more like a formidable athlete than someone with a disability. He sometimes gets dirty looks when he gets out of his car with a handicapped parking placard at stores and even got questioned once by police in his hometown of Cedar Grove.
“It does come in handy on Black Friday,” Hinze said with a laugh.
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Wisconsin’s largest paid circulation community weekly newspaper. Serving Port Washington, Saukville, Grafton, Fredonia, Belgium, as well as Ozaukee County government. Locally owned and printed in Port Washington, Wisconsin.
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