BEHIND THE PLAY #65

Dave “Shank” Partridge passed away on June 16th. He was a dad, a teacher and vice-principal and a long time assistant coach on the UBC men’s soccer team. He was also a close friend of mine for the past 39 years.

There was a Celebration of Life for his soccer community on July 22nd. I was one of the speakers. Here’s what I said.

I first met Shank just a few days after he landed in Vancouver from Leeds in 1986. He had come to UBC to do his Master’s Degree in Education.

Dick Mosher had just been appointed the new coach of the team and he, knowing Shank had his full English FA certification, quickly offered him the assistant coach position. 

Shank was all business out the gate and wasted no time intensely getting into tactics about how we were going to do this and that. It was all very mid 80’s “win the knockdowns, get the ball wide, get bodies in the box” stuff. 

I recall at some point during this trying to catch Alex’s eye with a “Is he serious?” look*. But his effect, and Dick’s, was notable and immediate.

When Dave became Shank

Dave didn’t stay Dave for long. It was the U of Alberta away game that first season that Dave became Shank. He was actually an assistant coach/player back then but hadn’t played a league game til this point. 

He came into the game at right back when someone got hurt in the first half. UoA away was one of those games that could make or break a season. There were six teams in Canada West. Ten games. You couldn’t afford to drop points as only the Canada West winner went to Nationals. 

So “Dave” enters what is a tight game and immediately takes a wide free kick just inside our own half. Instead of hitting it a bit more central he tries to knock it down the line but it goes out for a throw in. Again, I look across at Alex. “What the fuck was that.” He replied “He shanked it.” It happened again later in the game. I didn’t have to say anything this time. Alex just shouted “Shank!” as it sailed out of bounds. And that was it. He entered the game Dave and left it Shank. Forever. 

My wife Lyanne didn’t know his real name until his wedding day; almost fours years after first meeting him.

Back to Dick and Shank‘s  relationship 

Dick Mosher passed away four years ago. Not enough has been said about the friendship that Dick and Shank had and how it dovetailed so nicely despite being very different people from different backgrounds. As Shank said repeatedly, Dick believed in young people and he gave them room to make mistakes, contribute, find their strengths and grow. 

I think Shank came to realize that it wasn’t just the players on the team but also him that benefited from Dick’s subtle tutelage. They were an unlikely duo but it was really a legendary dynamic. They both thought incredibly highly of each other and Shank, through to his last months, would regularly reference Dick in conversations with me and do so with the utmost respect.

This had a tremendous short and long term effect on their players. Armed with the trust and belief of Dick and Shank and previous successes, we hit the field feeling invincible. We went undefeated that first year with them and only conceded one goal. We won CIAU Nationals 4-0 against UoT in the final in Toronto. I still enjoy saying that out loud.

When you’re trusted by your coaches, you don’t want to betray that trust. That showed on the field. The long term effect was that the trust and mutual respect we have in each other as teammates shows in how many of us from that  team still enjoy getting together socially. Many are here today.

UBC Soccer has left two legacies in my mind. The success on the field and the friendships that have endured off it. That comes from the culture that Dick and Shank instilled in the UBC Soccer program.

Hornby Island

There were four foundational pieces to Shank’s life that I saw. His daughters**, Leeds United, UBC Soccer and Hornby Island. I wouldn’t dare rank them on his behalf but Hornby was an incredibly special place for him and it was the first place that some of his ashes have been spread.

Our families started vacationing together there when Hannah was a baby. We liked it so much that when one of the houses we’d previously rented went on the market, we decided to buy it together. That led to almost 12 years of time together up there. It drew our families closer together and we got to see each other at our best and worst. It was a fantastic era in our lives that made indelible impressions on all of us.

Shank led us in card games and bocce on the beach. It was a really social atmosphere there filled with group dinners, backyard campfires and bike rides in the trails which Shank continued riding through to this year. A large part of his decision to buy a house in Bowser when he retired was its proximity to Hornby Island so he could go over, visit friends and ride his bike through the trails.

Cancer

While this is a celebration of Shank’s life I think we have to acknowledge the enormity of what he endured. It’s a testament to his physical and mental toughness.

Shank’s first battle with cancer in 2003 was the same type that Terry Fox had. A large tumour in his femur. He was given a 50% chance of surviving and underwent brutal chemo and radiation. He lived but did so with a steel rod inserted in what was left of his femur after 8” of it was removed. The rod broke and had to be replaced. Twice. 

After the rod failed a third time the doctors proposed removing his fibia and making it the load-bearing bone where his partial femur was instead of continuing with rods***. It worked and the chronic pain he’d been suffering lessened considerably and he was able to walk without what had been an omni-present crutch. 

Clearly this second round of cancer was worse. Shank reached and then exceeded the lifetime radiation dosage maximum for humans at some point in the last two years. He had a laryngectomy and was unable to talk for around a year while he re-trained his body to be able to speak. The cancer, though, soon spread to various other parts of his body. 

When Shank was given his terminal diagnosis in March 2023, he came from the hospital to see me. He was already clear in his mind that he would not allow cancer to take him. That he would decide when he was going and he stuck to that.

What followed was a doubling down on the embrace of life he’d displayed since buying his house in Bowser on Vancouver Island. He was given 8-14 months by his doctors. In the end he got 27 and wasted none of them. 

He attacked his prognosis with incredible positivity. Relentless bike rides, over 3500km since his throat surgery according to his Strava, (that would get you from UBC to Saskatoon and back with plenty to spare) on his new Rocky Mountain full suspension e-mountain bike, three trips to England, floor seats to a Rolling Stones concert, a last minute flight to Vegas during the Copa America to see his beloved former Leeds Manager, Marcelo Bielsa, lead Uruguay to a win over Brazil. 

As Hannah said at one point, the purse strings truly opened after the diagnosis. Life was fully embraced in this time. 

Surgery on Hornby 

There was at least one absurd bit of comedy in Shank’s battle with cancer.

Lyanne and I invited him to join us for a few nights on Hornby in the summer of 2023. We had rented a house for two weeks there after selling the co-owned house 2 years prior 

Late one night he came upstairs to our bedroom and beckoned me, in a panicked fashion, to come downstairs with him. He had pulled a small, hard, white plastic doo-hickey out of his throat that was facilitating his ability to speak again. 

Unfortunately, he left the applicator used to re-insert it properly at home. He was worried that the flesh would grow over quickly if he couldn’t get it back in and his progress in re-learning to speak would be wasted. 

At this time he was using a ceramic chopstick to write messages on his tablet as he hadn’t sufficiently regained the ability to speak. He indicated to me that I needed to use it, the chopstick, to push the doo-hickey back into the back wall of his throat. To be clear, this involved me using a chopstick to push a small piece of plastic through the quarter-sized hole in his throat and into an almost impossible to see much smaller notch in the back of his throat.

I’ll just note that through our multiple, frantic efforts when Shank felt the chopstick needed cleaning he simply wiped it on the blanket that our dog has been using to sit on when he was on the couch. Probably not quite the same sterilization standards used at VGH.

Keep in mind I was on vacation and may have had a few drinks earlier that evening and was not anticipating having to perform field surgery with a dirty chopstick. 

Spoiler: It did not go well. We both tried repeatedly to get it in. Him using the bathroom mirror to try guide it in, me trying to eyeball it through the unnatural orifice in his neck. 

After an hour or so we gave up and called Hannah. We booked her on the first flight to Nanaimo where Shank met her. She brought the kit and got the valve back in in just a few minutes. 

So, I’ll be available for appendectomies and vasectomies in the parking lot when we’re done here. Bring your own chopstick please. 

Emma and Hannah

I really want to acknowledge the time, commitment, effort, patience, love and advice that Emma and Hannah provided to their dad in the last two years. The level of care and advocacy that Shank needed due to losing his ability to speak for a year combined with living away on Vancouver Island meant the support he needed was far more than normal and that role wasn’t just provided by his daughters but embraced by them. 

Hannah left her job to live with him in Bowser for an extended period. Emma flew in from Alberta repeatedly, staying with him and navigating the medical system which her job as an occupational therapist no doubt helped immensely.

They kept him organized for his many, many appointments and ensured all his meds were well stocked. They rallied him when his strength flagged and rolled with his down periods when he could be a bit difficult (I’m sure you all find it hard to imagine Shank being difficult…). They were always supportive, reliable, aware and were able to have very open, frank conversations through incredibly difficult periods and decisions that had to be made.

It was amazing to have a window into that devotion and as hard as this loss is for them I think that journey with him will help mitigate the feelings of loss that linger. To Emma and Hannah, thank you for helping to keep him with us as long as was possible.

The last Wordle

There had always been an element of friendly competition in my relationship with Shank.

Initially, card games (mainly Hearts) and chess with Gary Kern when the three of us lived together in a basement suite while at UBC, then more card games, crib and table tennis at Hornby. 

Eventually in the past couple years it was bocce, golf and croquet at his house in Bowser along with some mountain biking in Cumberland and on Hornby. I was worried he might struggle on the trails but it was me that spent the day coated in the dirt he kicked up in front of me and nursing a bloody shin from a fall. 

Finally, it turned into daily Wordle and Connections exchanges by text which we did for close to a year.

This all led to a beautiful moment of serendipity. 

The last time Lyanne and I saw Shank was two days before he passed. It was a Saturday. He had been moved to the hospice he was in four days prior.

The last text I got from him was the next day. It was about the day’s Wordle where the solution was QUAIL. 

This was his nickname at Carnegie, the Teacher College he attended in Leeds. He was blown away and excited by the coincidence. 

I replied, showing him mine. My first word was SHANK; the first time I’d ever used his nickname as a first word.

And yes he blamed our visit with him the day before for not getting his Wordle right the day before…

He passed away the next morning using MAID as he had said he would.

What I’m left with as memories of him as a person

• The resilience and positivity in the face of adversity

• The thoroughness of his decision-making in difficult circumstances 

• His passion for teaching, both on fields and in classrooms

• His ability to remain social, positive and engaged right up til the very end

It was a unique, formative friendship spread over 39 years. I’m very grateful for it and will miss it.

_{*Alex Percy, my longtime friend and centre-back partner at UBC starting in 1985.}

_{** Emma and Hannah are Shank’s daughters. Emma is the older of the two.}

_{*** This was an eight hour procedure, done in 2014, that was considered experimental at the time} 

_{Expect future Behind the Play newsletters to be written and delivered more erratically. I’ll aim for every second Monday still but especially through the summer they could just randomly pop up in your inbox more or less frequently than that.}