More than 200 friends, family, students, former teammates and colleagues packed Sorcerer Softball Academy April 11 for a memorial  to Delmar Himango, who had passed away  April 5, following a battle with cancer and other ailments.  Delmar was 59.  He is survived by his wife Chris, daughters Tiffany and Shannon, and three grandchildren.

Like many others in the softball community, I will miss him tremendously.  Del and I founded Sorcerer Softball Academy together more than a decade ago and were partners in the business up to the beginning of this year, when, in constant, agonizing pain, he was forced to forgo giving lessons and retire.

When he left, much left with him.  The first thing that you noticed missing was the noise level - Del could not give a lesson without roaring approval, encouragement or commentary at a 100 or more decibels.  The second noticeable absence was Del's intense love for pitching and for passing those skills on to kids.  Some students initially were afraid of him - he was big, intense, passionate and boisterous, certainly nothing like their math or history teachers.  But kids almost always came to realize that he was for them, loved working with them and wanted them to succeed.  Impatient with nearly everything else in life, he seemingly could  work with a student for as long as it took as she struggled learning to spin a rise, drop or curve.  Maybe kids liked him because beneath it all he was still a kid himself, fascinated with throwing a ball at blinding speed and making it move.

Del came to softball pitching relatively late in life, not seriously attempting to pitch until he was 21.  But he was soon consumed with becoming a top hurler, taking a bucket of balls to a San Leandro schoolyard each day, spending hours by himself throwing hundreds of pitches into a concrete wall.

Men's fastpitch softball was a big sport in Northern California then, with many of the world's top pitchers playing here.  Del burned inside to reach that level, too.  There were no pitching coaches.  Pitchers learned from each other and Del would pick the brains of many of the top throwers, relentlessly returning to the schoolyard to practice what he had learned.

Starting in a San Leandro industrial league, Del in only several years skyrocketed through the ASA classifcations, reaching the Major Division, first with Chuckburger in Hayward, later with Marin Wheel and Brake and ultimately with Able Rule of Modesto.  He pitched magnificently for 12 years at that level before retiring to help raise his family.

As his partner at Sorcerer, I admired him for always giving his best to each of his students.  He was an extremely effective teacher, taking what he had learned as a top pitcher and passing it on to the girls and young women who took lessons from him.  His efforts produced scores of the leading young talents in our region.  In the 10 years that we worked together in San Ramon, eight of our students were East Bay Players of the Year, many were named all-state, a number were selected as All-Americans and one pitched on the USA 19&U team.  Former students performed effectively for colleges across the nation.  Del had touched them as athletes.

But he touched the lives of people in other ways, as well, as speaker after speaker at his memorial recounted what he had meant to them.  Daughters Shannon and Tiffany remembered Del as a father who was always happy to see them, no matter how many times they had seen each other earlier in the day.  He was a dad who always gave them his complete support, they said.

Former San Francisco 49er tight end  Brent Jones, a long-time friend of Sorcerer, remembered Del not only as the former pitching coach for his daughter Courtney, but as someone who taught him a great deal about raising a young female athlete.  Courtney, a nationally-recruited soccer player, will begin her collegiate career at the University of North Carolina in September.  Jones thanked the Himango family for sharing Del with his family and with the Northern California softball community.

BJ. Helfrich, one of the many of Del's former students who attended, remembered Delmar for working with her through long periods of modest success.  He gave her the will to work hard to achieve, Helfrich said.  She was too modest to note to the gathering that her hard work paid off - she pitched Humboldt State to an NCAA Division II National Championship.

Mike Nevin, one of Del's catchers in his early years at the Major Division level, remembered Himango as a jokester who loved to party off the field, but as pitcher who worked hard at excllence and ultimately achieved it.   Like all  of us  who knew  Del  well,  Mike acknowledged  that the very best  Delmar stories,  especially  those  that  involved his playing  days,  were probably best left untold at a memorial gathering.

There were others who spoke well of their years with Del - his brother Larry; Sorcerer pitching instructor Lori Grace, whom Del mentored; forrmer Foothill H.S. head coach Scott Kabrich, whose father played with Del and who coached with  Himango  at the  Pleasanton school; Pat  Flier, mother of former Sorcerer student and player and former Villanova University standout Robin Flier; other past teammates and friends.

For all of us, it was an emotional evening, filled with both joy and sorrow.  I found myself holding back tears, yet laughing inside at many of the madcap times we had spent together.

I know this with certainty.  No one like Del will ever pass our way again.

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