It’s old hat to say there’s no way of knowing what the future will hold, and the observation isn’t much comfort to those who don’t even have an idea what direction they want to go in yet.

I know I’ve felt unsure before about what I was going to do with my life, and that former version of me would have probably never guessed I would end up where I am now.

I wonder if Dave Mire ever knew when he was playing baseball and football for Port Neches-Groves High School that he was going to find himself at Sam Houston State University one Friday getting inducted into the Bearkats’ Hall of Honor.

He does know what got him there, though.

“I really feel fortunate to be able to be around three outstanding coaches.” Mire told me. “My high school coach, Coach Troy, I owe everything to really because he really got me going. And then Coach Griffin and Coach Skeeters — Coach Skeeters won over 900 games and he’s the winningest coach at Sam Houston. Bill Griffin had over 900 wins as well, and was in the hall of honor for junior college coaches. So those three guys really all contributed to anything I ever achieved significantly.”

Butch Troy was his coach at PNG and was his first introduction to baseball. Bill Griffin helped him hone his skills further at Panola Junior College, and John Skeeters coached him into becoming an All-American with a .355 batting average when he came to Sam Houston his junior and senior years. Skeeters and Coach Carlo Gott had fostered a baseball tradition at Sam Houston that Mire told me made him feel “warm and fuzzy” about the school, which is why he chose to go there.

I wonder if Mire ever knew that baseball would put him on the path to meeting his wife. He and Lisa met at Sam Houston and have been married for 41 years now. He has two children, Ashley and Tyson, and four granddaughters, Alex, Hailey, Macie and Reese. His son Tyson even went to Sam Houston on a baseball scholarship.

I wonder if he ever knew how much influence his coaches would have on him. They instilled in Mire a desire to be a coach himself, a desire that drove him to become a “manager of managers,” guiding a team of five who themselves have teams of their own, as division president at David Weekly Homes in Austin.

The best wisdom I’ve always heard on facing the future is to watch for opportunities, follow good role models and keep an open mind. Talking with Mire I could see the timeline of his life, how each moment lead to the next, how his environment and the people he knew evolved him from a diehard PNG fan born in Port Neches to a Sam Houston Hall of Honor inductee.

No, I can’t see my future, but that doesn’t mean it’s not in front of me waiting to happen. As long as I take away the best lessons from my role models, keep my eyes open and do what I love, worrying about which direction my future is heading maybe isn’t so necessary.

Brad Robichaux is a reporter for The Port Arthur News. He can be reached at brad.robichaux@panews.com