Loss of son gives Hagan a new outlook on coaching

“Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him,” Darian Hagan said of his son DeVaughn at a 2013 benefit for suicide prevention. “He was just like me in every way — his smile, his laugh, his big head.”

In November of 2010, DeVaughn Levy-Hagan tragically took his own life inside of his dorm room at Garden City Community College, where he had been working to improve his grades and earn a scholarship to the University of Colorado.

“I will always remember his kindness, his big heart and his smile,” Hagan said. “I will always remember DeVaughn Levy-Hagan.”

On Saturday morning, it was announced that the legendary Colorado quarterback is the new running backs coach for the university he led to a national title 25 years ago. It will be his second stint as an assistant coach for the Buffs (2005-2010) but he says this time will be different, as always, thinking of DeVaughn.

“Going through the suicide with my son, I’ve gained an appreciation for younger people,” Hagan explained to media on Saturday morning. “I will not be a yeller or a hollerer, I will be a guy that’s hands-on and positive. I will be stern with them, I won’t give them leeway to do things that they aren’t taught to do. . . I’m just more relaxed as a person.

“You don’t have to yell and scream and use profanity and all that stuff,” he added. “Just use positive reinforcement, love the guys up, get them started, give them direction and they’ll play hard for you.”

It’s that appreciation for young people that has Hagan lighting up when he talks about how many players would come to his office to talk during his stint as director of player personnel.

“They all trust me, which is cool,” he says with a look of pride.

It’s that appreciation for younger people that had him itching to put his coach’s polo on again.

“I just missed being out on the field with the guys, rallying with the guys, in the heat of the battle with the guys,” he says with a look of excitement.

“I missed trying to affect their minds, getting them to see what coaches see and helping them be the players they want to be,” he says with the look of a father.

It may just be that appreciation for young people that had Mike MacIntyre feeling like Hagan was the perfect fit.

“All 112 of these young men are really my kids, they really are, their parents entrusted them to me,” MacIntyre said back in October. “When you see that joy in their eyes, you see them proud, excited and all of that, it’s just like being a proud dad.”

To be a coach in the college game is about more than just football, it’s about taking in boys in what may be the most important four years of their lives and turning out men, about helping them be successful in whatever path they may choose as so many will choose a path outside of the white lines.

DeVaughn Levy-Hagan never got to live his dream of being a Colorado Buffalo, but that same smile, that same laugh walks the campus every day with the man who holds on to his memory in that same big head. For Coach Hagan, to be able to spend time with the young men that are living that dream, to have them trust him, learn from him, come to him to talk about whatever life threw at them that day, to be able to help them achieve their next dream, that means the world.