For 45 years, the McMahon family has been an integral part of Midland University. Midland is honoring the McMahons with the Distinguished Family Award during the Alumni & Legacy Awards Brunch Sunday, October 22nd at the Wikert Event Center.

It all began when the late Jim McMahon was hired as a physical education instructor in 1978. McMahon also took over the cross country and track and field programs, building the Warriors into one of the nation’s elite programs.

“Jim and I were blessed to have Coach Don Watchorn (Athletic Director) see the potential in Jim as a college coach,” said Jim’s wife, Karen. “From the very beginning, Midland became a part of our family.”

In the ensuing decades, three generations of McMahon’s have followed in Jim’s footsteps, serving as coaches, educators, attorneys, and healthcare workers. Jim and his wife, Karen, had three sons, Chris ‘94, Sean ‘96, and Kyle ‘04, who each graduated from Midland. Sean’s wife, Beth (Parr) ‘00, also graduated from Midland while Kyle’s wife, Rebecca (Meyer) attended Midland.

“Having our sons attend Midland,  participate in sports, graduate from Midland, and become successful in their careers was a joy,” Karen said. “I am very proud that my three sons and daughter-in-law received their bachelor’s degree from Midland.”

Sean was five years old when his dad began teaching and coaching, and Midland was a big part of growing up for him. “I remember going with my dad to nearly every Midland home volleyball, basketball, or football game,” Sean said. “My dad also taught many classes over the summer, and my brothers and I would come to watch him teach and even participate sometimes. It was then that I realized how seriously my dad took teaching. I had him as a teacher myself, and his Theory of Track and Field class was one of the most detailed and eye-opening classes I ever took because he made you do everything from a coaching perspective to an athlete’s perspective.”

Jim would serve as a head coach for 33 seasons, and spend four more as an assistant coach after his retirement in 2012. During that span, he coached 24 individual national champions, was the District XI Coach of the Year for cross country and track and field a combined 11 times, and won 50 conference titles in the two sports. His crowning achievement as a coach came in 1989 when his women’s track and field team captured the NAIA indoor national championship. Jim was inducted into the Warrior Athletic Hall of Fame in 1999 and the NAIA Track and Field Hall of Fame in 2011.

Karen worked alongside Jim for the majority of his coaching career, serving as an administrative assistant in the athletic department for 26 years. “We spent many hours at athletic events,” Karen said. “Jim made working with him very easy. He had a passion for coaching and teaching and he was very organized and never expected me to take care of his office work. It was always a busy office, and he was very considerate of me.”

Sean and Kyle both competed for their dad while Chris played on the tennis team. Another member of the McMahon family is currently making his mark at Midland as an athlete. Ross, the son of Sean and Beth, is a member of the Warriors track and field team and has earned All-American honors in the high jump during both the indoor and outdoor championships. He will graduate in May as a secondary education major and is currently doing his student teaching at Fremont Middle School, as well as being an assistant coach to his parents in the cross country program.

“Ross and my dad always spoke the same language when it came to track and field,” Sean said. “It’s been fun watching him and going to his meets has brought back a flood of memories for us.”

Sean, Beth, Kyle, and Rebecca have taken paths down the coaching road themselves. Sean has guided the Fremont Cross Country program for over 25 years and has established himself as one of the top coaches in the history of Nebraska cross country. Sean’s teams have won nine state titles and he has been named Nebraska Coaches Association Coach of the Year on three occasions. Among his many other accomplishments, he has been named the Rotary Club Fremont Teacher of the Year and earned the George O’Boyle Cross Country Lifetime Achievement Award.

Beth has been both an assistant coach for the boys cross country program and head coach of the girls program, a role she currently serves in, and was also an assistant for Jim at Midland. She earned the Jim Farrand award in 2019 for Nebraska Assistant Coach of the Year. Sean and Beth have each been longtime assistant coaches for the FHS track program, and will serve as co-head coaches for the boys’ team this spring. Both Sean and Beth are science teachers at FHS while their daughter, Samantha, is a seventh-grade English teacher at Fremont Middle School.

Sean recalls his interactions with professors at Midland leading himself, and other members of his family, down the path to become educators. “People like Dr. Gary Carlson, Dr. Greg Clements, and Dr. Ron Johnson were life-changing educators who got to know you and helped shape your future,” Sean said. “If they wouldn’t have had an influence on me, I might not have had an influence on Beth, or our children, to become educators. Dr. Carlson put me on the path to becoming a high school science teacher, and it is one that truly has been life changing for both me and my family.”

Kyle is an elementary physical education teacher in the Papillion-La Vista School District. He serves as the head boys track coach at Papillion-La Vista South while leading the Fort Calhoun cross country teams in the fall. Rebecca, Department Manager of Radiation Oncology at the Nebraska Medical Center, is an assistant coach with Kyle at Fort Calhoun. Kyle and Rebecca guided the Fort Calhoun boys team to a Class C state championship in 2021, along with several runner-up finishes on both the boys and girls sides. They have four children. 

“Midland was a significant part of my childhood and education and helped shape me into the person I am today,” Kyle said. “I got to see great coaches like Joanne Bracker and Rich McGill interact with their teams. My weekends were filled with cross country and track meets and all the long bus rides with athletes on the team that were like extensions of our family.

“The education I got at Midland was a huge part of my development. Coach Bracker drove home the importance of physical education, and that has stuck with me to this day.”

Chris is a deputy county attorney in Douglas County. He and his wife, Nancy, who teaches pediatric nursing at Clarkson College, have one son.

“Midland was like a second home, not only attending the school, but spending my formative years at Hopkins Arena while growing up,” Chris said. “I have always been a proponent of lifelong learning, and Midland provided a strong liberal Arts foundation to build upon.”

Jim passed away in 2016, but his name lives on at Midland through the Jim McMahon Track & Field Scholarship. “Teaching and coaching was more than a job or career for our father,” Sean said. “It was a passion that he looked forward to every season and every year. That passion was always evident to us, and helped instill in each of us a desire to find a career that we would find purpose and ultimate fulfillment in. He always joked that coaching was his hobby, that he just happened to get paid for.”

Karen is grateful for everything her Midland family has meant to her over the past 45 years. “I worked with so many amazing coaches, athletic directors, professors, staff members, and students,” she said. “I am truly blessed with a wonderful family, friends, and my Midland family.”