During hard times his senior year, Mike Steele secretly lived at his high school. Hernando High was “the best thing that ever happened to me.” Thirty years later, he’s still giving back.
BROOKSVILLE – One night after a Hernando High School basketball game in 1993, Mike Steele, a senior at the school who also worked as the team’s manager, caught a ride home with one of the coaches.
Steele got dropped off around 10 p.m. in front of the block home he shared with his mom and five siblings. As he walked up the driveway to the small front porch, he spotted two super-sized garbage bags. They were stuffed with his clothes. Also on the porch was a note his mother had scrawled on a page torn from a Steno notebook:
If you can’t accept that we are moving… then that is how it is. We’ve been telling you we were going to move, and now we’re moving. You’ve made your choice.
Steele reread the note. His mom had been talking about moving. But it felt like one of those things she said in passing that was never to happen – like wanting to buy a new car.
He grabbed the bulky bags and started to walk in a familiar direction: Toward his high school stadium. He paused to set the bags down every few feet, lost in thought. How am I going to fix this? What am I going to do? Will it be over tomorrow? Will they come back?
Although he kept pausing, Steele’s feet continued to carry him to the stadium. It was like a second home to him, but it would soon become his primary one.
When Steele arrived back at the stadium, he climbed the stairs to the press box at the top. He tried the door. It was unlocked. He went inside. Steele sat there for a little while, thinking before deciding to go to bed.
Changing his spots
Steele was born in Clearwater in 1974. As the second oldest of six kids and the oldest boy in the family, he learned to be playful, spontaneous, and, most importantly, how to share. Living with so many people in a small space meant there wasn’t much room to spread out.
When Steele was in the eighth grade, his parents divorced. He moved with his mother and siblings to Hernando County.
“I had a single mother who worked her butt off,” he said. “You know, we didn’t have a lot of money. We didn’t have money, barely. So, it was always a tough gig.”
Steele began managing sports teams at Central High School west of Brooksville. But halfway through his sophomore year, his mother moved to the other side of town, making it difficult to walk to school.
He was apprehensive about changing schools and didn’t want to lose his job. He walked about eight miles each way for nine weeks before transferring to Hernando High to be closer to home.
“I didn’t want to be a Leopard,” Steele said of Hernando High and its fierce gold mascot with purple spots. “We just had to make a move because it was so hard to get to school. My grades were slipping from walking; it was too much distraction.”
Although Steele was better than he thought he’d be at changing his spots.
At Hernando High, he soon managed not only the basketball team but also the football and track teams and sometimes baseball.
“Mike did whatever needed to be done,” said Brent Gaustad, Hernando High’s assistant football coach. “If we needed something fixed, he tried to fix it. If we needed water, if we needed something cleaned out, we needed laundry done. If we needed anything folded, if we needed help with even spraying the field, whatever we needed help from, Mike was there.”
Things seemed to be going great at school, but Steele’s home life was a different story. His mother had started a relationship with a new boyfriend from St. Petersburg. Steele didn’t get along with the man. His mother kept saying she was going to move them all to St. Petersburg. Steele just didn’t want to believe it.
“That’s where I learned I wanted to be better.”
The first morning he woke up in the press box, Steele went about his morning regimen as if he were home – except he didn’t have to wait for his siblings to get out of the bathroom. After a few days, he fell into a routine.
The school cafeteria provided decent food, like milk and pizza. The stadium had washers and dryers he could use to clean his clothes. He used a hose off the side of the stadium to brush his teeth. He’d shower during gym class.
And every night, with the cold January temperatures setting in, he’d head to bed inside the press box, curling up in two zip-up Michael Jordan sleeping bags.
During the day, Steele stashed his sleeping bags and belongings in hiding spots under the stadium to keep his occupancy secret. He knew every curve and corner of the stadium, making it easier to get around without people noticing.
Steele lived in the Hernando High School stadium for about six weeks of his senior year of high school. He was 18 and had never lived apart from his family. He didn’t consider himself homeless – just on an adventure.
“I don’t see myself as the stadium kid or the homeless kid. I just see myself as waking up every day and trying to have a good day.”
Despite leaving her son behind, Steele’s mother never stopped worrying about him. She’d call around to check on him, making sure he was OK and attending school.
Waking up on the school grounds, Steele began his days around 7 a.m. with a double alarm: he woke to the ring of a small alarm clock with bells on the top that he set each night in the press box and to the sound of the school’s early bell. He would make his way past the baseball field to the first of his seven classes.
Steele already loved his job managing the basketball team, and now, he threw himself into it. He took inventory of all the jerseys for away games, washed them, and hung them on the players’ lockers for home games.
Working with the coaches and managing the sports teams inspired Steele to strive for more in his own life.
“That’s where I learned I wanted to be better.”
Steele formed a friendship with Bronson Arroyo, who went on to a 15-year career as a Major League Baseball pitcher and won the 2004 World Series championship with the Boston Red Sox.
Although Steele was a few years older, they got to know each other when he managed the basketball team Arroyo played on during his freshman and sophomore years.
“When it comes to being a manager, and you wouldn’t normally find someone who’s as serious about the craft as he was, he was very serious about making sure he was doing his job,” said Arroyo. “It was unusual to see somebody take that kind of low-level job so seriously, and I think that’s what made him stand out.”
Arroyo said Steele had a keen eye. During practice, if he noticed a player looking tired, he would bring them water. He also wasn’t afraid to call someone out for being dishonest or lazy.
“You’re saying that, you know, your mother’s car broke down. That’s why you didn’t make it to practice on time. And if Mike knew that wasn’t true, he was going to find a way to expose you. And that was the lesson that he was teaching everyone. In a lot of ways he was using his wit and his honesty to kind of keep people in check.”
During a rainy February in 1993, basketball season was coming to a close – and so was Steele’s adventure living in the Hernando High School stadium.
Some of his classmates spotted him climbing over the fence one night. William Coleman “Cole” Brinson and a few of his friends confronted Steele in class the next day. Brinson asked Steele why he was climbing the fence in the middle of the night, but Steele refused to tell him. Brinson kept pushing:
What are you doing? Tell us, or we are going to tell on you. Are you stealing? Are you robbing?
When Steele realized they thought he was doing something bad, he decided to tell the truth. He’d avoided telling anyone about his situation before because he didn’t want to be a burden. But now, he knew he had to.
Steele explained to his classmates that he had been sleeping in the stadium because he had nowhere else to go.
Like a son
Instead of turning Steele in, Brinson stepped in. Steele moved into the Brinson family’s small home near the stadium, bringing only a couple of milk crates of belongings and some clothes.
He lived there for about a month before moving in with the Lovett family. They had a bigger house with more room for Steele. He knew the Lovett family because their son Derek played baseball. While living with the Lovetts, Steele took a job at Winn-Dixie. The Lovetts had one key rule for him: to not let his grades slip.
The Hernando High School’s coaches weren’t going to let that happen, either. Coaches Michael Imhoff, Brent Gaustad, Tim Sims and Trey Crawford looked out for Steele and surrounded him with support during and after his time in the stadium.
“We would bring him food at the stadium, make sure he had a place to shower and use the restroom and stuff like that,” said Brent Gaustad, a longtime county principal who served as Hernando High’s assistant football coach for over 25 years.
Although Steele didn’t think anyone knew he was living in the stadium at the time, Gaustad said he did.
“We just wanted him to have a safe space.”
The coaches became like parents to Steele when he needed to sit and talk or had questions about his family situation.
“We just tried to guide him through, you know, keep him positive,” Gaustad said. “He didn’t get down much, but sometimes life was tough.”
Gaustad nicknamed him “the Man of Steele” after Superman. He would also call him Steele Curtain and Steele Shield.
But Steele had the closest bond with head football coach Imhoff.
“Mikey was like his son,” Gaustad said. “Imhoff didn’t have any kids (at the time), and he kind of wanted to make sure Mike was OK and always, you know, always took care of him.”
Steele said after the other players had gone home to their families and he was still working, Imhoff would sometimes treat him to a soda or lunch. When Imhoff’s wife became pregnant, he came to the stadium to share the good news with Steele.
“He was always good to me.”
Three years later, in 1996, Imhoff was tragically killed alongside another of Hernando High’s assistant football coaches, Joseph “Mike” Bristol, in a roadside shooting by a 19-year-old who later said LSD had “totally fried my mind.”
Steele said he’ll never forget any of the four coaches—or the many others who helped him when he needed it most. “I don’t forget those people, and I don’t forget what they’ve done.”
Even after watching thousands of kids come through the Hernando County School District in the 30 years since Steele graduated, the one-time nomad left a lasting impression on Gaustad.
“He literally makes my job worth it because even to this day, on Father’s Day, he sends me a long text telling me how much he appreciates me, how much he loves me. And he just thanks me.”
“The best thing that ever happened to me”
The high schooler who was once apprehensive about changing schools and “didn’t want to be a Leopard” now calls his transfer to Hernando High School “the best thing that ever happened to me.” It took a while, but today, at age 50, Hernando High still helps Steele live his best life.
After graduating from Hernando in 1993, Steele grappled with what to do next. First, he managed an all-star team, the Hernando High School Dixie Boys Summer League Baseball team, which got to travel to Lufkin, Texas, for the World Series. Winning only one game and losing two, they got bumped. Still, Steele was doing something he loved.
“It was one of the greatest summers ever,” he said.
Then, he joined the Navy for nine days before deciding it wasn’t for him.
He also tried living in Tallahassee and Gainesville before realizing he wasn’t a college-town kind of guy, either.
Nowhere Steele went seemed to stick—he always found himself back in Brooksville. He worried that if he couldn’t find his place in the world, he would disappoint everyone who had helped him get this far.
Steele also, inevitably, kept returning to the stadium, a place that had always felt like home. Whether it was spending time with friends, volunteering at events, or watching football games, the stadium always drew him back.
Steele met his wife, Jennifer Daniel, in 1999. She attended Central High School with some of his younger siblings. They started talking, hit it off and got married. They have two children, Mikey and Michaela, both graduates of Hernando High. Steele and the kids never let Jennifer forget they are leopards.
About 10 years ago, after years working for the county in various roles—pulling weeds, sorting trash, reading water meters, and working in animal control and planning and zoning—Steele applied for a job in Code Enforcement. He’s been there ever since.
His favorite part of the job is interacting with people and solving problems. After Hurricanes Helene and Milton this fall, Steele worked in Hernando Beach, where Helene left severe damage. With gutted homes, residents had to haul flood-damaged belongings into their yards.
Friday Night Lights
Every Thursday during football season for about the past ten years, Steele has helped a childhood friend, Blair Hensley, feed the local high school football teams. Hensley started the project in 2006, using his restaurants to serve schools throughout the area.
Steele said that giving players free meals on Thursday nights ensures they get the nutrients they need before Friday night games.
The meals kick off around 4:30 p.m., and players and coaches gather to enjoy dishes like beef stroganoff and prime rib. The atmosphere is focused as minds turn toward the next day’s game, yet it’s filled with lively conversation and laughter. Strong brotherhood and camaraderie fill the room.
But Friday is Steele’s favorite day of the week. Friday means football. Steele and two of his friends host a radio show about the local games. He enjoys spending time with his friends and discussing and analyzing the games. He loves capturing the atmosphere and bringing it to life for listeners.
“Sometimes it’s fun, sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it’s not easy,” Steele said. “But it’s always worth trying, like it’s always such a great thing.”
Steele began announcing the Hernando County football games on the radio for WXJB about six years ago alongside Hensley and Frank Miller. Together, they formed a three-man team they nicknamed Friday Night Lights, said Barbara Manuel, the owner of WXJB.
“The three of them just work so perfectly together,” said Manuel.
Miller leads the broadcast while Steele and Hensley provide color commentary on the live games from outside the press box where Steele once slept. They comment on the plays, provide statistics and decide whether the plays were good or bad.
Prior to his stint as an announcer, Steele was part of the “chain gang” for 11 years. That’s the volunteer who uses a football down marker to indicate the line of scrimmage and down number in a football game.
Because of his experience managing different sports teams and working on the chain gang, Steele makes it a point during the radio show to thank the people behind the scenes who park cars, sell merchandise, collect the tickets and set up and strip the field.
Manuel said that while Steele has always been skilled at announcing due to his deep knowledge of sports, he has improved over time and become much more comfortable in the role. The show has also become popular because many parents and community members listen, especially when they can’t attend the game.
“We’ve had listeners as far away as Europe,” said Manuel.
The Fortress of Steele
After high school, Steele and his mom began to heal their relationship. Steele said he never held resentment toward her. She did her best. She raised six kids with very little money. When she passed away 16 years ago, mother and son were at peace with one another.
Steele continues to give back to the community and the high school that supported him during a hard time in his life. He often expresses his support by wearing distinctive purple T-shirts, hoodies and hats – sometimes all at once. Both his children are also dedicated Leopard fans. Still, even they get embarrassed by the extent to which their dad walks around decked out in Hernando High swag.
“My wife says being a Leopard is not some special fraternity, and I always say I’d say that, too, if I wasn’t in it. And my kids will say a ‘Leopard for life, a Leopard for life.’”
Steele painted his front porch purple and gold two years ago, transforming it into his very own Fortress of Steele. As he collects new knick-knacks, he keeps adding to the porch, making it even better. Painting his porch purple and gold, Steele said, is something he has always wanted to do.
Leopard helmets, pictures and four TVs decorate the walls. Purple fairy lights cast a glow across the ceiling. A leopard-print rug stretches across the carpeted floor. In the center of the porch, two coffee tables with glass tops display old-class pictures. Couches line the perimeter, some draped with leopard blankets and accented with leopard-print pillows.
“It’s no different than if somebody wants to paint their Gator room orange and blue. It’s just my Gator room. I love the Leopards like that.”
“That’s the purple and gold porch,” said Hensley, the owner of popular Florida Cracker restaurants, as well as Steele’s childhood friend and fellow broadcaster. “You can see it driving down North Avenue. Everybody knows about that porch. A lot of people come to visit that one.”
Steele sometimes likes to sleep out there, even when it’s cold outside.
