Before dawn on Friday, thousands lined the streets near Cape Canaveral, Fla., hoping for a glimpse of NASA’s Orion capsule as it blasted into the sky for its .
At 5:05 a.m. MST, Orion was on its way, leaving clouds of smoke and blinding gusts of fire in its wake. For the next four hours and 24 minutes, Orion would orbit the Earth twice, collecting data and images from its journey via the 1,200 sensors and cameras on board.
A 9:29 a.m., Orion splashed down in the Pacific Ocean after traveling farther from Earth than any spacecraft designed to carry humans since Apollo 17 in 1972.
EFT-1 was deemed a “flawless” launch. It was one step closer for man. One step closer to a crewed deep-space flight. One step closer to a dream realized for the thousands who worked on the spacecraft.
Casey O’Hayre was one of those.
The Colorado native and 2009 Colorado School of Mines graduate had spent the past five years working on the Orion project as a Mechanical Packaging Engineer for Lockheed Martin, “making sure everything was fitting together properly” with Orion’s electronic guidance and power systems.
For much of the past year, O’Hayre split his time between Colorado and Florida to work on Orion. Sometimes he would be at the Kennedy Space Center for as long as four weeks at a time, all to ensure Orion would go off without a hitch.
“I’ve had a dream for a long time to push man’s presence into the universe farther than we’ve ever been,” he said. “I think it would be amazing if we became a multi-planetary species, and whatever small part I can play in that, would be awesome.”
Mission accomplished.
Or, partially accomplished.
O’Hayre is not just a mechanical engineer who helps to build rockets and dreams of humans, one day, becoming roaming other planets. He’s also a basketball coach.
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“One day, with our kids who graduated this past year, when they were in eighth grade, about to be freshmen in high school, we were scrimmaging them one day in practice,” explained Ronnie DeGray, the CEO of the Chauncey Billups Elite Basketball Academy and the head coach of Valor Christian’s varsity basketball team. “It was me, Casey, Chauncey and a couple other guys out there scrimmaging against the kids. One of the kids had scored on (Casey) and he just had this personal vendetta, like ‘You know what, I’m gonna score on this kid and I’m not going to let him score no more.’
“So we’re out there trying to be mentors and trying to show them stuff and he just took it really serious and made it a one-on-one competition.”
That “kid” was a 6-foot-2 point guard out of Denver East High who was named Mr. Colorado Basketball by The Denver Post twice. That kid was ranked No. 1 in the state by MaxPreps last year and No. 18 among point guards by ESPN.
That kid is now a freshman at Colorado: Dominique Collier.
Collier is one of many to have played for O’Hayre, a coach with Billups Elite and now the junior varsity coach at Valor Christian.
“He scored on me two times in a row and I was into him because I wasn’t going to let him score again,” O’Hayre said of the Billups Elite practice. “That was one of the most fun things about coaching those kids as they grew up. When it started, I was markedly better, but …”
But under his leadership, and that of the other coaches within Billups Elite, they became, well, elite.
A former Chatfield High standout, O’Hayre was a four-year guard for the Colorado School of Mines, from 2005-09, and led the Orediggers in steals (29) and assists (85) his senior year.
Graduation marked the end of his playing days, but his new careers began just months after. First came the job with Lockheed Martin. Then, about eight months later, in the spring of 2010, he latched on with Billups Elite, which has become one of the top basketball programs in the area, started by the “King of Park Hill” himself.
Since its inception in 2010, Billups Elite has churned out some of Colorado’s finest players since its founder owned the court at George Washington High. Collier. Ronnie Harrell (Creighton). Chase Foster (San Francisco).
O’Hayre has been a part of it from the start as an eighth-grade coach, watching his grade-school players with dreams of making it big turn into college prospects and Division I players. After playing high school and college ball, O’Hayre understood what it took to move to the next level.
And he knew he could help — on the court and off.
“The kids at Billups Elite are some of the best players in the state and they really have strong ambitions to play in college and play beyond that,” O’Hayre said. “So I feel like I can push them.”
DeGray concurred. Give or take a few words.
“He’s working on the Orion project,” DeGray said. “You gotta be a smart guy (to do that). And Casey is really, really good with numbers. The stuff he can rattle off — kids’ stats, their shooting percentage — I’m sitting there like, ‘Man, what’s wrong with you?’
“His knowledge helps us to be successful at Valor and also with the Billups program.”
While spending his springs, summers and falls working with players in Billups Elite, O’Hayre in 2012 began to help DeGray at Valor Christian. After two years of working as DeGray’s assistant on the varsity team, O’Hayre was given the reins to the junior varsity team.
“At Valor, my intention as the JV coach is just trying to do everything I can to prepare these kids for the next years as they come up in their life,” he said. “I’m trying to help them be strong, good men. I want to get guys better at basketball, but that’s not all of it. That’s a small part of it.”
On Dec. 16, with the JV team’s opener at Highlands Ranch, O’Hayre’s latest mission begins.
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At 6:15 p.m. on Friday, O’Hayre landed at Denver International Airport, just hours after watching Orion complete its successful launch from Cape Canaveral. Immediately, he hopped in his car and drove some 40 miles to Valor Christian.
The varsity Eagles were playing Air Academy in their third game of the season. Tipoff was at 7:30 p.m., leaving O’Hayre just enough time to make the trek south.
After missing the first two games of the season for Orion’s launch, O’Hayre wasn’t about to miss another.
It was another long day in the life of O’Hayre. A life he dreamed of long ago. A life that, most days, requires him to be at work at 6:30 a.m. then at Valor for practice until 7 p.m.
Balancing both isn’t easy, said O’Hayre, who recently moved into the role of Avionics and Wiring Systems Engineer at Lockheed Martin, making him responsible for the system that essentially serves as the brains of the spacecraft. But he’s found support from his managers at Lockheed Martin as well as his fellow coaches with Billups Elite and Valor.
And when he returned from Florida on Friday, he found that the thousands who lined the streets near Cape Canaveral weren’t the only ones watching his years of work come to fruition. Many of his players asked him about the launch and his work with Lockheed Martin.
“I found out a lot of the kids I’m coaching are in a similar place that I am, in that they love basketball and want to keep playing, but they have other goals,” he said. “It’s fun to talk to the kids about some of the things I did and say, ‘You can do these things. This is achievable.'”
Achievable with work. And long hours. And dreams.
And from what DeGray has seen over the past four or five years, this is just the start for O’Hayre.
“I see him as a guy who’s maybe a year away of being a head coach of his own high school team if he wants to,” DeGray said.
“Casey’s a very competitive person. I guess that comes from building rockets and stuff like that.”
Nicki Jhabvala: njhabvala@denverpost.com or at twitter.com/nickijhabvala
