Coach KC

When I was a junior in high school, I put together a recreational basketball team with some of my friends. After a broad national search, we enlisted KC to be our coach. He brought impressive credentials to the position:

1. As a young man, lettered for the Kirkwood High Pioneers basketball squad that finished second in the Missouri state championships in 1973.
2. As an old man, he founded the Beer Nuts, a men’s recreational team whose name was inspired by the sign listing the offerings in aisle six of the Germantown Kroger grocery store.

The search committee was particularly taken with KC’s aggressive approach to the game. For example, while playing for the Beer Nuts as a 40-something-year-old man, he tackled another 40-something-year-old man into the bleachers as retribution for a seemingly dirty foul on a Beer Nuts teammate. This tackle took place several minutes after the offending foul while the teams were lining up for free throws, displaying KC’s ability to develop a plan and wait patiently for the right opportunity to execute it. The search committee knew that these qualities would serve KC well in his position as the coach of the Grace Evangelical Church’s 17 & Under Boy’s Team B.

Like any master craftsman, KC knew that he needed to build his team from the ground up. Naturally, he started with our warm-up drill, which he borrowed from the 1973 Kirkwood Pioneers. The Pioneer’s warm-up drill, full of complex passing patterns and thunderous slam-dunks, mentally deflated their opponents before they even stepped on the court. While some might have questioned the ability of Grace Evan’s 17 & Under Boy’s Team B--composed of millennial white boys--to execute a warm-up drill intended primarily for 1970s African Americans, KC was undeterred. Knowing that intimidation was the key to victory, he devoted two full practices to teaching us the warm-up drill. He finally gave up when he realized that only two of us could make a layup and exactly none of us could dunk.

Having assessed the talent at his disposal, KC decided to focus the fundamentals of the game. He started by teaching us how to pass the ball.

“No arm-high passes,” he said, “Those will get stolen. You have to put it where they can’t get their hands on it. Seth, stand over here with your arms out like you are playing defense. Now, you can either do a bounce pass,”—he bounced the ball underneath my outstretched arms by way of demonstration—“or you can whizz the ball past their ear.” To demonstrate this approach, he fired a robust chest pass right into my face.

To further hone our passing skills, KC trotted out a timeless drill known as the Three Man Weave. In this drill, three players start on one baseline, run the length of the court while passing the ball to each other, and finish with a layup at the opposite basket. The Three Man Weave quickly became the bedrock of the Grace Evan’s 17 & Under Boy’s Team B practice regimen. I estimate that 50% of total practice time over two seasons was devoted to the Three Man Weave. This devotion was not exactly because of the drill’s effectiveness. Rather, it was because of KC’s insistence that we make three layups in a row before stopping the drill. This requirement was problematic for a team on which only two of players could make a layup with any amount of consistency. And one of those players enjoyed smoking marijuana more than playing basketball, so he did not make it to every practice.

In order to increase the drill’s difficulty and keep himself from going insane while we bricked, airballed, and otherwise aborted layup after layup, KC wandered around the center of the court with his eyes shut and his arms outstretched, attempting to swat the ball while shouting “Ray Charles defense! Ray Charles defense!” Fortunately, he never received any OSHA complaints from the blind, black, or musically-inclined members of the squad.

When we weren’t taking chest passes to the face or running the Three Man Weave, we scrimmaged. We usually had an odd number of players, so KC would participate. The consummate teammate, he rarely shot the ball. Except for one time when he got the ball on a fast break. That time, he tried to dunk the ball from the free throw line.

I was supposed to be guarding KC on the play, but I was hopelessly out of shape and trailing the action. For this I am thankful, because I was afforded a panoramic view of the following: KC received an outlet pass at midcourt. His head on a swivel, he dribbled toward the basket. As he approached the free throw line, he left his feet, looking to execute a jump pass. However, all of his teammates were also out of shape and trailing the action. Now he was in midair and had to make an effort to score the ball. His legs trailing behind him like the tail of a tube-socked comet, KC extended the ball toward the basket with his right arm. He executed what can only be described as a half-dunk, half-finger roll. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), he was still three feet from the rim. The ball drew no iron and bounced harmlessly to the floor while KC landed in a heap in the middle of the lane. He was unguarded.

KC and I would ride to practice together in my car. This provided me with a prime opportunity to torture him with the rap and butt rock that were staples of my music library at the time. He did like one song, however--a live version of Sister Hazel’s 90s chart-topper “All for You,” and it became a tradition for us to listen to it while we rode to and from practice. I associate that song very strongly strongly with rec basketball, and I make sure to keep a copy on my mp3 player. That way, I am regularly reminded about Dr. KC rising to the rim with a wild look in his eye and his mustache fluttering in the breeze.