KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Once you’ve slayed more dragons than Beowulf, you’re allowed a little self-pampering. Aren’t you? There are kids to visit, chairs to rock, fish to catch, 5-irons to abuse.
To this, Gene Keady chortles. A Ron Swanson, red-meat-and-woodworking sort of chortle. In his world, 77 is the new 46, that pedal still punched all the way to the floor.
"I just love the game; I just love what it stands for," the iconic college basketball coach, who’ll be honored Saturday in his hometown of Larned, Kan., tells FOX Sports Kansas City.
"I love the fact I give young men an opportunity to get an education and make better lives for themselves and their families. It got in my blood when I was in high school in Larned."
And, hey, who are we to argue with nature?
"Something you get — that fever about state tournaments, and everything gets revved up," Keady continues. "And then I went to the national tournaments over in Hutchinson for nine years. I love it and I look forward to it, every day. I always look forward to going to work. I’ve never, ever thought, ‘Why am I doing this?’"
He just does it. Mean Gene is Clean Gene now — a bit older, a bit grayer than the volcano in a suit who’d won 550 games at Purdue and Western Kentucky — but there’s still that flinty spark. That fever.
Since 2010, the 77-year-old Keady has worked on the St. John’s staff — under one of the many branches on his coaching family tree, Steve Lavin — as a special assistant and adviser. He’s got an apartment in the Big Apple. Widowed in 2009, Keady remarried in June 2012, to the former Kathleen Petrie at a Nike camp in Hawaii; Kansas State coach Bruce Weber, another former assistant, served as his best man.
This year, Keady, who lettered in three sports at K-State and helped steer Weber toward the Little Apple, is seeing a storied career come full-circle. In November, the former Boilermakers coach will be inducted into the College Basketball Hall of Fame in downtown Kansas City, headlining a class that includes Rollie Massimino, George Raveling, and the 1963 Loyola (Ill.) national champions.
But before that, there’s a weekend junket to Larned, and center stage at the little southwestern Kansas town of 4,000 and change. As part of Larned’s annual "Santa Fe Trail Days" celebration, Third Street will be renamed "Gene Keady Way."
"It helped me get started in sports, and also, it was a small enough town where I never got into trouble because everybody knew you," says Keady, who played football, baseball and track at K-State, from whom he’d received an undergraduate degree in 1958 and his master’s in 1964. "I knew they’d tell my dad. And if it ever got to your dad … I mean, parents meant everything in those days."
In those days, baseball was Keady’s first love — as a dyed-in-the-wool New York Yankees fan, it still is — but he made enough of a splash as a two-way player with the Wildcats to get selected in the 19th round of the 1958 NFL Draft by the Pittsburgh Steelers. It’s the same draft class that produced Jim Taylor, Ray Nitschke, Bobby Mitchell, and, in the 21st round, John Madden.
Before knee problems put the kibosh on the whole thing, Keady even worked out at the Steelers’ training camp with a young Len Dawson.
"I’ve always been very lucky to be around good people," Keady says. "My wife and I love it here (in New York). Never a dull moment."
Small world. Charmed life.
You can follow Sean Keeler on Twitter @seankeeler or email him at seanmkeeler@gmail.com
