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[Click here for Part 1]
LDN: Did you bus out to Hutch or did
you fly out there?
NK: We took the train out of Pekin or
Peoria. I had to put labels on Wayne Turner, of Atlanta, and a
couple of others so they wouldn't get lost. I still have the ticket,
and we rode on the Santa Fe for a $4 round-trip ticket. Isn't that
amazing? It makes me think of other people that were on that trip. I
guess you would call him my student manager -- now owns Eltas &
Associates, one of the largest public relations firms in Chicago.
They do all the Disney promotions and things of that nature. And
they have all been very successful people.
LDN: How did you even find out about
the Lincoln College job?
NK: I was in the service from '54 to
'56, at the end of the Korean War, and I was stationed in Germany
protecting you, or the future of you, and I wrote maybe 100
applications to high schools and different things. I had coached the
freshmen at Northern Illinois University for two years and I had
been very successful there, but it seems that most schools then just
wanted an older person and I was pretty young.
Some friends of my sister lived down
here, and they were with what was known as the Stetson China Company
(large producer of pottery china before plastics came out) here in
Lincoln. And they said, "Hey, there's a job that has opened up down
here," and so I wrote up an application and sent it in. A week --
no, it was two weeks -- later I made a follow-up phone call, and
they put me through to President Raymond Dooling, and he said,
"Could you come down for an interview?"
Well, if I had had a cell phone, I
woulda been running then. So, I did come down to Lincoln for the
interview. I tell people that I got the job over two maintenance men
that applied. It wasn't a very attractive job at that time.
The gym wasn't that fantastic. Before
the facade was put on it, it looked just like a gym in Hoosiers.
During my first year the president said they were going to renovate
it, but he wasn't sure when they were going to start. So, I took a
sledgehammer to about a 6-foot-wide vestibule, and I started
knocking it down. He came up and said, "What are you doing?" and I
said, "We gotta do this." I had already cleaned the basement --
painted it and put up a locker room and a training room to build up
a little prestige there, ya know.
The first thing I did for tickets is
that I raised the price 50 cents. I used to go down to the old
Lincoln Hotel and other places to meet people and give them free
tickets, but after a while I didn't need to do that anymore. These
players were from Logan County, and plenty of people wanted to see
them play.
LDN: People credit you with turning
around the LC program and putting Lincoln College on the map. What
do you say to that?
NK: What people don't know is that two
years before that we had John Swart, who later starred at Illinois
State and is in their Hall of Fame, and we just didn't quite have
what I call the glue to make it happen. If I woulda had Bob Miller,
we woulda gone then.
Anyway we were playing Moline that year
and they were the No. 1 offensive team in the nation, and we played
them in the state quarterfinals and beat them 116-113. And then we
played, I think it was, Wilson in the semifinals, and we were one
down with 10 seconds to go -- and I can still remember this -- and I
called timeout. I said to myself, "I got it, I got it, I got it,
here it is…" and I drew up a little thing where they threw it in to
Swart.
This one guard whose name I won't
mention -- I ran him to cut off the other guard to the far side of
the lane. They were all gonna attack Swart. He was to fake his shot
and pivot around and drop a pass to this kid under the basket. There
wasn't a defender within 10 feet of him, but he decided that he was
gonna dunk it and he rattled the rim. They kicked it down to the
other end and scored at the final whistle, and so we lost by three.
[to top of second column in
this article]
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That was what I called a tournament
team. They did not have the tremendous consistency of the '61-'62
squad, but on any given day they could beat anybody. That was the
team that kinda got college coaches looking at the players -- like
Joe Stoll at Bradley because we played their freshmen. It was so
good for our players and so good for our program. We also developed
the Illinois Collegiate League for baseball during that time period.
Have you ever heard of that?
LDN: Yes, I have.
NK: That was with Emil Verben, the
former Cardinal and Cub. We had Del Unser from the Phillies and Don
Kessinger from the Cubs was playing out of Peoria at the time, so
there were a lot of things going on beside basketball. We had a
golfer get to the NCAA
And we built up the soccer thing.
You have to understand that Lincoln
College is an excellent, excellent two-year institution. They were
extremely successful, at least in my day, at what I call retreading.
Some kid would flunk out of Princeton or Harvard and come to LC and
retool his skills on studying and learning, and they would go back
and become really successful. We had a lot of students like that.
LDN: Did you guys play Lincoln
Christian College in those days?
NK: We did play them my first and or
second year, and after that I don't know why we didn't play each
other. We had started the Central Illinois Collegiate League, and
that might have had something to do with that decision. They always
had very good, very competitive teams. They were building a lot of
buildings when I was in town setting a good foundation for their
future. I had some good friends over there.
LDN: What else should people know about
this team?
NK: If I get to speak at LC on Friday
or Saturday or at the banquet on Saturday, I would say, "It is
amazing what you can accomplish when no one cares who gets the
credit."
Of all the teams I've had and things of
this nature, this was the team that looked up at the scoreboard at
the end of the night and said, "Did we win or lose?" They didn't
care who got the most rebounds or who got the most points or who
made the plays. They may have talked about it later, but as far as
caring about mentally or emotionally, they cared about winning.
They also had high integrity, they were
dedicated and coachable, and they were humble when they won.
They were also respectful of their
opponents. I never heard a time when they said, "Well, we're going
to Springfield today. We're gonna really kill them." They were
always extremely respectful, and that's what you've gotta do of
their opponents.
They were a classy group. Tommy's a
provost, Mike Lumpp made a successful career for himself, Wayne
Turner is Turner Oil Company in Atlanta, Bob Miller coached for a
while and then he established a couple State Farm Insurance
branches, and the list goes on and on. They were all very successful
players and people. It was part of their makeup.
They also all had excellent, excellent
high school coaches. Miller and Turner came out of Atlanta, where
Doc Kinsey was a great coach, and Lumpp and Zurkammer came out of
Lincoln, where Paul Johnson was a great coach.
Even at Duke today, they look for
players who are humble and respectful and have great high school
coaches. That's the key to success.
Maybe it was fate that brought them all
together at that one time, I don't know.
LDN: Well,
Coach, that's all the time we have. Once again, on behalf of the
Lincoln Daily News and the great residents of Logan County,
CONGRATULATIONS on this outstanding honor. We salute the Lincoln
College Lynx of 1961-62!
[Jeff
Mayfield] |
