maly, too: Former Drake Coach Kurt Kanaskie On Staff At Virginia Tech

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Former Drake Coach Kurt Kanaskie On Staff At Virginia Tech

By Bill Landis, The Sentinel.com. In 32 years of doing the same job, it’s rare to encounter new situations.

But after 32 years of coaching college basketball, Kurt Kanaskie finds himself in a situation he’s never been in before. When it was announced on May 10 that Kanaskie would join first-year head coach James Johnson’s staff at Virginia Tech, it marked the first time in the Cumberland Valley High School graduate’s career that he’ll coach at three schools in three years.

If his track record suggests anything, this will be the only time he ever finds himself in such a situation.

After serving as an assistant coach for eight years at Penn State, Kanaskie moved to Navy last season with former Nittany Lions head coach Ed DeChellis and saw the Midshipmen struggle through a 3-26 (0-14 Patriot League) season.

“It’s a little deceiving because I was at Penn State for eight seasons and then went to Navy for maybe 10 months,” Kanaskie said. “I was at Lock Haven for three years, but other than that everything has been five years or longer. It’s sort of an anomaly that I was at Navy for such a short time.”

Kanaskie spent five years at his first coaching stop as an assistant at South Carolina, followed by the three at Lock Haven as a head coach and eight seasons as the head coach at Indiana (Pa.), where he led the school to its first-ever national ranking and NCAA tournament bid during the 1994-95 season and was twice named PSAC Coach of the Year.

He spent seven years as the head coach at Drake, where he had some terrible seasons, before joining DeChellis at Penn State.

Now that he has a new home in Blacksburg, Va., Kanaskie hopes he’s sticking around for a while.

“Hopefully I’ll have a long stay at Virginia Tech,” Kanaskie said. “The facilities are out of sight. It’s a great school and this is a tremendous opportunity.”

But it come with its challenges.

Kanaskie has big-game experience from being an All-State player at Cumberland Valley, an all-Big Five player at LaSalle University and an assistant coach in the Big Ten. The ACC, though, is a different animal.

His first season in the ACC could very well be a bumpy one, but it doesn’t mean Kanaskie is going to back down from the challenge.

“I’m really anxious to see the difference between the Big Ten, which has great teams, great facilities and great fan support, and compare it to the ACC,” Kanaskie said. “There’s great basketball in either conference.”

Yet another challenge Kanaskie faces is being away from his youngest son, Kyle, who will be a senior starter for the State College High School basketball team next season. With State College’s moving to the Mid-Penn Conference next season, making the 1 hour, 30 minute drive from the Naval Academy to see his son play in the Harrisburg area wasn’t out of the question.

With Virginia Tech being more than four hours away, that makes things a little more difficult.

“I don’t know how many games I’m gonna get to see,” Kanaskie said. “That’s been the toughest adjustment is being away from him.”

Still, the opportunity at Virginia Tech was too good for Kanaskie to pass up on. Though the Hokies went just 16-17 (4-14 ACC) last season, the coach is optimistic for the future of the program under Johnson, who’s positive attitude and approach to teaching his players is what Kanaskie said led him to accept the position in the first place.

With 18 years of head coaching experience, Kanaskie didn’t dismiss the possibility of returning to that role somewhere down the road. But the timing would have to be right and the conditions would have to be perfect.

Just like what he has now in Blacksburg.

“At this stage of my career, I wouldn’t have made the move to Virginia Tech if I wasn’t totally sold on James Johnson as a person, a teacher and a coach,” Kanaskie said. “The same would apply if I were to become a head coach again. It would have to be the right situation at the right institution with the right people in place for me to do that. Obviously, I wouldn’t shut the door on that possibility, but it would have to be the right place because I think Virginia Tech is a special place to be right now.”

JOLTIN' JOE GOT IT STARTED

When Ron Maly was a kid in Cedar Rapids, he wanted to enter an essay contest, and he did. He wrote about Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees being his favorite baseball player. For finishing second in the contest, Ron won a Louisville Slugger baseball bat autographed by DiMaggio. Ron later wanted to be the first person in his family to attend college, and he was. He earned a degree in political science from the University of Iowa, and did what all political science majors do. He became a sportswriter. He had, after all, covered high school football, basketball and baseball games for the Cedar Rapids Gazette while he worked parttime during his university days. Ron wanted to sit in the press box and write about an Iowa-Minnesota football game, and he did. It happened while he was the sports editor at the Albert Lea [Minn.] Tribune, and the game was at Memorial Stadium in Minneapolis. Ron wanted to cover a World Series, and he did. Also when he was working for the Albert Lea newspaper. Ron wanted to cover Rose Bowls, Sugar Bowls, Orange Bowls, Cotton Bowls, Holiday Bowls, a Freedom Bowl, a Sun Bowl, a Super Bowl and NCAA basketball tournaments, and he did those things after he moved to Des Moines. Ron was a four-time sportswriter of the Year in the state of Iowa [the years were 1977, 1978, 1994 and 1996]. In 2006, he was named a charter member of the University of Iowa's media Wall of Fame in the Kinnick Stadium press box. A photo of the plaque that's displayed in the press box is displayed above this story. Following Ron's retirement from the newspaper business, a publisher asked him if he wanted to write a book about the rich football tradition at the University of Iowa, and he did. The hardback version of "Tales from the Iowa Sidelines" was a best-seller, and so was the revised, softback version. Now he's been asked by his publisher to update the book for a second time. He's in the process of doing that at the present time. Ron considers being asked to update a best-selling book for the second time to be the supreme compliment, considering the Hawkeyes won just four games in the 2012 season. When Ron isn't working on books, he's busy traveling and spending time with his family. Indeed, he attends the athletic, theatrical and musical [both vocal and instrumental] events in which his six grandchildren participate. He also writes about anything that interests him for his many websites. Every chance he gets, Ron proudly wears his America Needs Farmers T-shirt.

The Hawkeyes' Rich Football Tradition, Revisited

I mentioned a while back that I was in the process of updating my Tales from the Iowa Sidelines book. Updating it for the second time. The original hardback edition of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines [pictured at the right] was published in 2003, during the 10-3 season, when coach Kirk Ferentz and his Iowa football team had a 10-3 record that included a 37-17 victory over 15th-ranked Florida in the Outback Bowl and after the Hawkeyes went 11-2 in 2002. That book was a best-seller, so the publishers came to me again in 2005, a season that finished with a breathtaking 30-25 victory over No. 11 Louisiana State in the Capital One Bowl on New Year's Day, 2005. Because buyers had cleaned out the the shelves in the bookstores, the publishers wanted to know if I'd do an updated version of the book. I agreed, The revised, soft-cover edition [pictured at the left] was published in 2005. Warren Holloway, who teamed with quarterback Drew Tate on a miraculous 56-yard touchdown pass to win the Capital One Bowl, was featured on the cover. That book, too, turned into a best-seller, So I had reason to feel very good about my years as a published author. It's not every day that a the original version is a best-seller, and so is the updated version. Then, imagine my surprise when I received an e-mail from a senior editor at the publishing company last fall, wanting wanted to know if I was interested in doing a second updated version of the book. It came at a time when things weren't going well for the Hawkeyes in the 2012 season. They lost their last six games and finished with a 4-8 record. Frankly, the thought of doing a revised edition of the book during a 4-8 season seemed to be a stretch. "Maybe producing a revised edition in a year or two would be a better idea," I told the publishers. "We'd like to do it now," I was told. "Let me think about it," I said. After a few days of thought, I accepted the idea. I talked myself into the idea that this was the supreme compliment--being asked to do a second book update during a 4-8 season showed strong confidence by the publishers in me and in the Hawkeyes' football program. So I got back into the business of interviewing players and coaches again, going to postgame press conferences, weekly press conferences and a scrimmage in West Des Moines. After a press conference in Iowa City, I did a one-on-one interview with coach Kirk Ferentz, and mentioned to him that I was in the process of doing a revised edition of my two best-selling books. I congratulated him on the excellent things he had done for Iowa's football program--all of which contributed to the success of my books. "I think Coach Fry had more to do with it," he told me, bringing up the name of Hayden Fry, his one-time boss at Iowa and a man who brought Iowa's football program back from the dead in the 20th century. That's modest Kirk Ferentz for you. Even though the 2012 season wasn't something Hawkeye coaches, players and fans will recall with any special feeling, Ferentz has a 14-year record of 100-74 at Iowa that includes two 11-victory seasons [2002 smd 2009], two 10-victory seasons [2003 and 2004], plus he's been the Big Ten coach of year in 2002, 2004 and 2009, and national coach of the year in 2002. Indeed, Ferentz has done some wonderful things at Iowa City, and I fully expect his success to continue. I've concluded my writing for the second update of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines, and the senior editor has furnished me with an early look at the book. Not only are the Kirk Ferentz years included in the updated version, but so is the stuff I previously wrote about Howard Jones, Dr. Eddie Anderson, Heisman Trophy winner Nile Kinnick and the 1939 Hawkeye Ironmen, Ronald Reagan, Ozzie Simmons, Ossie Solem, Randy Duncan, Alex Karras and lots of other legends from Iowa's rich football history. I expect the book to be in stores soon. I hope you like it.