McKeown Wants Family Time
By Jack Danilewicz
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Del.icio.usThe demands of coaching today prompted longtime Castle head girls basketball coach Jeff McKeown to consider moving on a couple years ago, but then his ultra-competitiveness kicked in and he stayed on for two more seasons.
“There was no way I was resigning and walking away after going 1-11,” said McKeown, a three-sport letterman in his own prep playing days at Southwestern Michigan.
McKeown’s Knights came back strong this season to go 6-6 in the parity-driven OIA East Red Conference. The Knights narrowly missed making the Division I State Tournament - going 1-2 in the OIA post-season tournament - and the Castle program has once again found solid footing. With that in mind, McKeown recently resigned his position with the Knights. He had been head coach since 1997-98.
“I feel good about my decision,” he said.“Although I am sure I will miss it, it is the right time to move on.We improved this season; we got better. Almost the whole team will be coming back, so whoever takes over will have a lot of talent.”
McKeown is a science teacher at Castle and had also been an assistant football coach under Nelson Maeda in the mid-to-late ‘90s. He also assisted the boys varsity basketball program for a few years under Rocky Fraticelli and was the head JV boys coach for a couple of seasons.
“I’d like to spend more time with my family,” said McKeown, whose clan includes 2-and-a-half-year-old daughter Maya and wife Lori. “The time commitment is a little bit too much nowadays for what I’d like to spend on it. It isn’t fair to my family to be away so much, and it wouldn’t be fair to the kids I coach (to not give the time needed). It’s something I’d been kicking around. Coaching is not something that defines me, either.”
Echoing the sentiments of many modern-day coaches, he also talked of the byproducts of the current specialization in athletics. The pursuit of college scholarships for women has fueled the tendency for kids to focus on only one sport instead of competing in several, in his view.“That makes it tougher as far as the commitment level (to another sport) in the off-season. There’s a false idea out there that you have to be concentrating on only one sport all year long and that this will make you more attractive to (college) recruiters.
“Recruiters like to see well-rounded individuals. There are different ways to train and work on your skills. (Playing multiple sports) is a more healthy way to train. Playing the same sport for 12 months of the year doesn’t allow the muscles to heal. Using the same muscles all year, they tend to get tired.”
McKeown played basketball, football and ran track at Allegan High in one of Michigan’s most competitive areas. Three-sport athletes were more common in his day and even more so in the era before his own.
“Basketball was my focus, and I always practiced it in the off-season, but I was committed to those other programs when I needed to be committed.”
McKeown said he’ll miss the interaction with the student athletes he coached. “The best part of the job was being able to work with the kids in a setting other than the real classroom.You see the real personalities (in coaching athletics). That’s the part I’ll miss.”
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