by Peggy Bair
The town of Leavenworth and Leavenworth High School are featured in a documentary film based on 1970’s LHS basketball coach, Ken Zacher. The title is “Full Court Press: the Ken Zacher Story.” The film will be presented at 7 p.m. Thursday, October 10, at the Leavenworth High School auditorium.
Before coming to Leavenworth, Zacher’s coaching career included his racially-charged experiences as the 1971 varsity basketball coach at Nowata High School in Nowata, Okla.
Zacher was fired by the school board there for refusing to replace the black team captain with a white player. The team captain was tasked with escorting a white homecoming queen during the school’s ceremonial event that year. Zacher’s refusal sparked an uprising in the community.
“It became pretty difficult,” said Bob Knoll, who coached with Zacher in Nowata. “Crosses were burned in his front yard, windows were broken, his cars had four flat tires. It was pretty vicious.”
After his firing, with the help of University of Kansas basketball coach Ted Owens, Zacher became the Leavenworth High School varsity basketball coach in 1972. Knoll soon followed Zacher to Leavenworth.
Zacher’s high energy and hardline style of coaching won him loyalty and praise from his dedicated Pioneer players. Zacher took the team to state his first coaching year. Although they did not win the state championship, they won the sportsmanship award and finished with a 20-3 record that year.
Zacher coached the Pioneers from 1972 until 1976, a year he was facing family issues. He was also awash with backlash from parents about his stern coaching style. This led to a hearing with the Leavenworth school board to decide his coaching fate. The board narrowly agreed to retain him as varsity basketball coach. However, Zacher succumbed to suicide just before he was to begin his fifth year of coaching the team.
The film about Zacher’s life is the brainchild of Dane Warner, a 1981 graduate of Nowata High School, who decided about three years ago that the Zacher story was compelling enough to create a documentary. The movie production company, End of the Road Production, states that its mission is to “bring awareness to mental illness, racial discrimination and suicide prevention.” The film is an award winner in the 72nd Christian Online Film Festival, selected in two categories, documentary, and feature film. The film is also an official selection for DMOFF, Direct Monthly Online Film Festival.
Warner will be present at Thursday’s Leavenworth High School showing of the documentary.
Retired Leavenworth High School teacher Lynn Smith, who taught for 37 years at LHS and who also coached with Zacher in the 1970s, recalled working with Zacher.
“He was a very stern coach,” Smith said. “He was tough on the kids – and that was for a reason,” Smith said. “The kids loved him for it. What he did was in their interest.”
Among the Leavenworth High School players Zacher coached were Clinton Johnson and Brad Sanders, both who went on to play at the University of Kansas under coach Ted Owens. One of Nowata’s star basketball stars, Warren Dennis, followed Zacher from Nowata to Leavenworth.
Zacher’s exile from Nowata put the coach so much in the spotlight at the time of racial strife, that Zacher was asked to speak at the 1972 national NAACP convention. The convention was attended by thousands. From an archived recording of Zacher’s speech, the coach hit back at those who ousted him from Nowata.
In that speech, Zacher told the NAACP audience: “They hired me as an educator to remove ignorance, and if I perpetuated ignorance and racial prejudice, I wouldn’t be doing my job,” he said. 1
The public is invited to the showing of Full Court Press: The Ken Zacher Story at the Leavenworth High School auditorium Thursday ,Oct. 10, at 7 p.m. Tickets are $20 at the door or in advance www.usd453.org/education-foundation A Q&A will follow the showing. DVDs of the movie and posters will be available for purchase at the event.