Coach Bill Kaiser fondly remembered by his Logan boys

The name Bill Kaiser evokes fond memories in the young boy of many grown men who played basketball at Princeton Logan Junior High School from 1959-87.

Perhaps a little fear, too, to those who may have needed a reprimand from time to time.

The IBCA and Bureau County Sports Hall of Famer won 12 Starved Rock Conference championships and eight SRC tournaments, winning 74% of the games he coached with a 346-120 record.

But Kaiser, who passed away June 3 at age 96, was much more than wins and losses. He not only coached basketball and taught English, he taught life lessons to those adolescents.

He coached with a stern, but fair style that always brought out the best in his young men.

“He was such a motivator. He always wanted your best. You didn’t always have to be perfect, but he expected you to give your best,” said Scott Robbins of Princeton, who played for Kaiser during the 1977-78 and 1978-79 school years.

“I had him as an English teacher and he was great teacher too. Just a good human being. He will forever be a person that meant a lot to me. He taught me a lot more than I thought he did at the time. But as I get older I know what he meant to me. And he meant a lot to my family.”

Kaiser is most dear to all the Robbins family, having coached all six of the Robbins brothers, Tom, Tony, Scott, Doug, Jeff, and Jimmy. Doug played on Kaisers’s two undefeated teams that went 40-0 over a two-year period from 1979-80 and 1980-81.

“Coach Kaiser and Coach (Mike) Kesseler) rotated and coached the boys in seventh grade and kept them through eighth grade. What was weird about that is he ended up getting all of us,” Scott said.

Robbins said he remembers how Kaiser and Kessler would always come to see their Logan kids play at PHS. Kaiser remained close friends with the Robbins family’s exchanging Christmas cards with the boys mother, Fran, over the years.

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Bill Kaiser, shown with his coaching partner and dear friend, the late Mike Kesseler, passed away on Tuesday, June 3 at the age of 96. The Hall of Fame Logan Junior High Coach leaves behind a lifetime of memories and life lessons for the kidss he coach from 1959-87. (Photo provided by Bill Kaiser, Jr)

John Hedrich, who played for Kaiser’s 40-0 squad, pulled out an old scrapbook from his Logan days, reading the letter Kaiser wrote to the players and parents after each season.

“It was a reminder who he was, who he wanted the boys on his team to be. He was the genuine article and what you saw is what you got,” Hedrich said. “You don’t necessarily appreciate it in the moment, but later you do. And really it wasn’t too much later my friends and I knew he was so valuable to us in our development.

“He knew what 7th and 8th grade boys needed. 7th and 8th grade boys don’t know what they need. But Bill knew what we needed and he gave it to us.”

A big part of Kaiser’s success, Hedrich said, was that he had a good relationship with the parents.

“There were older siblings who played for him, so parents knew him from that and Biddy Basketball he held for the 5th and 6th grader,” said Hedrich, who splits his law practice between his Princeton and Chicago offices. “The parents certainly had the expectations what it was going to be like so nobody was surprised when kids came home and said, ‘He’s coaching us real hard. He’s doing this, he’s doing that.’ I remember one time I came home complaining to my parents and they were like, ‘Well, yeah, so, good.’”

Hedrich said Kaiser wouldn’t let his class get too big for their britches and was always about the team, playing all 15 boys as equally as he could.

“He was constantly reminding of us not to get overconfident and think we were too great, which I think was a challenge because we thought we were all that and a bag of chips,” he said.

Kaiser preached hard work in practice and working on fundamentals, Robbins and Hedrich said.

“He was a no-nonsense guy. We had fun, but he didn’t try to manufacture fun. It was the result of working hard and getting better and winning. And winning was a lot of fun,” Hedrich said. “He was there to work and he expected his players to work to get better. Our group had a lot of guys that wanted to.”

A late bloomer, who was not big enough to play varsity football at L-P, Kaiser went on to play for LPO’s (now IVCC) JC state football teams as well as the Apaches’ basketball and baseball teams. He received offers to play football from Southern Cal, Arkansas State and San Francisco, opting to take a full-ride with the University of New Mexico. He was the starting left back for the Lobos’ nationally crowned defensive champions and played baseball.

For his talents, Kaiser received the Tom Yasm Memorial Trophy that was awarded by Illinois Valley sportswriters to the best area college athlete, an honor that was presented to St. Bede’s Ken Goral and Princeton’s Lew Flinn and Joe Ruklick, among others before it was discontinued in 1956.

Bill Kaiser Jr., remembers walking out of a high school game at PHS once, remembering the words of his father that resonate with him today.

“He appreciated people so much. He always said it’s all about people to him,” Bill Jr. said. “I remember we were walking out of Prouty Gym after a ball game and he said, ‘There’s a lot of wonderful people in this world.’ And I always liked that. I thought it was pretty profound.”

Very profound. The ball players he coached and their families would say the same thing about Coach Kaiser. He was a wonderful person and will be deeply missed by all the lives he touched.

Kevin Hieronymus has been BCR Sports Editor since 1986. Contact hm at khieronymus@bcrnews.com