UNK coach receives national honor
digg it!
Facebook
del.icio.us
Seed Newsvine
Fark It
Reddit
BY CURT McKEEVER / Lincoln Journal Star
Rollie Carter was ready to leave Aurora for the picturesque Rocky Mountain-prairie country of Greeley, Colo.
It was 1961, a time when chemistry teachers, with the U.S. investing more in its fledgling space program, could pretty much have their pick of jobs.
But Carter also coached the junior high football, basketball and track teams. So the Aurora school board went for the ace card it hoped would make Carter forget about mailing the contract he’d already signed.
He could lead the high school football and track programs. And since those responsibilities would take up more of his time, they’d get somebody else to coach basketball.
“I didn't have the slightest idea who they were going to bring in,” said Carter, who eagerly accepted the offer and was rewarded with the opportunity of a lifetime.
The basketball coach Aurora hired, Bill Kropp of Clarkson, happened to have two athletically blessed sons. The oldest, John, was 11 and went on to play in the Nebraska Shrine Bowl football game and have a successful basketball career at Kearney State College. But it was 8-year-old Tom who possessed a really special talent.
The kind that made him a four-sport standout and paved the way to being drafted by teams from the NBA, ABA and NFL.
The kind that merits him being the first Nebraskan inducted into the National Federation of State High School Associations National High School Hall of Fame.
“This is the highest award I’ve ever gotten, and I’m very humbled and overwhelmed,” Tom Kropp said of Monday’s recognition ceremony in Washington, D.C.
It’ll be his first real trip to the nation’s capital since the Washington Bullets traded him to the Chicago Bulls in 1977.
Kropp, a 6-foot-3 guard, spent one year in Chicago and — after being waived at the start of his third season in the NBA and completing his master’s degree in education — then spent four more years playing professionally in Belgium. He could have continued down that path, but chose a much less glamourous offer to return to teach and be an assistant basketball and track coach at his alma mater, Kearney State.
Any Nebraskan who follows college basketball knows Kropp is regarded as one of the top coaches in the country. In the last 13 years, he’s taken the Lopers to 10 NCAA Division II Tournaments.
It’s in Aurora, though, where his status mirrors that of a legend.
“It would take him a half-hour to go two blocks around the square now,” said the 71-year-old Carter, who coached for 14 years in Aurora, spent another 25 years as a principal and still lives in the central-Nebraska community. “People that were here when he was playing, they would know him and they would want to stop and talk.
“His reputation among people who really mean something and are leaders in our community is phenomenal.”
Back when he had the nation’s top collegiate football program, Nebraska coach Bob Devaney held the same affinity for Kropp.
“He told me that he was the best football player he had seen and that he wanted him very badly,” Carter said. “Coming from him, that may be the ultimate compliment.”
Devaney had convinced the kid that taking a scholarship from the Huskers would be in his best interest. During his first weekend in Lincoln, though, Kropp felt something else tugging at his heart.
Family.
At the time, both of his sisters and his brother were students at Kearney State, and Tom wanted to be there with them.
“I was not disappointed in the least, and I wasn't surprised in the least, because the relationship that exists within the Kropp family was unique,” Carter said.
“Most people don't believe it when I tell them, because here was the father who was very dominant, a mother who was great, very supportive of the kids. And it was to the point that it was more important to the kids to be with their siblings than it was to go off and have a big, highly publicized career at a bigger school.”
Tom Kropp had worked on summer construction crews since he was 13, and while the full ride to Nebraska weighed heavy on his mind, he’d saved enough money to pay for a year or two of college.
At Kearney State, he ended up with a scholarship that paid for about one-third of his expenses.
For him, it was money well worth spent.
“I’ve always said this, and tell our kids on the team, when you play sports, and it doesn’t matter what level, the important thing and what you take away from it are the relationships you make,” Kropp said.
It should be noted, then, that Tom Kozelko will be among those joining Kropp at Monday’s ceremony.
Who’s Kozelko? Just a one-year teammate in Washington. But from that came a friendship so strong that when Kropp’s daughter was born many years later, Kozelko was named her godfather.
That story doesn’t surprise Carter.
Even when Kropp was growing up in Aurora and it became evident he was equally as talented, if not more, than older kids, he carried himself with a humility that made him likeable and easy to follow.
Carter still laughs about the football practice when Kropp lined up opposite an undersized and younger teammate for a tackling drill.
“Here was Tom, he was going to be the ball carrier, and this was a drill where you’re lying on your back and you have to scramble to your feet to make the tackle,” Carter said. “Well, this kid makes a picture-perfect tackle, raises him to his feet and everything.”
Kropp could have been credited with an assist.
“Tom was helping the kid do that,” Carter said. “He was always a great leader with the kids. I never, ever saw any sign of any kid who was jealous of his success.”
The 55-year-old Kropp can trace much of that back to his father, an ex-Marine, former basketball and baseball player at Wayne State College who had high expectations, but a great appreciation of his children.
He remembers how confident he and his brother were in all the coaches at Aurora well before they’d got to high school — because they’d been regulars at high school practices for years.
“When those kids got involved with the other kids in town, the pick-me-up game was constant at their house,” Carter said. “And Bill could open the gym and let them in, and they'd play all the time.
“I remember Tom was just a youngster, sort of a pudgy little kid. Bill told me, ‘I want my kids to participate in athletics. If I have to go to the smallest school in the state, that's what I'll do.’ Well, he didn't have to do that.”
In the basement of his home sits one of Carter’s most treasured possessions. It’s a framed picture he’d taken at least a decade ago during the annual Aurora alumni basketball tournament.
The subjects are Kropp (the 1971 Journal Star Nebraska High School Athlete of the Year), Sondra Obermeier (the third Nebraska Girls High School Athlete of the Year in 1976), Kevin Penner (a multi-sport standout who went on to have a distinguished career playing baseball at Wichita State) and Tom Haase (the 1986 Nebraska High School Boys Athlete of the Year).
They’re all special to Carter — maybe equally.
But he never had such an easy task as writing a letter of recommendation for Kropp to be inducted into the National High School Hall of Fame.
“Actually, it was kind of hard. There were so many things you could say that could describe his accomplishments,” Carter said. “I guess I tried to write more about him as a person and let the athletic achievements kind of work in.”
Reach Curt McKeever at 473-7441 or cmckeever@journalstar.com.
Post Your Comment
Standards and RulesYour posted comment will appear after it has been approved.
Frequently asked questions about story commenting.