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Published on: 1/31/2009
Last Visited: 3/3/2009
In 1955, Oklahoma native Sonny Maynard came to Arkansas City to play basketball under Dan Kahler, famed for coaching teams to winning records, regional championships and national rankings.
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Kahler would bench him - even if just for a few minutes - every time he committed the "cardinal sin" of playing poor defense, he said.
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Kahler was there, too.
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Kahler and several of his former players were among the first group to be inducted into the Tiger Hall of Fame, in 2000.
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"Dan Kahler was the greatest coach who ever lived - always positive and uplifting," Maynard said.
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Another former player for Kahler, Jack King, also attended the social event Friday night.
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King and Kahler reminisced about that final game of the season.
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"He was the best center passer," Kahler said.
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Of Kahler, Potter said: "He's one of the finest individuals I ever met.
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Hunt attended ACJC for one year, but Kahler made a big impression on him.
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Kahler also was a collector of good players, Hunt said.
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"That's about it," Kahler told the manager and took his team to another place to eat.
From then on, the team boycotted that restaurant.
Arkansas City resident Ken Gilmore also played a semester for Kahler.
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A member of the 1955-56 team, Don Shanks said Kahler was a very strict and very eloquent person.
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As a coach, Kahler ran his teams hard and drilled them on the fundamentals of defense, Maynard said.
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In those days, all teams in the state were eligible to play in one state tournament, without classifications, Dan noted.
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Dan Kahler noted that his father later became a coach and athletic director at Southwestern College.
He was inducted into the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame in 1974.
Growing up in the East, Dan graduated from a high school in Toms River, N.J., where he learned to dunk the basketball.
"I was quick.
I could jump," said Kahler, who grew to be 6-foot, 4-inches tall.
"I dunked it in high school even though 'dunk' didn't exist when I graduated in 1944."
Kahler was about to have a picture taken of him as a high school basketball player.
He asked the photographer if he wanted him to "put the ball through basket.
The photographer said no, he wanted Dan to put his hand in the basket.
Dan did, and the photo was taken.
In those days dunking was considered "showing off," he said.
And he didn't encourage it in the games he later coached.
Kahler went on to become a standout athlete at Southwestern College in Winfield, earning 15 letters.
He later played ball with an AAU team in Denver.
As a coach, Kahler tried to bring out the different individual skills of his players and get them to work together.
The best teams excelled because they had "chemistry," he said.
Kahler coached Tiger basketball from 1952 to 1959.
He led ACJC to six Jayhawk Conference Western Division titles and qualified for the national tournament four times, finishing as high as second following the 1952-53 season.
His overall record of 170-49 (.776) is the best of any Cowley men's basketball coach.
He retired from coaching to become principal of Arkansas City High School, where he remained until 1963.
That year, he moved to Lawrence and served as analyst and interviewer for the University of Kansas Sports Network for more than a decade.
He eventually moved to the Kansas City area, where he has been very active in the education.
He was named Greater Kansas City Teacher of the Year in 1988 and he was the first recipient of the Maxey Dupree Award, better known as the "Kindest Kansas Citian," in 1991.
In 2002, Kahler was honored by having the surface of W.S. Scott Auditorium named Dan Kahler Court.
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Above: Dan Kahler, right, hugs Jack King at a social event Friday night held as a kickoff leading into tonight's Cowley Tiger Athletic Hall of Fame induction ceremony.
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