#265 - WE ARE DICK KATTE, LIFE LESSONS AND WISDOM FROM A COACHING LEGEND

We are bringing you a special treat in this episode, a sit-down chat with one of the legends of high school basketball coaching not just in Colorado, but in the country. Dick Katte began coaching basketball and teaching math at Denver Christian High School in 1960, becoming the head coach in 1964. He finished with a record of 876-233, which until this past season represented the most wins ever for a coach in Colorado. A lot of you know me as a running coach, but I actually broke into the coaching biz in basketball, way back in 1983. A dozen or more of Coach Katte’s wins were against teams that I helped coach, and it was always particularly gratifying when you could steal a rare win from the master, as we did in the 1998 state title game. Sorry Coach, I had to throw that in. His final team in 2012 went 26-0 and culminated with his eighth state championship. Coach Katte has been inducted into an alphabet soup of halls of fame, including those of CHSAA, the Colorado Sports HOF, the National High School, and National High School Coaches’ HOFs. Along the way, he was a football official for the WAC, supervisor of football officials for the RMAC, and has served admirably for CHSAA and the CHSCA, focusing particularly in the area of sportsmanship. But there were some major road bumps along the way, to put it mildly. In 1984, he suffered a brain aneurysm that almost killed him. Nine years later, he contracted cancer which necessitated the removal of 4½ feet of his small intestine. Through each of these challenges, Coach Katte felt like he was being tested by God to re-evaluate the way he was conducting his life on and off the court, and he came out on the other side a much better man. I’ve made many friends in the coaching world over my four decades in it, and anytime you listen to a great coach, you come away with many gold nuggets of insights and wisdom. Follow along with this conversation with Coach Katte, which I have split into two parts, and you will come away with a trove of those nuggets. Among the topics we discuss in this first part is about that at age 87, he is still teaching math at a school that helps its students go into the trades. Despite the age gap, he is still challenging and developing trusting relationships with his pupils. For further depth on this life very well-lived, he wrote his memoir, Over Time: Coach Katte on Basketball and Life, which you can find on Amazon.

Coach Dick Katte
303-587-7674
[email protected]
His book: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=dick+katte&i=stripbooks&crid=1GZ1YS0LXMUV4&sprefix=dick+katte%2Cstripbooks%2C184&ref=nb_sb_noss

Bill Stahl
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