Bates in the NCAAs<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Bates takes on Roger Williams University<\/a> in the first round of the NCAA Division III Women’s Basketball Championship at 5 p.m. Friday, March 4, at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, N.Y. The game is available via livestream<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n A quirky, erudite, tinkering polymath who taught chemistry, too, Keaney deployed pithy aphorisms in Latin and English; invented URI\u2019s school color (\u201cKeaney Blue\u201d) in his lab; and used ideas from Demosthenes and American philosopher William James to create a potent approach to coaching, one that instilled a sense of wonder and romance in his athletes: the \u201clove of the seeking, the zest, the joy of the road to winning.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Frank William Keaney was born in Cambridge, Mass., in 1886 to Irish immigrants. His mother died in a flu epidemic in 1900. By then, his father had abandoned the family of five children. Frank and brother Allan were raised by an older sister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Attending Cambridge Latin School, he studied Latin and Greek and played football, baseball, and track. He picked up basketball, invented in 1891, at the local YMCA. Without parental supervision, he got in early trouble. \u201cIn the district court this morning, Frank Keaney was fined $3 for throwing snowballs,\u201d noted the Boston Globe<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Graduating in 1907, he played semi-pro baseball in the Maine League for Lewiston. At season\u2019s end, as Keaney prepared to head home, teammate Willard Boothby, already enrolled at Bates in the Class of 1909, introduced him to Bates President George Colby Chase, who asked Keaney about his goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTeach and coach,\u201d replied the 5-foot-8, 145-pound shortstop. Chase asked, \u201cDid you study Greek and Latin?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n After Keaney quoted the opening verse of Virgil\u2019s Aeneid <\/em>and translated it, Chase admitted him on the spot. Joining a class of 138 from eight states (including South Dakota), he was one of few Catholics. Jumping into campus life, he played in the annual freshman-sophomore baseball game that fall, won by the frosh, 3\u20132, in a \u201crattling good game,\u201d reported The Bates Student<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Then it was on to football, which was enjoying heady times. The year before, in 1906, the forward pass had been legalized, and Bates, under coach Royce Davis Purinton<\/a>, Class of 1900, joined the vanguard. \u201cThe forward pass was attempted by the Bates team and was well handled,\u201d the Student<\/em> reported. \u201cThe play promises when perfected, to be especially pleasing to the spectators besides an effective ground gainer.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n In Keaney\u2019s first game, against the soldiers of Fort McKinley, a bygone Army base on Great Diamond Island in Casco Bay, Bates won 34\u20130. The Bates backfield included two freshmen, Keaney and Eugene Vernon Lovely of Gardiner, Maine. It was an auspicious pairing: Both would one day have athletic stadiums named for them. (Note: They weren\u2019t the first Bates backfield to achieve rare distinction after Bates: the 1904 tandem of Harry Lord<\/a> and Bobby Messenger<\/a> later played together for the Chicago White Sox.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n In October, Harvard pummeled Bates, 33\u20134, at Soldier\u2019s Field in Keaney\u2019s hometown. Harvard, one of the nation\u2019s best teams, employed assistant coach Oliver Cutts<\/a>, Bates Class of 1896, a Harvard-trained lawyer and All-American, who later returned to Bates as football coach and athletic director.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In November, at Orono, heavy rain made Alumni Field \u201cresemble a clam flat,\u201d the Student<\/em> said. Bates tied Maine, 6\u20136. Keaney scored the touchdown on a 20-yard run, \u201cdodging and evading several tackles.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bates finished 3-4-1, with Keaney awarded a varsity B, Lovely a freshman numeral, and Boothby, who had introduced Keaney to President Chase, promoted to manager next year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That winter, \u201cthe first season in the history of intercollegiate basket-ball\u201d was played at Bates. Twenty tried out, including Keaney, \u201cexperienced in the game.\u201d The first game, on Jan. 17, 1908, was a 52\u201318 loss vs. the Rockport YMCA. The first college game, a 21\u20137 loss to Colby, was at Lewiston City Hall. The finale, a 22\u201315 loss to Maine, was at the old wooden Bates gymnasium<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After a disappointing 3\u20135 record, the Student<\/em> declared the inaugural season \u201chandicapped by inexperience, incomplete organization, absence, and loss and change of captains.\u201d A high-minded editorial went further, citing \u201cobjections for maintaining basket-ball at Bates as an intercollegiate sport.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The primary objection was that the \u201cbest material\u201d \u2014 i.e., the best athletes \u2014 already played football, baseball, or track, and were overstretched. \u201cIn the past those students who have had to sacrifice their studies for athletics have had a chance in the winter term to vindicate their ability as students. But with basket-ball included, the winter term holds out the same distractions from study.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n A decision was made. \u201cBasket-ball\u201d was dropped as a sport. Its return would come 12 years later, in 1920.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Keaney was one who could surely use the break. In his first year, he played football, ran track, played baseball, joined interclass competitions, and pounded the books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He also worked. In his first year, tuition was $50 a year, and board was $3 a week. To pay for his board, Keaney washed dishes 20 meals a week for 60 students. On one Saturday, he dashed from the dish sink to Garcelon Field, where he \u201ctook the ball on a double pass around Bowdoin\u2019s left end for 20 yards.\u201d On Sundays, he mixed ice cream in an \u201cold fashioned electric freezer with paddles.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n To pay for his room with amenities like \u201csteam heat and electric lights,\u201d Keaney cleaned out the lab in Hedge Hall, and two classrooms, and kept the coal fires burning in pot-bellied stoves. \u201cAt 6 in the morning I took out the ashes, carried the coal up two flights in coal hods. At noon I looked the stoves over. At 6 p.m. or at 7, I banked the fires, and at 10 saw they were O.K.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n An aspiring teacher, he taught in a one room schoolhouse between Thanksgiving and February. On campus, he studied Latin, Greek, chemistry, physics, and English. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As baseball approached, the Student <\/em>predicted that \u201cthe Cambridge High man seems to be the fastest man to fill Captain Wilder\u2019s old place at shortstop.\u201d The team finished 11\u20138, with freshman Keaney batting .216, behind senior Wilder (displaced now to second base), who hit .320.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n By junior year, Keaney was hitting his stride. In football he was named Second Team All-Maine, but with a caveat: \u201cSome may pick him (first team) in preference to the Bowdoin man. Keaney\u2019s play is decidedly of the spectacular order while Smith is perhaps more reliable.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the classroom, Keaney excelled in Latin and Greek. \u201cHe loved the structure of the language,\u201d according to his biography, Keaney<\/em>, written by William Woodward. \u201cHe learned to appreciate its potential impact in influencing others and making things happen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And in baseball, he led off and batted .380 with 38 steals, developing the swashbuckling style soon to become his trademark. Bates beat Bowdoin three times. In a 5\u20132 win, Keaney was \u201cthe star of the game,\u201d the Student<\/em> reported, with three hits and four stolen bases. In a 5\u20134 Memorial Day win, he had three hits, including a triple, and stole two bases. And in a 6\u20135 Ivy Day win, he stole home, \u201cthe feature for Bates.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Keaney added another activity destined to change his life. As scorer for interclass girls basketball in the old Rand Gym, he watched the Class of 1911 defeat the Class of 1910 in overtime, 18\u201314, as \u201cMiss McKee threw two baskets for the Juniors, winning the game.\u201d He and Winifred \u201cMac\u201d McKee, Class of 1911, of Newark, N.J., soon became inseparable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Following his junior baseball campaign, Keaney was elected captain senior year, prompting a Boston Globe<\/em> headline to gush that he was \u201cnot only a fine ball player, but is a brilliant student and popular.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n But days later, the papers published a shocking story that Keaney was headed to Chicago to try out for the Americans. Further, \u201cKeaney could not be found at the college. His trunk had gone and so had he. None of the students could verify the story and all hoped that it was untrue, as a job with the Chicago Americans would debar him from college baseball another year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Keaney did not play in Chicago that summer (had he, he would have joined Harry Lord and Bobby Messenger, both Class of 1908, who played with the White Sox in 1910). Instead, he played for the Cubs \u2014 not in Chicago, but his hometown Cambridge Cubs, at shortstop. He never again played for Bates. \u201cOn account of financial reasons, he was obliged to play professional baseball during the summer vacation, thus making him ineligible,\u201d the Student<\/em> reported. He resigned as captain. Bates finished 10-5.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Interestingly, Bates had earlier students who played minor league ball yet retained eligibility. Prior to 1906, Bates was in the Maine Intercollegiate Athletic Association, whose rules and enforcement were haphazard. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1906, the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States was created, to standardize football rules \u2014 such as the \u201cforward pass\u201d \u2014 and make the game safer. Renamed the NCAA in 1910, the new entity established tighter eligibility rules, forcing Keaney from baseball in 1911, and making him an early casualty of \u201camateur\u201d rules. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Senior season, football hopes ran high. But Keaney, \u201cone of the best backs in Maine,\u201d according to the Globe, <\/em>chose not to play. \u201cHe prefers to give his entire time to baseball.\u201d Two weeks later, came news that Keaney would coach the Gardiner High School football team, just up the road from Bates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why no football his last year? Was it the opportunity to coach? New-found love? Perhaps, but Cupid did not stop Lovely, who later married Isabell Kincaid, Class of 1911, of South Portland, from playing. The reason was NCAA eligibility rules once again, according to the Lewiston Journal<\/em>. Bates finished 5-1-3, losing only to national champion Harvard, 22\u20130, at Soldier\u2019s Field. Lovely, along with Keaney\u2019s backfield replacement \u2014 his brother, Allan, Class of 1916 \u2014 led Bates to its best season since the undefeated 1898 team<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While courting \u201cMac,\u201d Keaney kept busy as sports editor of the yearbook and led Bates to the YMCA basketball championship, beating Bangor 25\u201321 and Hebron 17\u20136. In baseball, Allan replaced him at shortstop. The 1911 yearbook listed Keaney\u2019s three majors (Latin, chemistry, and English) and thesis (\u201cThe Sources of Petroleum\u201d), but most telling was the poem beneath his photo:<\/p>\n\n\n\n He was always strong in athletics<\/em> At Bates, Keaney was developing a philosophy that focused on human potential that would drive his career as a coach and teacher. He filled journal pages with ponderings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Keaney was particularly taken by the ideas of William James, the father of American psychology. He was moved by James\u2019 famous speech before the American Philosophical Association at Columbia University in 1906 in which he said that \u201ccompared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his journals, Keaney reacted to James\u2019 thought with this question: \u201cDo we ever go all out 100 percent?\u201d As a coach and teacher, he would spend his life\u2019s work wrestling with that question. At Bates, he had sown the seeds of all his future success: teaching, coaching, playing four sports, yielding to the NCAA, giving 100 percent, finding love. Bates had been a yeasty time; now he would rise to the challenges ahead. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Like many new grads, he took advantage of the Bates alumni network. C.C. Spratt, Class of 1893 and principal of Putnam (Conn.) High School, hired him to teach algebra, chemistry, and physics and coach all sports \u2014 for $900. Mid-year, he followed Spratt to Woonsocket (R.I.) High School with the same duties, but for $1,200. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Success followed immediately. His baseball teams won 77 straight; track won a state title; and basketball beat Reading (Mass.) High School, coached by brother Allan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1914, he married Winifred, and sons Frank Jr. and Warner followed. In 1917, he moved to Everett (Mass.) High. By then, he had begun to perfect his philosophy: \u201cCoaches and teachers should be full of \u2018pep,\u2019\u201d he wrote. \u201cThey should love life and impart it\u2026fun improves interest.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Drawing on James, Keaney believed that athletes could awaken from their slumber and attain peak performance when, they were given \u201csome unusual stimulus\u201d \u2014 a challenge, funny pep talk, creative sports drill, or hard exercise \u2014 that \u201cfills them with emotional excitement, or some unusual idea of necessity which induces them to make an extra effort of will.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ever the lover of language, he developed a colorful lexicon, dubbed \u201cKeaneyana.\u201d A 1941 newspaper article shared over 130 distinctive Keaney sayings, including his signature \u201cGive me some Old Gazazza<\/em>!,\u201d which meant go all out, beyond limits. He would evangelize with anyone \u2014 the press, players, colleagues \u2014 about his work. Taking his cue from Demosthenes, he said the three most important things in speech-making are, \u201cAction, action, action.\u201d Keaney saw \u201caction\u201d as a chance to \u201cshow your true character… what you are made of. Action is fire and dash.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1920, as basketball resumed at Bates, Rhode Island State College (which would become the University of Rhode Island in 1951) hired Keaney as a chemistry professor and one-man athletic staff. Founded in 1892, the college had hired its first athletic director in 1916, but three men quickly came and went. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cKeaney brought in ingenuity, dash, and flamboyance to the tottering athletic program.\u201d His first year, football went 0\u20134\u20134, including a 27\u20130 loss to Brown. But basketball improved from two wins to 9-8, and rival UConn was beaten in three sports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1925, the athletic staff doubled when Olympic hammer gold medalist Fred Tootell, a graduate of Bowdoin, was hired to coach track and assist in football. From 1925 to 1930, Keaney teams went 122\u201365, including 15\u20131 in basketball in 1929.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He coached football for two decades, and baseball for three. Even at 50, he could out-kick any player, including his sons, both Rhode Island kickers. Harkening back to Bates days, his baseball philosophy was: \u201cIf you run the bases with abandon, you will win.\u201d His baseball record was 221\u2013110\u20131.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it was coaching basketball that brought national attention to Keaney and Rhode Island. For decades, the slow-paced college game had been seeking an identity, and Keaney provided it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Inspired by the aggressive forechecking and outlet passing at a Boston Bruins game, Keaney \u201cturned a game of patterned plodding into 40 minutes of frenzied excitement,\u201d said Sports Illustrated<\/em>. With the full-court presses, fast breaks, and long outlet passes, Rhode Island led the nation in scoring, and would do so in nine of 10 years in the 1930s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1937, a rule change turbo-charged Keaney\u2019s offense. Now, a jump ball following each basket was replaced by an in-bounds pass. With that, Keaney\u2019s teams went from \u201cpoint a minute\u201d wonders to \u201ctwo points a minute\u201d marvels. Dubbed \u201cfirehorse\u201d basketball, spectators loved it. In 1940, Rhode Island beat Connecticut 102\u201381 in the highest scoring game ever played.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The system was deceptively simple,” Sports Illustrated<\/em> said. “Rhode Island came out with a full-court man-to-man press and stayed in it the whole game. Whenever a Ram player got his hands on the ball after an opponent’s basket or in the back court, he heaved a long pass to a breaking teammate.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Purists dismissed the pell-mell, fast-break style as undisciplined and too physically demanding. But writing in 1954, the legendary coach Red Auerbach lauded Keaney\u2019s approach, saying it was based on the premise that a \u201cteam will normally score more points than the opposition if it gets more shots at the basket than its opponents.\u201d Keaney\u2019s team approached each possession as if there were just a few ticks of the clock left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Keaney, the erudite polymath who taught chemistry as well as coached, dismissed critics with a Latin phrase, \u201cnihil ex nihilo est nihil\u201d \u2014 <\/em>\u201dNothing tried is nothing gained\u201d \u2014 and pointed to the science behind his strenuous conditioning at a time when lingering belief that hard aerobic exercise could harm the heart<\/a>. \u201cA normal heart is never injured by hard work,\u201d he wrote in his journal.\u201d In Latin, he would yell to his athletes, \u201cElle conditio<\/em>\u201d \u2014 \u201cGet in condition!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ahead of his time, Keaney explored the connection between physical conditioning and mental performance. A well-conditioned athlete, he wrote, \u201cmakes fewer errors of the head.\u201d When an athlete performs at maximum physical efficiency, \u201carising problems in a game are quickly solved, fewer errors are made, and players are more attentive, more alive, and more alert.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not that Keaney\u2019s own appearance reflected this. Long before Bill Belicheck made his hoodie chic, Keaney \u201cambled about on stubby, bowed legs, and his more-than-ample stomach sagged comfortably over his low-slung football breeches or sweat pants, with draw strings rarely tied. His attire also included a loose-fitting T-shirt or sweatshirt.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Until 1941, \u201cLittle Rhody\u201d was just a regional sensation; they\u2019d never appeared at college basketball\u2019s mecca, Madison Square Garden. That would end in January when \u201clittle, unknown\u201d Rhode Island, according to the New York Daily News<\/em>, came to the Big Apple. <\/p>\n\n\n\n His provincials had never even used a glass backboard, so he installed one at practice. Anticipating stage fright, he roared to his team, \u201cDon\u2019t be looking at tall buildings!\u201d A special train, filled with fans, left Kingston for the national unveiling. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cRams 42 points in First Half Sets Record at Eighth Ave Arena\u201d; \u201cRI Cagers Unorthodox Tactics Dazzle Garden Crowd \u2014 Lives Up to Ballyhoo\u201d; \u201cSt. Francis Victim of \u2018Racehorse\u2019 Basketball\u201d\u2014headlines blared. His 6-foot-4, 270-pound son Warner led the team in rebounds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the war years, when Rodman Gym\u2019s skylights were blacked out, the nation\u2019s attention turned elsewhere. Frank Jr., a B-24 navigator, flew bombing missions over France and Austria. College basketball continued, but Keaney added another job, training troops on campus, inventing a toughening game called \u201cmurder ball,\u201d combining basketball and football.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the 1940s as throughout the mid-1900s, there was no such thing as March Madness, and the major men\u2019s college basketball tournament wasn\u2019t the NCAAs but the National Invitational Tournament, which vastly eclipsed the NCAA tournament in prestige and media attention, partly thanks to the tourney\u2019s location, Madison Square Garden.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1941, 1942, 1945, and 1946, Keaney-coached teams earned invitations. In 1946, Rhode Island finished the regular season at 19\u20132 to earn its fourth invitation to the exclusive eight-team NIT to compete for the national championship. To prepare for smoke-filled Madison Square Garden, he placed \u201csmudge pots\u201d filled with cartons of smoldering cigars and cigarettes throughout the practice gym.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A shot from 62 feet out by Ernie Calverley tied the opener against Bowling Green before Rhode Island won 82\u201379 in overtime. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Next, they beat West Virginia. In the championship against Kentucky, coached by the legendary Adolph Rupp, the \u201cBaron of the Bluegrass,\u201d Rhode Island lost 46-45. Impressed by Keaney\u2019s abilities, Boston Celtic founder Walter Brown offered him the job to coach his new professional team. Keaney initially said yes, but then decided to return to Rhode Island.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Keaney\u2019s dazzling style was hardly confined to the basketball court or the baseball diamond. Indeed, \u201cthe fast break was only the most spectacular product of his maverick genius,\u201d wrote Sports Illustrated<\/em>. \u201cThere was a touch of originality in everything he did.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ever the tinkerer, to promote sharpshooting, he devised the Keaney Ring, a 15-inch iron rim placed inside the standard 18-inch rim. \u201cHe loved to create and experiment, as was his modus operandi for his career as a coach.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Keaney taught chemistry with the same passion and ingenuity. Some of his chemistry demonstrations were outlandish, like putting a tennis ball in liquid air (minus 321 degrees), then fire the ball at one of his athletes and laugh as the brittle rubber ball broke into a thousand pieces. He used chemicals in his lab to create powerful liniments for his athletes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He once asked, \u201cWhy not a state high school championship in chemistry?\u201d He then devised an exam and awarded trophies. With 300 competitors in 2018, the championship celebrated its 85th<\/sup> anniversary<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In his laboratory in Rodman Gym, he devised a new color, \u201cKeaney Blue,\u201d the school color to this day, \u201cmore pronounced than Columbia blue, more fluorescent than a Carolina blue,\u201d said his biography. Unveiled at Brown Stadium in 1935, the new color heralded the first ever victory over Brown, 13\u20137. In celebration, he was hoisted on the shoulders of his \u201cKeaneymen\u201d and \u201ccarried the length of the football field.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Keaney continued as athletic director until 1956. Across all sports, his record stands at 707\u2013322\u201314. In 1960, Keaney was inducted into the Hall of Fame, a year after inventor Dr. James Naismith. \u201cHe was a wonderful, boisterous Irishman, an old-fashioned type coach who was half-father and half-Rockne,\u201d wrote Woodward in Keaney<\/em>. \u201cHe seemed to be saying to his players, \u2018I\u2019ll build your character son, you just listen to what I have to say.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his forward to Keaney<\/em>, Chuck Daly, who coached two NBA championship teams, as well as the 1992 U.S. men’s Olympic basketball \u201cDream Team,\u201d wrote, \u201cThe game as we know it today places tremendous emphasis on conditioning, speed, quickness, tough defense, and sharp passing,\u201d \u201c[Keaney] introduced all these concepts 25 years before they became the norm.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Red Auerbach called Keaney \u201ca great psychologist,\u201d hailing him as \u201cvery innovative and ahead of his time.\u201d Sports Illustrated<\/em> said he had \u201ca restless imagination and flair for showmanship.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1953, URI dedicated Keaney Gym, with 5,000 seats, on Keaney Road. But he isn\u2019t the only one in his Bates backfield with that honor. At Andover (Mass.) High School, the football stadium is named for Eugene V. Lovely,<\/a> honoring his contributions as a longtime science teacher, principal, and football and baseball coach. (His wife, three children, and two grandchildren all graduated from Bates.) \u201cHe probably influenced more 20th-century people in Andover than any other person,\u201d a 2016 Andover Townsman<\/em> story said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n All his life, Keaney filled dozens of notebooks chock-a-block full of diagrams, reflections, and verse \u2014 his own version of Leonardo\u2019s Notebooks. From one, a poem \u201cThe Coach\u2019s Wife,\u201d he read at the dedication of Keaney Gym in 1953: <\/p>\n\n\n\n There are lines of praise to the athletic sta<\/em>r On road games, he sometimes stopped the team bus in front of his home, strode to the porch and kissed his beloved Winifred \u201cMac\u201d McKee Keaney before returning. Maybe there was a lesson somewhere there \u2014 more profound even than William James. They were married 53 years until his death, at age 81, in 1967. She died a year later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bob Muldoon \u201981<\/a> lives in Boston. The author of the novel Brass Bonanza Plays Again<\/a><\/em>, he has written a variety of historical sports features for Bates News<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Frank Keaney graduated from Bates in 1911, varsity basketball didn’t exist. So how did he become one of the great college hoops coaches of all time \u2014 and inventing the fast break along the way?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":144725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[7,24],"tags":[10359],"class_list":["post-144670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-athletics","tag-bob-muldoon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144670"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":144755,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144670\/revisions\/144755"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2022\/03\/1911-class-baseball-team-20220303.webp\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2022\/03\/1911-Mirror-Frank-Keaney-114901AM.webp\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2022\/03\/1911-class-basketball-team-20220303_20536-PM.webp\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2022\/03\/womens-basketball_2022-03-03.webp\")
Be it baseball, football, track<\/em>
But during his last two years<\/em>
He has given his time to win Mac<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2022\/03\/charlotte_mckee_1911_13-PM.webp\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2022\/03\/10.2307_community.2962176-1-1.webp\")
![\"**](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2022\/03\/AP_460314034-edited.webp\")
![\"Ernie](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2022\/03\/AP_460321026-1.webp\")
![\"Creator:](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2022\/03\/10.2307_community.2962178-1.webp\")
And the boys who make the team<\/em>,
And the winning play of a crucial game<\/em>
Has been many a poet\u2019s theme<\/em>.
There are headlines bold for the winning coach<\/em>
And of how he directed the strife,<\/em>
But here\u2019s to a soldier behind the lines,<\/em>
To the valiant coach\u2019s wife<\/em>….<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Someone to rejoice when the victory\u2019s won<\/em>.
To share sorrow in times of defeat<\/em>.
To have faith in the coach\u2019s dreams and plans<\/em>.
His alter-ego, who makes life complete.<\/em>
So we laud the deeds of the coach and team<\/em>.
Their success is the aim of her life<\/em>.
She\u2019s content to console, to exalt, to inspire.<\/em>
And to be, just the coach\u2019s wife<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n