SPORTS
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Thursday, April 22, 1993
9
Kansas Sports Information
Before being fired in 1983, Ted Owens compiled a 348-128 record at Kansas. He is second among Kansas coaches in all-time victories behind Phog Allen.
BACK
By Matt Doyle
Kansan sportswriter
ULSA, Okla. — The annual
Metro Christian Academy fund-
ing.
raising auction is less than a minute away and the auction committee is fixing up the details on travel packages that will be among the items up for bid.
This day is a busy day for Owens and his auction committee as they wrap up the plans on some expensive auction items.
Ted Owens, the auction committee chairperson, is bouncing around the conference room making sure every detail is accounted for, whether it is travel packages to Chicago and other cities. "We'll beautiful," he autographed by Garth Brooks.
"I hope that Chicago package doesn't go for too much." Owens said. "I would like to go see my oldest daughters."
Ten years after he was fired by Kansas,Ted Owens has found a home coaching the game he loves
The committee members break out into a laugh in response to Owens' comment.
His daughters, Nancy and Kelly, both live in Chicago.
BOUNCING
coaching college basketball at Kansas and Oral Roberts Universities. He bounced around the European League. And now he has bounced back — landing in a place that he says feels like home
The other 10 percent of Owens' time still goes to the sport he has been involved with for more than 45 years — basketball. He is the head basketball coach for Metro Christian's high school boys team.
Owens has been bouncing around the past 10 years. He has been bounced twice from
At 63, Owens now spends 90 percent of his time as director of development, raising money for Metro Christian, a kindergarten to 12th-grade private school with 750 students in south Tulsa.
After a decade of changing locations and addresses, Owens and his family have settled in Tulsa. Owens says he is happy and content.
For 19 years, from 1964 to 1983, it was nearly impossible to talk about Kansas basketball and not mention Ted Owens in the same breath.
Owens' career at Kansas began in 1960 as Dick Hart's assistant coach When Hark resigned following the death of his wife, Owens was promoted to head coach.
His career record at Kansas was 348-182, including trips to the Final Four in 1971 and 1974 and six Big Eight Conference championships. He coached Walter Wesley, Joole White, Dave Robisch, Bud Stallworth and Darrell Valentine to All-America honors.
He was named Big Eight Coach or the Year five times, and Basketball Weekly named him its National Coach
His tenure at Kansas is exceeded only by the late F.C. "Phog" Allen, who served as Kansas' basketball coach for 39 years.
of the Year in 1978.
Ten years have passed since Owens left KU, relieved of his duties with one year remaining on his contract by an athletic director Monte Johnson.
"It it was the toughest moment in my family's life, but what could you do? What you do is get on with your life," he said.
Ted Owens coaches the Metro Christian Academy Patriots during the Tournament of Champions at the Oral Roberts Mabee Center. Owens has worked at the private school in Tulsa, Okla., for three seasons.
Tulsa World
Owens had directed the Jayhawks to a 13-16 record in the 1982-83 season, and a 13-14 mark the year before.
He got back into coaching at Oral Roberts University, serving as the Titans head coach from 1985 to 1987. He resigned in June of 1987 in what he called "the most uncomfortable and awkward situation" he had ever been in.
Those two seasons, plus the 10 previous seasons, had seen cycles of powerful and weak teams. Owens was in the midst of a down cycle. Two teams had finished seventh and tied for sixth in the Big Eight when the axel fell.
"I know that my last two years our teams weren't up to the standard that people and myself expected to have at Kansas," he said.
Owens was relieved from his duties as Oral Roberts athletics director and
And certainly not the standard Johnson expected. He wanted the basketball program in postseason action and in the top 20 every year.
Name Seasons Record Percentage
Roy Williams 5 132-37 .781
Larry Brown 5 135-44 .754
Phog Allen 39 590-219 .729
W O. Hamilton 10 125-59 .679
Ted Owens 19 348-182 .657
Dick Harp 8 121-82 .596
James Naismith 9 55-60 .478
Owens was crushed. He felt he had the talent and personnel already in place to return the Jayhawks into the national spotlight.
"It was devastating," Owens said. "The thing that devastated me the most was that we were on the verge of really having a great team again."
Point guard Carl Henry, power forward Kelly Knight and reserve center Brian Martin would return for their senior years in the 1983-84 season. Ron Kellogg, a shooting guard, and Calvin Thompson, a small forward, had established themselves in their freshman seasons in 1982-83, and Greg Drelling, a 7-foot center transfer from Wichita State, would become eligible in 1983-84.
But Owens did get on with life after Kansas. He spent time as an investment broker in Kansas City, Mo., and did color commentary for Wichita State and Pacific 10 Conference television games.
"I felt we were in position to have some great teams, and that hurt worse than anything." Owens said.
Just three years later, Dreiling, Kellogg, and Thompson — along with a kid named Danny Manning — served as the core of the 1986 Final Four team for Kansas under coach Larry Brown.
Kansas coaches by winning percentage
forced to accept Ken Tricker, a former Oral Roberts head basketball coach from 1969-1974, as his assistant coach. Things were so crazy with Oral Roberts basketball that Owens was ordered to move out of his office and into one previously occupied by an assistant coach.
Trickey eventually replaced Owens. But he says that he has no negative feelings about the experience at Oral Roberts, where he had a 21-35 record in two seasons.
"We had zero talent," he said. "They had lost all their starters and it was a long rebuilding process. We really had it back to a respectable point."
In 1988, Owens was appointed coach and general manager of the Fresno franchise in the World Basketball League. But the franchise folded before it ever played a game.
Then Owens moved to Israel, coaching Maccabi Tel Aviv in the European League. But he and his family — wife Michelle, son Teddy and daughter Tootsie — returned to Tulsa in the summer of 1990.
At the time, Metro Christian Academy was in financial trouble, and had considered shutting down. The academy needed a person who could raise money.
That's when Metro Christian headmaster Wanda Hartman received a call from former University of Tulsa basketball coach Jim King.
It also needed a head basketball coach.
King asked her if she knew who was back in Tulsa.
"He told me it was Ted, and suggested that we hire him," she said.
Owens and Hartman had become close friends through the First United Methodist Church in Tulsa when Owens had coached at Oral Roberts, but Owens thought that Hartman was joking about working at Metro Christian.
"They had never had a development director, someone who could raise funds for the school, before," he said. "They were doing some fund raising, but mainly it was just ladies in the school."
Owens set up a golf tournament, an idea that Metro Christian had tried before but had lost money on.
Enter Owens who, using his background in business and recruiting, secured corporate sponsors to cover expenses. This May, Metro Christian will hold its third annual golf tournament under Owens' leadership. It is expected to net more than $50,000, money that goes directly into helping Metro Christian's athletic program. He also put other programs into high gear.
Hartman said Owens brought to his new position his creative fund-raising ideas and organizational skills.
"It's fun trying to put packages together and get people to bid on them," Owens said. "It's also fun to start doing things in your life that you've never done before."
"He has been a tremendous asset to the school," she said. "Not only in his work with the auction and golf tournament and basketball team, but he was helped with projects that identify
Hartman said Owens has done a wonderful job in the position of development director for Metro Christian.
The annual April auction is expected to net about $75,000 this year.
a particular focus to improve the school."
With Owens' help, the Metro Christian library and media center will be able to upgrade its computer center and install a CD-ROM system that will connect to the Tulsa County Library System.
"Our school is a growing program, and Ted has enabled us to grow," Hartman said. "His being here has brought us good students and brought us good students who also want to be good athletes."
Students like Grant Marshall. Marshall was preparing for his sophomore year at Metro Christian in 1990 when he found out who the school's new basketball coach would be.
"My dad told me our new coach was Coach Owens, and he asked if I knew who he was," Marshall recalled.
The younger Marshall not only knew Owens, he knew the connection between him and his father.
Grover Marshall, Grant's father, played basketball at Kansas in 1961 when Owens was an assistant for Dick Harp.
The younger Marshall started for Owens all three years at Metro Christian. He averaged 22 points a game and was named All-State in Oklahoma. He, along with Owens, are just two reasons Metro Christian's basketball team has been a top 15 team the past three years in class 2A basketball in Oklahoma.
Of course Owens has had to adjust his coaching techniques from the college game to the high school level. Plays that worked at Kansas and Oral Roberts just are not possible at Metro Christian.
"It's a game where you keep learning things all the time," he said. "It gives me a chance to do what I always loved, and that's to teach. I always loved to prepare for practice and games."
"Backdoor and alley-oop plays are wonderful plays, but you may not have the talent to run those plays, so you must dust it to that on that level," he said.
But the fundamentals of basketball remain the same.
In his three years at Metro Christian, Owens has had a 47-35 record, and the Patriots had their first appearance in the state tournament. In 1982 the Patriots lost in the semifinals to the eventual class 2A state champion
Carnegie, 41-36.
"As exciting as the Final Fours at Kansas were, that was just as exciting for me." Owens said. "I really wanted those youngsters to achieve what they wanted to achieve in basketball. They had never been to a state tournament and never won anything — districts, regional, area — and last year we did it all."
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Marshall also credits Owens with helping him become a better basketball player and with his opportunity to play division one college basketball.
"It was a privilege to play for him," Marshall said. "I don't think I would have as much exposure as I did if it were not for Coach Owens."
So Ted Owens has bounced back. He enjoys what he is doing at Metro Christian Academy.
The fund raising may have been something new to him, but he has become a success at that too.
And it looks like Tulsa will be the place where Owens closes out his long career in basketball.
"I asked my fifth grade son, Teddy, if he would want his dad to coach him," he said.
Teddy Owens replied: "You got to be kidding, of course I want you to coach me."
By the time Teddy gets through basketball, Owens will be 70 and have spent 42 years teaching kids to pass and shoot.
"So I'll probably give up coaching after he is finished playing here," Owens said.
After years of bouncing around, it looks like Owens has found one last place and one last player to pin the future on.
Kansas Sports Information
Ted Owens coached Kansas to two Final Fours and six BigEight Conference Championships in 19 seasons with the Jawahars.