Today’s coaches at all levels could learn a lot from Greg King.
Winning was never the goal. Teaching kids how to become the best players – and the best people – they could be was his mission as a high school coach at various stops. Winning was the result of those teachings.
King passed away last week and although his peak days as a coach, which included winning five 8-man state football champions at Stratton, are gone, they’ll be talked about fondly at the programs where he invested his time and the programs that got to pass his ship in night.
“As high school coaches, we don’t get to pick and choose,” King’s son Cameron said. “We’re not colleges. We have to make or system fit the our kids and help mold them to and apply that to them so they know that we care about them as individuals. We’re making sure they’re ready for reality.”
King got his start as an assistant at John Mall High School in Walsenburg. He eventually made his way to McClave where he coached basketball and then moved to Stratton in 1989 where he led the football team to five titles in seven years, a run that began in 1992.
His career continued at Del Norte and Grand Junction where he also severed as athletic director before retiring. He often worked the state track and field meet and was pulled out of retirement to head to Norwood to coach the girls basketball team.
Along the way, Cameron had gone from playing for his dad to figuring out that his life path was best suited for teach and coaching alongside him. Playing for Greg was the first step in Cameron being ready for reality, but it was coaching with him where he truly started understanding the full scope of the reality he was in.
“Everything I do is based on what I learned from him,” Cameron said. “I thought I learned a lot about basketball [when playing], then I started coaching with him and realized that I didn’t learn a damn thing as a player because there was this whole other aspect to it.”
That didn’t stop simply with his teams. There is probably no real way to measure the time investment that King made to the kids who played for him throughout his coaching career. But that investment also applied to the kids throughout the entire school, regardless if they were on King’s roster.
“One of the biggest things I learned from him is even if you’re not coaching another sport, that doesn’t mean you don’t go and support that sport,” Cameron said. “If a kid is doing band, you show up at that band concert because if you show them that you care about them outside of sport, when it comes time to play the sport you coach, those kids will run through a wall for you.”
King’s mindset represents the genuine mission of high school athletics. He won state championships, but it wasn’t those trophies that defined his coaching career. He would have been the first to say that a true measurement of his success is based on what those kids did after winning those state championships and after leaving high school
Are they good husbands, fathers, mothers, wives and so on? Do they live their lives according to a level of expectation that King didn’t establish, but certainly strived for them to reach?
That’s what made him a successful coach and teacher.
Throughout his years on a sideline or bench, Greg King made Colorado high school sports better for his efforts.
