Mention a grade-school basketball coach, and the image conjured up may be that of a middle-aged dad with a slight paunch.
It’s a description that fits Jeff Kenny–to a certain extent. Kenny, who coaches the 7th-grade girls basketball team at Queen of Martyrs Elementary School in Evergreen Park, is a dad. But that’s where Kenny and the mental picture part company.
Kenny is 35, but this father of four could pass for 10 years younger.
Most amazing, though, is that Kenny has been legally blind since he was 21, when he lost his sight in an accident at a meat-packing plant. Although he can see only the faintest of images, Kenny is able to envision what his basketball players are doing on the court.
“It’s amazing how he knows what’s going on throughout the games,” says Julie McKendry of Chicago’s Mt. Greenwood neighborhood, a 16-year-old Mother McAuley High School student and Kenny’s assistant coach. “Even though he can only see a little, like shadows, he knows what’s going on. He goes to a lot of Bulls games, so he uses what he gets there on the girls.”
Kenny, who played basketball and football throughout grade school, high school and college, has an innate sense of what is going on with his players. Call it the ultimate court sense.
“I usually know where they are on the floor or what they’re doing,” Kenny says. “I can tell by the bounce of the ball whether or not someone is double-dribbling or if they’re walking by the sound of the ball and their feet. I can hear what their mistakes are. I can tell where they are on the court, and I’m not usually wrong.”
In his first year coaching the team, Kenny’s win-loss record indicates he hasn’t been exaggerating. Queen of Martyrs, which plays in the Ridge Park District League in Chicago and the Evergreen Park District League, finished the season in November with a combined record of 15-14 in the two divisions. They lost in the first round of the playoffs in the Evergreen Park League, and finished fourth among the eight teams in the Ridge Park League.
The team will play once more this year, in Mayor Richard M. Daley’s Holiday Hoops Tournament on Dec. 27 at McCormick Place in Chicago. But in the three months the team has played together under Kenny, bonds that go beyond basketball have been established. That’s because Kenny, who works full time as a counselor for troubled teens, has a knack for treating young people with the respect they often don’t receive from adults.
“If we lose, he doesn’t yell at us,” says Katie Hill, who plays guard for the Wildcats. “He’ll just tell us what we did wrong.”
“He likes to win, but that’s not the big thing,” adds Michelle Mahoney, a guard/forward. “It’s for everyone to play and have fun. He’s not rushing you to do things. If you have a question, he’ll take time to answer it.”
The squad Kenny leads, the Queen of Martyrs “B” team, is stocked with players who aren’t necessarily as talented as the “A” team 7th graders, though the coach makes sure they all get time on the court. Off the court, he makes sure the team sticks together by taking them on outings outside school.
“The `B’ teams are kind of treated unfairly compared to the `A’ teams, so when I started I got them warmup (suits), had a pizza party and bought them jump ropes,” Kenny said. “They know that I really care about them. If they have a problem or think something’s unfair, then they let me know.”
His team plays an intense, full-court pressing defense that relies on turnovers for scoring. The Wildcats lost three players from last year’s team to the Queen of Martyrs 7th grade “A” squad. They’re led by Kenny’s daughter Caitlin at guard/forward, Michelle Mahoney at guard/forward and Hill at guard.
“We knew we weren’t going to be a great offensive team, because some of the better players moved up,” Kenny said. “So we started at the beginning of the year pressing on defense. We’re one of the lower-scoring teams but one of the better defensive teams in the league. We’re really scrappy.”
Kenny’s coaching style is low-key and friendly. After teaching the team some basic plays, he allows team members to call their own plays in games. And when his players make mistakes, he rarely chastises them.
“He doesn’t scream a lot, and he lets everyone play the same amount in a game,” Caitlin Kenny says. “When we play really good teams, then the starters play more, but when we play the (weaker) teams, then he lets other people play a lot more.”
Kenny says this is the key to handling young players.
“Winning and losing are insignificant (compared) to how they feel about themselves,” Kenny says. “I want in 5 or 10 years to say that this was a lot of fun and it was different. I want these girls to have something in their lives to feel good about.”
Game situations illustrate the drawbacks of a blind coach. He can’t question a referee’s call, point out a player’s mistake or see the offenses and defenses that opponents are using.
“The biggest problem with him coaching is the refs,” says his wife, Lisa. “You need to be on them, but you have to see the foul to be able to say something.”
Still, Kenny has help from others courtside. He’ll ask McKendry about the plays his team and the opposing team are running, and players also pitch in with information.
“Usually, when a player is on the bench, they’ll tell him what’s going on in the games,” Caitlin says. “And if we already call a play and the defense suddenly changes, then Julie will call us to switch.”
Tom Newberry, who coaches the 7th grade girls at St. Catherine of Alexandria School in Oak Lawn, just finished his first year leading a team. like Kenny. “It didn’t seem like the blindness affected the game when his team played my team,” Newberry says. “The flow of the game seemed perfectly normal.”
Kenny maintains that he can distinguish action on the court by sound, thanks to his years as a high school and college athlete, though football was his sport of choice in his years at St. Albert Elementary School and St. Laurence High School in Burbank.
“I wanted to play both sports, but football was so serious then, so I just played that,” Kenny recalls. “We had a real good team. My senior year, we were in the state championship. Sports was good for me because it kept me off the streets and out of trouble, and football was a year-round thing at St. Laurence. I played basketball just to keep in shape.”
He received a football scholarship to St. John’s University in Minnesota, where he played for one season.
“But it was too small, kind of in the middle of nowhere, so I came back to the city,” Kenny said.
After bouncing around at a couple of colleges in the area, Kenny met Lisa, and sports receded in importance. They soon married, and Lisa became pregnant with their first child, Denise. Kenny found work as a refrigeration engineer at the Ampac Corp., a meat-packing plant at 42nd Street and Racine Avenue in Chicago. It was there that his life changed forever.
“I was repairing a pipe when it exploded in my face,” Kenny recalls. “One of the other guys was hurt, his arm was burned, but I lost my sight.”
The explosion damaged his corneas, something he didn’t try to fix for another eight years.
“At that point I decided that my kids were getting a little older and I didn’t want them wondering why I didn’t try to make the effort to see them,” Kenny said. “So for their sakes, I had some surgery done and it gave me a little sight for three months, then it went away. There’s so much damage to my eyes, there’s really nothing I can do unless I want to get desperate or drastic, and I got used to this right from the start so it never really bothered me that much.”
Kenny went back to school. He enrolled at St. Xavier College (now University), where he received a bachelor’s degree in sociology, then went on to the University of Chicago, where he earned a master’s degree in the field. He then went into social work and counseling and five years ago started his own practice with offices in downtown Chicago, Evergreen Park and Oak Lawn. His specialty: working with pregnant and suicidal teenagers.
“Getting my master’s was a new challenge, and I love challenges,” Kenny said. “All that stuff I discovered in social work is a world I never knew about when I had sight. All I knew about was sports and fun, because I was a young guy. This was a whole new world for me.”
He volunteered to teach Sunday school at Queen of Martyrs and for the World Association of Infant Mental Health. For entertainment, he bought season tickets to Bears, Bulls and Blackhawks games.
“I don’t want to do one thing, I want to do several,” Kenny says. “All of these things interest me so much, as long as I don’t get bored. And when I start feeling bored, I find something else to get interested in.”
After his daughters Caitlin and Denise began playing basketball last year for Queen of Martyrs, Kenny became involved in sports again on a personal level. When the coach of the Queen of Martyrs “B” team resigned, Kenny volunteered and school officials were immediately receptive. If Kenny hadn’t stepped in, the team was in danger of disbanding.
“None of the other parents was volunteering to take over the team,” says Dave Marzec, athletic director for Queen of Martyrs. “We didn’t have qualms about it because it all seemed natural to us. He’s been around for years, and all the parents knew him.”
“I felt this was my chance,” Kenny recalls. “I didn’t want those girls to miss out on the chance of playing, because once they got to high school they might not get that chance, or they might not want to do it.”
The burden of transportation for the team has fallen on Lisa Kenny, who doesn’t see it as a burden.
“I think it’s great,” she said of her husband’s involvement with the team. “It teaches the girls that you can do anything.”
Kenny and his wife live in the Mt. Greenwood neighborhood of Chicago with their three daughters–14-year-old Denise, 13-year-old Caitlin and 6-year-old Ellen–and 9-year-old son, Patrick. Because of their father’s interest in athletics, all of the children are interested in sports, Caitlin in particular. But playing for her father, that was something else again.
“He really likes basketball, and he always talked about coaching at home, but I didn’t want him to do it at first,” Caitlin says. “I didn’t want him to do it because he was my dad.”
She has come around, however, and now enjoys playing for her dad, even though Kenny does not play favorites.
“My daughter, when it comes to basketball, it’s almost like she’s not my kid,” Kenny said. “I don’t think I treat her special in any way. She’s a good player, but one time I yelled at her during a game, and Julie told me that I was a lot harder on Caitlin than on the rest of the players. But that’s because I know at home I can make it up to her. We easily go from father and daughter to coach and daughter.”
Newberry admires the job Kenny has done. “His girls seemed like a classy group and that’s probably a reflection of the coach,” he says.
And Kenny sees the coaching position as an adjunct to his counseling career.
“I consider this the most enjoyable thing I do, other than spending time with my kids,” Kenny says. “It’s kind of like social work. The girls all have their individual problems. Several of the girls come from single-parent families. We have a girl on the team who lost her mom a year ago. To me, for an 11-year-old girl, that’s a lot harder than losing your sight.”
