Olpe’s legacy is Nelson’s masterpiece
People always ask Jesse Nelson why he stays at Olpe to coach girls basketball, like his devotion to the town and the high school is something he has to answer for.
Their point is that because he’s been so successful with the Eagles — the most successful girls basketball coach in Kansas history — he should be hungry to move up to a higher level to show his wares, rather than stay in the relative obscurity of Class 2A.
You’re going to love what Nelson tells those people who question him.
“For me to uproot my family every few years and move so you can be a 3A coach or a 4A coach or whatever, it sort of takes a big ego to think your $3,000 job is important enough to do that,” he said.
Nelson’s point is that he’s not coaching for the money. And he’s not coaching for the glory — you can barely get him to acknowledge his tremendous accomplishments in 34 years of coaching the Olpe girls.
So why is he coaching?
“I get to coach better kids, who have better parents, than what most people get to work with,” said Nelson, whose Eagles (20-0) are chasing a third consecutive 2A championship. “I’m at a really good school in a really good community. And our kids really believe in what we ask them to do. If you can get past that hurdle, then you don’t really even have to be teaching them the best stuff.’’
Nelson downplays his role, which is exactly what his assistant coach, Carolyn Davis, said he would do.
Nelson has 739 wins, which is more than the top Kansas boys coach, John Locke. Locke was 731-203 while coaching mostly at Natoma with stints at Covert and Stockton before retiring in the mid-1970s.
Nelson, 60, hasn’t even lost 100 games yet; he’s at 94. The Olpe girls are riding a 74-game winning streak, 17 shy of the state’s girls record set by Little River in 1998.
They have a major obstacle to get over tonight when they take on unbeaten Berean Academy in a sub-state championship at Cottonwood Falls.
The Eagles have won 105 consecutive home games, 10 consecutive Lyon County League championships and 23 overall. Nelson has never had a losing season and has taken Olpe to the state tournament in 21 of his previous 33 seasons as coach, including nine in a row.
The first thing he tells a reporter interested in writing about his career is that he doesn’t know his numbers. They’re not in his head, not on a piece of paper, not anywhere.
That’s where Davis, who was a freshman at Olpe during Nelson’s first year as coach, comes in. She does have the numbers and has enthusiastically shared them with anyone who would listen for the past several weeks. As Nelson’s total approached Locke’s boys record, it was Davis who provided a heads-up to the media.
“First of all,’’ she said, “he’s just very, very humble. He’s hated all the attention and he’s just not much of a bragger.’’
But Nelson is, Davis said, ultra competitive. And that’s the trait most influential in all the wins he’s piled up at Olpe.
“He doesn’t want to lose,’’ Davis said. “But he treats kids right.’’
It starts in junior high because, yes, Nelson coaches the junior high girls, too. By the time those players reach high school, they know exactly what he expects and he’s been able to start the molding process.
He has, obviously, an understanding wife of 36 years, Vonna. They raised three children, the youngest of whom is now 20. Nelson doesn’t work as a teacher and counselor at Olpe now. He gave those jobs up a couple of years ago because of some bureaucratic red tape that would have cost him far too much to maintain health insurance and made it more cost-effective if he retired.
“A big part of coaching is seeing those kids in the hallways and asking if they got their math grade up or whether they behaved in science class,’’ Nelson said. “I’m not quite as attached now because I’m not in the building as much. I’ve been trying to feel out whether that’s working or not.’’
Nelson was a four-year basketball letter winner at Emporia State. He has coached a little of everything during his career, but says he’s never found anything more satisfying than teaching girls the art of basketball.
“He just has this way of seeing the game and teaching it to us,’’ Olpe senior Kendyl McDougald said. “There’s just this thing about him; he sees things on the court. He really helps us to understand. We’re always learning something new with him.’’
Nelson, meanwhile, says it confuses him when people say he’s special, even with all those championship banners hanging inside the Olpe gym.
“I don’t really think Olpe is some basketball hotbed for girls,’’ he said. “We play with the same kinds of kids as everybody else. There are a lot of nights when I sit there and am sort of amazed at what these kids are doing on the floor.’’
Yet season after season, it comes together. Olpe wins.
“These kids, they don’t want to be the ones that come here and lose many games,’’ Davis said. “They see their older friends get it done and they want to follow in those footsteps. And part of it is, they don’t want to disappoint Coach Nelson. They want to get it done because they know he’s going to be disappointed if they don’t.’’
Nelson says he isn’t chasing wins. When it’s time to stop coaching, he’ll know. He’s bothered by not being at the school as much as he used to be and that might ultimately cause him to step down.
But that’s something to think about in the future. The biggest thing on his mind now is finding a way to beat Berean Academy tonight in what could stand as a 2A championship game.
“I just fit with the type of kids I coach,’’ Nelson said. “This is the right level for me. The kids here over the years have been really coachable. We don’t give anyone a reason to dislike us, other than we win.’’
This story was originally published March 3, 2012 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Olpe’s legacy is Nelson’s masterpiece."