‘He showed us great care.’ Players remember KC coaching legend who died recently

Two months ago, her husband falling ill, Jestine Madison decided to treat her home like an open house. All visitors welcome, she said.

She had little idea what she was in for.

Friends and family members of her husband, William, came in droves. They came to chat with him. They came to help. And eventually, they came to say goodbye.

William Madison, a former high school basketball coach in Kansas City who amassed more than 600 victories over three-plus decades, died earlier this month. He was 79.

Madison, who led teams at Manual, Southwest and Northeast high schools, was best known as a coach who cared more for the lasting effect he had on players than wins. But he totaled plenty of the latter, with a career mark of 612-428, including a state championship at Manual in 1971.

Jestine had heard the stories. For years, she saw former players and students greet them in public, sparking conversations that would last hours.

The steady flow of visitors wasn’t a revelation. It was affirmation.

“We couldn’t go anywhere without running into someone who would stop him and tell him what he meant to them,” Jestine said in a phone interview Monday. “He was a father figure to so many of them. And then once he couldn’t get out out of the house, they came to him.”

Jestine rattled off the names of nearly a dozen players who dropped by their Kansas City home to visit her husband. They had all kept in touch regularly.

Two weeks ago, one of those players, Maurice Cunningham, called and asked to come watch the Chiefs game with ‘Coach.’ The two sat together, William with a Chiefs cap on his head and popcorn in his hand.

“We’d go over there and reminisce about the good old days,” said Cunningham, who played for Madison at Southwest from 1981-85. “We’d talk about the way he’d scream at us and laugh about that. He wasn’t feeling well, but his mind was still with it. He knew us all by name.”

Madison was a tough coach. He was strict with his players. He had a rule that every player should wear a tie on game days, and when his leading scorer once ignored it, he benched him.

But he was well-respected — and he formed relationships that survived his time as a coach. Calvin Wainright, a member of that 1971 title team, gave the eulogy at his services on Monday.

“He was hard on us. He was a disciplinarian. There was no nonsense,” Cunningham said. “But we liked him. He demanded respect. He got the most out of us.

“And at the end of the day, it wasn’t just about basketball. He would talk more about life than basketball — making sure you were in class, making sure everything was right with your home life. He showed a great care.”

His teams were quite good, too. Madison coached three teams to the state semifinals. He was the DiRenna coach of the year twice. In 2011, he was inducted into the Greater Kansas City Basketball Coaches Association hall of fame.

“His teams were always really disciplined,” said Gil Hanlin, a former Blue Springs coach who matched up with Madison’s teams. “Those teams played with a sense of purpose.”

For Madison, those high school teams were the beginnings of new relationships and eventually long-lasting friendships. He made an effort to keep in touch with his former players. When he couldn’t get a hold of one, he’d call someone else and ask him for an update.

On it went for the past five decades.

“He once told me he wished he could give me the world,” Jestine said. “I said, ‘You did give me the world. I’ll have all these kids — I call them kids — part of my life forever because of the respect and love they have for you.’ I cannot beat that.”