Head football coach Larry Kindbom strolls through the Hayes Football Suite on the second floor of the Athletic Complex, casting about for something to add to his take on the Washington University Bears.
"Now here's your story," Kindbom says, pointing to an oversized copy of a $10,000 check made out to the University's general scholarship fund. The donor, Burger King Corp., recently honored senior fullback and co-captain Chad Jackson for his academic and athletic excellence. "Our students are unbelievable," Kindbom adds.
The same might be said of the coach himself.
Since coming to the University in 1989, Kindbom has taken a flailing football program and carefully built it into a winning one, boosting the Bears into the ranks of top-notch Division III competitors. Along the way, he has levitated players' spirits, infused them with positive philosophy and developed what many in the University community call a "phenomenal" recruiting program.
If there is magic at work here, it is the University's formula, Kindbom insists. "The school speaks for itself. Our students are vibrant, exciting and motivated. They are earning degrees that will last them a lifetime," he said.
On the playing field, many of these students are breaking records with Herculean power, speed and precision. Notable is last year's 9-1 record, the Bears' most successful season since 1948. This year, the Bears have posted four-consecutive road shutouts. Not since 1949 has a WU team produced four shutouts in a season.
Consider the nationally ranked defense, a record-setting quarterback, a litany of other achievements and individual career marks for every type of play from tackles to touchdowns.
With an overall WU record of 49-29, Kindbom has jumped into the history books as the University's all-time winningest coach. So far this decade, WU's .652 winning percentage is among Missouri's best for four-year football programs. In league play, the Bears have captured a share of the last three University Athletic Association (UAA) crowns.
Yet Kindbom remains cautious in the company of such statistics. "The players probably had their scripts written before the current season started. The obvious thought was that we'd go one step ahead to win them (games) all. We struggled early in the season," Kindbom said of the team's 6-3 overall record (3-1 in the UAA). "But we're still a good football team."
"He is a great communicator with the ultimate Division III philosophy," said assistant coach Aaron Keen, a former WU record-setting quarterback and beneficiary -- as both a player and colleague -- of Kindbom's influence. "He's very knowledgeable on the Xs and Os of the game. A great motivator who knows how to push your buttons. He is well-liked, a ball of energy who has gotten the team to look at themselves, not always in light of the opponents."
This perspective translates into a self-reliance and confidence that Kindbom, from his first day on the job, has stressed among student-athletes. "Our guys are in the weight room at 7 a.m. in the middle of the summer," Kindbom said. "You don't work 365 days a year and consider yourself unsuccessful."
Added Keen: "All our players now have been recruited under Coach Kindbom's philosophy. They know his expectations."
Those expectations are defined, in part, by Kindbom's own formative coaching years. After serving for two years as assistant coach at Michigan's Kalamazoo College -- a Division III school where he had earned a bachelor's degree in political science and lettered for four years in football and baseball -- Kindbom attended Western Michigan University. There, the Lancaster, Penn., native served as a graduate assistant coach for a season while completing his master's degree in physical education.
His next stop -- Ohio State University to begin work on a doctorate -- landed him in the office of Woody Hayes, the controversial football taskmaster who could quote the ancient Greeks in one breath and, in the next, explode with a volcanic temper.
"I walked into Woody Hayes' office to see if I could help out," recalled Kindbom, who decided against a law career to follow a desire to teach. "No sooner had I finished my story, Woody was on the phone with the dean of the law school, saying, 'I have a young man who wants to go to law school at Ohio State.'
"I told him that this was not why I had come in and left the room. I got down the hallway when he called me back. I was reluctant to talk with him. I didn't know him, and I was naive," continued Kindbom. "I'm sure he liked the fact that I just got up and walked out. I think he sensed that there was a bit more to me than someone trying to get into the program. I had breakfast with him the next morning when he offered me the position.
"I learned a great deal in those two years," Kindbom said. Hayes' surprise punch unleashed on Clemson University middle guard Charlie Bauman at the close of the 1978 Gator Bowl notwithstanding, Kindbom added, "Woody was a tremendous individual who believed you win with people. He was an educator who ran the program like a small college."
Following a two-year stint as a graduate assistant coach for the Ohio State Buckeyes, Kindbom spent 1979 through 1983 as an assistant coach at the University of Akron in Ohio. Under head coach Jim Dennison, the team was transitioning from Division II to Division I and was straining in the face of stepped-up competition.
Dennison's handling of this changeover greatly impressed Kindbom, who bought into the coach's practice of positive mental attitude.
"The fans in Akron were upset that we weren't winning our games," Kindbom said. "Dennison brought in his coaching staff to tell us our priorities wouldn't change: 'First you have your families, then you have your teaching responsibilities and the players,' he said. He had run a very successful program. Now he was in the hot seat yet could still keep it all in perspective."
The tables turned slowly for the Akron team, which won two games that year. Two years later, the team went to the playoffs, and Kindbom, eager to embrace a new challenge, snapped up the head coaching position at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio.
Six years of coaching the Lords -- Kindbom also coached Kenyon's baseball team for four years and the golf team for one -- gave Kindbom a solid foundation in Division III ball. That he successfully established and maintained competitive programs, however, never eclipsed his abiding concern for his players' academic pursuits.
The kinetic Kindbom came to Washington University in 1989, insisting that the down-trodden Bears "sweat away" past defeats.
"Somehow, he manages to balance the right amount of intensity with the necessary calmness to be a head coach," said junior quarterback Thor Larsen, a business major who holds every significant passing mark at the University.
That composure was called into play late last month when the Bears traveled to the University of Rochester in New York. Two hours before kickoff, the Bears discovered that their equipment was missing from the bus.
While a scramble ensued to locate the gear, Kindbom kept the players loose, positive and engaged. He met with the coaches and maintained a productive, albeit unexpected, schedule.
The equipment was recovered in Atlantic City, N.J., and was returned to the team, which six hours later trounced Rochester 41-0.
Kindbom is known for caring deeply about his players, both on and off the field, and goes to great lengths to ensure their well-being. When Larsen anguished over changing his major this year, Kindbom got involved and suggested that the consummate scholar-athlete cut practice to talk with individuals who could advise him.
"Larry is inspirational, always upbeat, with an eye on worthy and lofty goals," Berg said. "He is a great teacher and coach who has the ability to connect with every student."
Kindbom is hoping to connect his son Kevin, a high school senior in Gambier, Ohio, with Washington University. The teen worked last summer at the School of Engineering and Applied Science and is considering attending the University. While college is a few years away for son Kyle, a high school freshman in Gambier, "he belongs at Washington University, too," asserted Kindbom.
The coach and his wife, Kate, who recently accepted a position in the University's admissions office, are the parents of a 3-year-old daughter, Kelsey.
In the St. Louis area, Kindbom's name holds sway for the community leadership roles he has embraced. He helped found the area's National Football Foundation/College Hall of Fame chapter in 1992. In 1994, he was given the Eddie Cochems Award, an inaugural honor that celebrated his contributions to the area's amateur football organizations.
He's an adviser to the campus chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. And Kindbom has been instrumental in reinstituting and organizing the Metropolitan Football Coaches Association, a local organization for area high school coaches. He also conducts local summer youth football camps.
"The more you give, the more you get back," Kindbom said of his efforts.
On that premise, the coach is experiencing a skyrocketing rate of return.
-- Cynthia Georges
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