Past Highlands High School, where he spent "13 wonderful years" coaching kids who still wanted to be coached; past the old St. Thomas High, where he had "10 wonderful years" teaching and coaching; then out Route 27 to Northern Kentucky University.

He has made the same trip every game since 1988. Ken Shields is not a slave to routine. Well, OK, yes, maybe he is. Shields has set his alarm for 4:44 a.m. every weekday for the last 40 years. But the trip to NKU and back through time is not slavish. It's comforting. It's a reminder that a man can go a long way in life without ever leaving home. Shields says the long-cut is wonderful, which is how he describes lots of things. Wonderful.

NKU coach Ken Shields gives his grandson, Carter New, a kiss after a game last season. (Craig Ruttle/file photo) | ZOOM |

He has coached 750 winning basketball games in 38 years. You'd never know it because, unless you're a Northern Kentucky lifer, you probably don't know him, which is too bad. Because after 750 wins, Shields has never lost his humility, his dignity or his sense of humor. (Or his gameday bathroom routine, which we'll get to in a minute.)

It seems impossible now that we can still produce coaches like this, guys who chop wood for 38 seasons going on 39, guys who stick around, producing fine people and very good teams, raising five kids with one wife, eating lunch every day in the school cafeteria, win or lose, sharing early-morning coffee with the secretaries in the office, leading the Lord's Prayer after every game.

They leave, don't they? They win 20 games a few times, they move to a bigger place. At its higher levels, coaching is a fast-tracking, cannibalistic exercise. On the ladder up, you step over a lot of bodies. If some happen to be your own players, well, that's life.

Seven hundred and 50 wins, all achieved in one community. Hundreds of players, raised in the sports cocoon of a man who tells them family means more than basketball. Shields says 27 of his former players have become coaches, most in high school, all spreading the same word.

Saturday, he started his final season. Shields' NKU team played an exhibition at UC. On Feb. 14, 2004, he'll coach his last home game. It's a Saturday afternoon, Valentine's Day. He hopes a lot of his former players will come to see him off. He thinks that would be wonderful.

He shouldn't worry about that. You reap what you sow.

"I've always told parents, 'When I recruit their kids, your son may not play under the most brilliant coach. But your son could not be cared for any more than I'm going to care for him,' " Shields says.

Life beyond basketball

This could be about basketball, about all those wins, the two years NKU went to the Division II national title game, about how the Norse finished last year ranked fourth in the country. Ken Shields is well-known as an offensive-minded coach. He hires good assistants and lets them work.

We'll stray from basketball, though. Basketball is just the vehicle that drives a life in the right direction. Coaches who win 750 times sometimes lose sight of that. Shields never has.

He continues to attract good players because he sells eternal truths: family, faith, hard work and hustle. It's not because he's current. Music? Shields likes Daniel O'Donnell. Yeah, him. The one and only. An Irish singer. Apparently.

He likes Connie Francis. She's wonderful. Where The Boys Are. "The ultimate," Shields calls her. He went with his family to Columbus recently, to see Simon and Garfunkel. "I enjoyed it much more than I anticipated," he says.

He doesn't watch Friends. He doesn't listen to Eminem. "I don't much get into that," he says. He let his players shave his head one year; he agreed to wear an earring the next. Beyond that, what you see is what you get: A "portly guy in gym shoes, without a lot of hair," Shields says.

A wonderful world

He has his quirks. He told his players to be on the bus to the game last night at 5:44. His Thursday practiced started at 12:41. Shields figures if you make these sorts of appointments on the hour, nobody takes them seriously. So, 5:44.

As a high school coach, his center always wore No. 55, his point guard No. 11. He'll wear the same outfit until his team loses. He never wears the same tie twice. At home games, he always uses the men's room 25 minutes before the game. Same bathroom at Regents Hall, same urinal, the first one as you walk in. If there's a line, he waits. "I'll say hello to everyone," Shields says. People, he agrees, are wonderful.

He uses it again after pregame warmups, and again when the team is warming up for the second half. Same men's room, same urinal. "Occasionally, I'll forget at halftime," Shields says. "I'll go back, even if the (second half) has started."

Before the game last night, the first in his closing-act season, he gathered his team in the locker room and said what he always says: "Do your very best, nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. God bless. I love you."

Shields won't miss the work. He hasn't missed a day for sickness his entire life. He took a personal day once, at Highlands, to go on a religious retreat. That's it. He'll travel some with his wife, he'll get himself in better physical shape. He'll drive his grandkids to school. He has 10 now. They all live within five minutes of him.

"It's going to be a heck of a void" is what Ken Shields says about retirement. "I'll be sitting at Frisch's the morning after the last game, drawing lineups on a napkin," because that has been the routine.

One of them, anyway. Forty years of routines, all of them helpful and full of purpose. Ask his players. They'll tell you. It's been wonderful.

---

E-mail pdaugherty@enquirer.com