After 50 years, he’s still... Coach Kief

After more than half a century of coaching football and baseball, dramatic finishes can still move Bob Kiefer to tears.

That was the case last week when his Port Washington High School junior varsity football team came back from a 22-point halftime deficit on the road to beat Mount Horeb/Barneveld, 24-22.

“That was fun. I told the kids afterward I’m a crier and I’m a hugger. That’s me. When we were talking to the kids after the game, I teared up. And they were laughing at me a little bit,” Kiefer said.

“And that’s OK. For all the years that I’ve coached, I don’t know that I have ever been part of a game where we won the way we did last night.”

All those years are 51 and counting.

Kiefer has had stints in baseball and football in Grafton, Fredonia and Port, where he has been the last seven years.

Those aren’t the only sports Kiefer is involved with. There’s barely an athletic event at Port High where he can’t be found. He does crowd control for wrestling and boys’ and girls’ basketball.

“I would be here watching anyway. You make a couple bucks,” he said.

He has also made a difference in the lives of his athletes, so much so that he often hears, “Hey Kief” from former players at local stores.

After coaching two sports for so many years in three communities, he remembers the faces but not always the names.

“The next thing is sometimes you get wedding invitations,” Kiefer said. “I’ve been to a bar mitzvah.”

Kiefer has led the sports equivalent of middle management throughout his career, handling either the youth, freshman or junior varsity teams. The latter two meant he often lost some of his best players to promotions to varsity.

“That’s not a negative to coaching JV. Anybody who’s any good, he goes,” Kiefer said.

One special player went to a club team instead. In his only varsity head coaching job, Kiefer got one year with Owen Miller  on the Warriors’ baseball team. After his freshman season, Miller decided to play for Hitters Baseball Academy, which conflicted with high school ball, then a summer sport.

“He and his dad came to my house after the season. His dad didn’t do the talking. Owen did,” Kiefer said.

“I said just go. We’ll miss you. At that point, he was a pitcher for us. He did everything. Even as a freshman, he was probably the best baseball player I’ve ever had.”

Miller is currently infielder with the Chicago Cubs.

The two still stay in touch.

The best all-around athlete he ever coached was Tim Fullington at Grafton. He starred in track, football, baseball and basketball.

Kiefer was not a star when he was student at Grafton High. He played catcher and linebacker.

“I played very little. I was not very good. I was too slow and I didn’t have much of an arm,” he said.

He doesn’t have much of an arm now, either. Decades of hitting fly balls and throwing batting practice have taken their toll. Port varsity assistant baseball coach Brian Hirschinger was one of 15 Ozaukee players Kiefer threw to.

Kiefer has asked Port High baseball coach Zach Perkins to hire a younger assistant to handle those drills.

Perkins loves having Kiefer around.

“We are so fortunate to have coach Kief on staff. He brings incredible experience, cares deeply about making a difference for our student-athletes and is all in,” he said. “He’s always more than willing to go the extra mile to make our program better.”

Driving a few miles was how Kiefer got into coaching.

 Kiefer drove his younger brother to youth football practice in Grafton because their father didn’t get home from work early enough to do so.

Kiefer stayed to watch practice.

Before long he was asked to help coach defensive backs. Then Ron Heller, the founder of the Grafton Gladiators, asked Kiefer to be the head coach of the seventh and eighth-grade team. He coached for 12 years and still stays in touch with some of his brothers’ classmates.

Those were the years National High School Athletic Coaches Association Hall of Fame inductee Kip Cramer was building Grafton into a powerhouse. Cramer has fond memories of working with Kiefer.

“Bob was an all-around assistant coach. He was always willing to do what ever was needed,” Cramer said.

Kiefer also got into coaching Little League in Grafton, before high school baseball coach Dennis Goecke, a member of the Grafton Athletic Hall of Fame, asked him to coach the freshman team.

Bumping from youth to high school, Kiefer said, was a big step.

“I didn’t know if I was qualified to do it. But I worked with some really good assistant coaches who were older than me and had kids on the team. I learned so much from working with those guys. I just kind of progressed,” he said.

After several years, Grafton’s numbers started to dwindle and Kiefer knew Ozaukee’s baseball coach. He took over the varsity program one year after being an assistant.

Kiefer also applied to be the head football coach, but Jim Lippe got the job. Lippe then hired Kiefer to be his defensive coordinator. The two became fast friends and the Warriors regularly made runs in the playoffs.

“Bob was always a great coach. He was really good with the players. He had a great work ethic,” Lippe said. “He was one of those coaches I could really depend on with the little things you have to do in management of a football team, like make sure the doors are open.”

Lippe later became the junior varsity coach under C.J. Koehler at Port. Koehler, a member of Grafton’s 2010 team that qualified for state, remembered Kiefer from playing Little League.

“Kiefer has always been about the kids, which is why I think he has been able to be successful as long as he has in coaching,” Koehler said. “He is able to connect with everyone and pushes them to be their best self no matter what generation they are from. That’s the big reason when I got the Port job I asked Kiefer to join our staff.”

Kiefer also sent Port High’s head football coach John Bunyan his resume and was hired as JV football coach.

“He understands the game, but more importantly, he understands kids,” Bunyan said. “He builds relationships, teaches life lessons and genuinely cares about helping young people become better.

Kiefer helped Port land its head boys’ basketball coach. He had star Garrett Hoffmann in baseball and football at Ozaukee, and he called him about a baseball job opening. Hoffmann said he would rather coach basketball, and he got the job when the spot opened. Last season, Hoffmann led Port to the most wins in school history last season.

Now retired for four years, Kiefer used to work in the heat-treating industry. His third or first-shift schedules allowed him to coach. He is also not married and doesn’t have children.

“That’s why I can do all this stuff,” Kiefer said with a laugh.

After five decades of coaching two sports, Kiefer said student-athletes haven’t changed. But their parents have, which caused him to shift coaching styles.

“I used to be that screamer and yeller. When I took over the baseball job at Ozaukee, I thought, hey, you’re the face of the franchise. I learned not to be that yeller,” he said. “Just like teachers around here, they teach in the classroom. I teach on the football field. I teach on the baseball field.”

Kiefer has learned how to get the most out of his players.

“I’ve always used the analogy, it’s a fine line between a pat on the back and a kick in the ass,” he said. “Every kid gets motivated differently.”

He saw the fruits of his labor during last week’s thrilling comeback.

“We did such a good thing at halftime. We stayed calm as coaches. We talked. We fixed what we had to fix. We made some personnel changes. We handled it so well,” Kiefer said.

He also still loves the strategic aspect.

“I always equate it to a chess game. It’s check and checkmate. What is the other coach going to do, and what then am I going to do to defensively counter that? In baseball, it’s the same thing. Are they going to steal bases? Are they going to put down a bunt?” he said.

Kiefer even maintains a passion for practice.

“I could have had the worst day ever. When I come down those steps to step on the field, everything is better,” he said.

Kiefer now tries to develop student-athletes differently.

“As I get older, the more I think about is, is that kid going to graduate high school and do well athletically? Is he going to go to college and maybe have a chance to play sports in college? When he’s done with college, is he going to have a good job? Is he going to be a good husband and father?” he said.

“Those are the things I look at now to see how these kids develop and how they’re doing.”

Now nearly 70 years old, Kiefer has no plans to stop coaching.

“If somebody would have told me I’d still be doing this 50 years later, I would have said no way,” he said.

“I will keep on doing it until either I know I can’t do it anymore or somebody else tells me I can’t.”