Former Denver Christian boys basketball Dick Katte has a new book out. (Pat Miller)
AURORA —
He’s a humble, often times self-deprecating man. So it took some time to convince him that anyone would want to read a book about his life.
Six months, to be exact.
Dick Katte retired from his legendary coaching career in March 2012. It was a storybook end: His Denver Christian Crusaders won the Class 2A state title, the eighth of Katte’s career, with a perfect 26-0 season. He stepped away as the state’s all-time winningest coach with an overall record of 876-233.
Katte has been inducted into multiple halls of fame, including CHSAA’s (1999) and the National Federation’s (2004).
And yet the reason Katte finally agreed to write a book, six months after he retired, was not because of the accomplishments or the titles or the records.
“I think the thing that turned the corner was I thought I could give back,” Katte said in the CHSAA office on a recent Wednesday. “I could give to some young coaches things that maybe took me 30 years to learn.”
The book — Over Time: Coach Katte on Basketball and Life — is two years in the making, and is available now.
Katte is holding a book signing at the CHSAA office on Thursday from 5-7 p.m. Additionally, Denver Christian is holding a signing on Nov. 28 from 3-5 p.m. at its campus in Lakewood. Books will be sold at both events, and are also available at DickKatte.com.
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Mark Wolf, a former reporter at the Rocky Mountain News and assistant basketball coach at Columbine, approached Katte about writing a book while he was still coaching.
Former Denver Christian boys basketball coach Dick Katte. (Pat Miller)
They had grown to known each other over the years through the basketball life — team camps and the like.
“Then he comes and he spends the last week of my (final) season at every practice, and the three games (in the state tournament), and he then writes an article for Mile High Sports,” Katte said. “I read that, and then I said — ‘Yeah, maybe.'”
But he wasn’t fully sold just yet.
“There’s that sense of false humility,” Katte said, “which says, ‘Who me? Who wants to hear?’ It’s going to be like, ‘Dick, who?’ Now that I see how well it’s been received, I think, ‘Man …'”
Now the book is in print — hardback — all 255 pages. Wolf’s article became the first chapter of their co-authored project.
“Never did I think it would be a hard-covered, classy look,” Katte said. “I thought it’d be some paperback, 90-pages or so.”
Getting from idea to print was a process, though.
Katte would “scribble” thoughts and concepts on paper which his wife Lorraine later typed up. (Katte dedicates the book to her: “She became my best assistant coach and my faithful scribe,” he writes.) They sent the transcriptions to Wolf, “who asked questions and used his literary expertise,” Katte said. “Then we all read it, I don’t know how many times. I think every time I read it, I changed something.
“Somebody said, ‘Don’t read it (when it’s published), and don’t go to a used book store,” Katte added, his characteristic chuckle following.
The process, while largely about reflecting and the past, also gave something unexpected. Katte’s daughter, Jamie, lost a battle with leukemia as the book was going to print. Jamie was an editor and while undergoing treatment in Seattle, she and Katte sat down with a few chapters.
“We sat down together and she learned about me,” Katte said. “I can just hear her say, ‘Do you really want to say it that way?’ Those are my memories of leaving her, sitting down and letting her go through this. So I have that. … She was pretty good when we did that together.”
Now a polished product, Over Time is a collection of who Dick Katte is, and the values he emits.
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The book is a blend of biography, Xs and Os and faith. It goes into strategy, philosophy and history. It looks toward the future of the sport. There’s also a chapter on random thoughts — things that Katte’s picked up after 52 years of coaching.
It goes into his young life growing up in Sheboygan, Wisc., to his time at Calvin College in Michigan. It touches on the importance of Katte’s role as a math teacher, and the number of students he impacted.
It dives into how to build a basketball program, on how to shape the lives of high school students.
“I was trying to write it for young coaches,” Katte said. “A way for them to build a program, to be real with kids, and hopefully not to burn out after 10 years. I don’t know if I could do what I did now. Somebody asked me to come back, and I said, ‘Only if somebody else does the summer.'”
It deals with the importance of winning, but not simply for the sake of winning.
“I don’t care if you win any state championships,” Katte said, “but you always want to win more than you lose so that the lessons of losing are accepted, but you learn from them. If you lose too much — you can teach about dealing with adversity if there aren’t so many. Winning helps make losing, and the lessons learned from it, more impactful.”
All totaled, writing the book took about a year and a half.
“There were extra chapters added even when I thought we were done,” Katte said.
Completing the project gave him a sense of perspective on his career.
“It gave me a sense of humbleness,” Katte said. “How did all this just work together when all I did — honestly, honestly, every day I went to school and I just wanted to help young people. That kind of motivation was allowed to blossom into not only success with (Denver Christian’s teams), but some accolades even for me — which I’m really, not that I’m so proud of them, but I am, too.”