Hall of Fame basketball coach Don King dies at age 92

CEDAR RAPIDS — Hall of Fame boys’ basketball coach Don King has died at age 92, it was learned Friday.

King won over 500 games in his illustrious prep career, which included stops at Hayfield, Lisbon, Nevada and Cedar Rapids Washington. King’s Warriors won the big-school title in 1969.

It’s the school’s lone state boys’ basketball championship. King was head men’s basketball coach at Coe College from 1962 to 1966 before going to Washington.

He retired in 1993 and was inducted into the Iowa High School Athletics Association Hall of Fame the following year.

“He taught me and so many the fundamentals of the game of basketball at a young age at Coe’s camp,” said former Washington and University of Iowa guard Ryan Luehrsmann.

Luehrsmann eventually got into coaching and led Cedar Rapids Xavier to a pair of state titles.

“I still have some of the short letters of encouragement he sent to me during my time as a player and time as a coach at Xavier and will cherish those forever,” Luehrsmann said. “He taught more than just basketball. He taught us all lessons to live life by. A hall of fame coach and person.”

King grew up on farms near the Vinton area and graduated from Geneseo High School, where he grew a love for the game and discovered his life’s calling as a coach and educator. He and his wife, June, moved from Cedar Rapids to Florida in 2017.

“I was dedicated to basketball, it was so much of my life,“ King said in a 2017 Gazette story on his career. ”There are so many individual things, but the greatest satisfaction in high school coaching is seeing young men develop. Not only as basketball players, but as students and individuals in the four years or more that you have them in your program. That's the greatest satisfaction.“

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