ATHERTON, CA - Keith Larsen was always a quick study on the basketball court. It was off the court where letters and numbers on chalkboards were a hopeless jumble and his the world refused to move at his hummingbird-like pace.
Nobody knew it back at St. Robert's School in San Bruno, but Larsen was afflicted with not only dyslexia which makes some letters and numbers appear transposed, but the mysterious attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Some of it still bothers him.
"It's not an issue," the Menlo School basketball coach insists. "I just told the kids that if I superimpose something to call me on it. I don't do it on purpose."
The Knights, 9-3 heading into tonight's 7:30 game against visiting Woodside Priory, are more amused than anything by their colorful new coach.
Asked about Larsen's faulty grasp of spelling, junior center Charlie Roth said "There have been some good mistakes on the board. 'Scissors' -- that was tough. There have been others. Oh 'Thumbs down' without the "b" -- that's been just about every other time."
None of this has hindered Larsen, 58, who has taken a team that went 12-14 last season and has nobody taller than his own 6-foot-2 frame, and won 75 percent of his games. The Knights are tied for first place with Sacred Heart Prep and Pinewood in with the West Bay league with a 3-0 record.
"I just told the kids that they don't have the smartest coach in the world, but that nobody will try harder or out-work me," Larsen said. "Thank God for spell check on computers. I just need to write down everything ahead of time on the board and even then I might have three or four misspelled words. We just joke about it."
If anyone back in San Bruno during Larsen's formative years of the 1960s knew about such things, all of the clues were there. The inventive spelling, the constantly moving body limbs, the fluttering from one activity to the next -- they were all apparent to anyone paying attention.
A perpetual-motion machine, Larsen and his pals thought nothing of playing 4-5 games of hoops at the San Bruno Rec Center followed by a few games of pool downstairs and then a bike ride down to Capuchino High to kick some field goals. After that of course he needed a double cone and a Coke at Shaw's Ice Cream -- because isn't a severe infusion of pure sugar just what every hyperactive kid needs?
"I never thought of it as anything bad," Larsen said of his frenetic pace. "I like it. My mom and dad always told me that you're given things you can do well and things you can't do well. In my case I was given a body that was suited to playing sports and an ability to talk. I always knew in school if I was having trouble to ask questions and then I just worked as hard as I could."
Larsen, after surviving the nuns and lay teachers at St. Robert's, played basketball for two years at Serra and then transferred to the now-defunct Crestmoor High in San Bruno where he started for two seasons under former coach Pete Pontacq. He also played under the late, great Lyle Newcomer at Skyline College and graduated from San Francisco State in 1985.
His impressive coaching resume includes tenures as a head coach at Woodside High, Menlo College and Cal State Stanislaus and a stint as an assistant under Mike Montgomery at Stanford.
Always flexible, Larsen while at Stanford was once assigned to scout a Cal game at Berkeley. But he got stuck in traffic on the San Mateo bridge, pulled over in Hayward and watched the game on TV and then bluffed his way through his scouting report to the coaching staff. Now that takes moxie.
And, oh, did we mention Larsen if left-handed?
Whatever his shortcomings and peccadilloes, the Knights have taken to Larsen's up-tempo offense, intense man defense and array of endearing quirks.
"Coach Larsen has definitely changed the program around," Roth said. "So far it's for the better. It's a new style of offense and getting quick buckets is more fun."
Said Menlo star Liam Dunn: "He always says the ends don't justify the means. He always wants us to do things the right way, regardless of whether we make the shot or not. He wants us to do things his way."
Larsen also thinks the refs should dance to his crazy samba beat, as his teen-age daughter Victoria explained.
"He makes me laugh so hard," she said. "When he coached at Stanislaus he would get so fired up that he was funny to watch. He'd get on the refs and you could see the look of confusion on their faces."
Led by players such as David Nahm, Jack Hammond, Jared Lucian, Tench Coxe, Will Richardson, Dunn and Roth, Menlo has followed the lead of its off-beat coach in overachieving. Just as Larsen's myriad personal obstacles didn't handcuff him, a lack of height nor overwhelming talent haven't stopped them.
"Our kids play so hard," Larsen said. "They're great kids. We have a small team so if the ball goes in, we win. If not, we have a dogfight."
Reach John Murphy at jmurphy@prep2prep.com. Follow him on twitter at @PrepCat
