Currently, Powell High School’s track meet is called the L.A Kohnke Powell Invitational as a tribute to L.A ‘Louie’ Kohnke, although not many of the thinclads are educated on the manner.
When the current PHS track coach, Mr. Scott Smith, was approached about who Coach Kohnke was, he gave a simple answer.
“He was a successful coach a very long time ago,” Smith said. “We memorialize our track meet after him.”
In an attempt to further educate the student body, former student and track athlete of Coach Kohnke, Myron Heny, was interviewed.
“He understood kids really, really well. He didn’t try to make kids do anything, he didn’t think they were capable of doing,” Heny said. “But by the same token, he wouldn’t take any slack either. If you had him for class and were any kind of athlete, you’d better be out for some sport. He was very, very, very adamant about that.”
Coach Kohnke had a few quirks as well.
“He always had a cigar, and I never seen him light it,” Heny said. “But he chewed on a cigar and, when you were running distance races especially, he’d be on the far corner of the track and [when you were] coming around the final turn, you know, going down there, he would stand on that corner and he’d just holler at you like mad. ‘Get your blankety-blank in gear and get to going.’”
“He would grab that cigar out of his mouth, but I always saw him chewing it and never saw him light it up, ever in all those years,” Heny said. “Maybe did at home, but never, of course, at school. But when he coached, he had that cigar out of his mouth. But he was very intense and very knowledgeable.”
Coach Kohnke successfully coached football, basketball, and track throughout his career, and was inducted into the Wyoming Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 1984. Kohnke coached at Powell High School from 1935 to 1959. From 1946 to 1953, he also doubled as Northwest College’s first basketball coach.
“You know, if he saw you screwing around, you’re in trouble, big trouble, and especially if you’re dinking around instead of paying attention to what was going on,” Heny said. “If you were a, say, 100 yards (in those days, it was yards), 100 yards or 200 yards running or something and you were screwing around wrestling on the end field or something, you know what you’d end up doing? He’d enter you in the mile at the end of the meet, there’d be a lot of weight guys and sprinters and stuff running in the mile and he would stand on the corners you know, and making them run too. Not just, ‘Oh, I’ll go jog my mile.’ No, there wasn’t any of that. But yet kids loved him.”
Kohnke also coached Keith Bloom, an iconic athlete from Powell, who was the last three-sport letterman at the University of Wyoming and who went on to then play professional basketball and baseball.
As well as a coach, Kohnke was a beloved teacher.
“He taught physics and chemistry and you had to take one or the other. You could take them both if you were so inclined,” Heny said. “I took him for physics… At the end of the year, one of the projects for your final grade was an electric motor. Build your own electric motor and make it work.”
“And I remember I had an ‘A’ student help me out because I was struggling with the windings and stuff like that,” Heny said. “I turned it in and man it worked good, and after I turned it in, the next day, he asked me to stay after class and I thought uh oh. And I went in and he said, ‘Myron, this is a great electric motor. But your talent isn’t that good, you know. You know, you’re not capable of this. Who helped you?’ Well, I said ‘my classmate Higgins,’ who went on to be an electrical contractor with Westinghouse. Anyway, he says ‘Now you go home and build one.’ So I did. I got it to run. But he gave me a good grade because I did it myself. But that’s the way he was. He just wanted you to do the best you could.”
For any interested in looking at photographs and newspaper clippings from L.A Kohnke, Homesteader Museum holds a scrapbook that was compiled from his time as a coach.
