This is from Quincy Herald-Whig.
By BLAKE TOPPMEYER
Herald-Whig Sports Writer
Herald-Whig Sports Writer
CARTHAGE, Ill. -- Thursday didn't start off well for Zach Keene, not after he found out he had been fired as Illini West's girls basketball coach by a 4-3 vote at Wednesday's school board meeting.
Yet Keene's day improved as he started receiving messages from current and former players.
"I've gotten text messages all day and phone calls all day," Keene said. "I took the rest of the day off after I found out this morning, but I've gotten text messages from a few kids at school who are current players and an abundance of messages and phone calls and text messages from past and former players that have just said, ‘You go above and beyond basketball. You touched our lives.' That's just meant the world to me."
As of Thursday afternoon, Keene said he hadn't heard from any of the board members who decided his fate. He received the news of his dismissal Thursday morning from Illini West athletic director Joey Dion and Principal Brad Gooding.
The school's administration recommended rehiring Keene, but "the board decided to go in a different direction," Superintendent Kim Schilson said.
Tracey Anders, president of the Illini West school board, did not return a phone call requesting comment.
Dion said he "absolutely" gave Keene a good recommendation and that he would do so if Keene seeks a coaching job elsewhere.
"My recommendation was to rehire Zach Keene," Dion said.
"All I can do at this time is to thank Coach Keene for all (he did). ... He treated girls basketball like that was a full-time job."
In seven seasons in charge of the girls basketball program in Carthage, Keene built on the success of his predecessors. He guided Carthage to a third-place finish in the Class A state tournament in 2006 as part of a 25-win season.
Carthage won 27 games and a regional title in its last season in 2006-07 before the district converged with LaHarpe and Dallas City to form Illini West.
In five seasons with Illini West, Keene's teams went 89-55 with two Class 2A regional titles. This year's team went 17-13 and upset state-ranked Havana in the regional title game for the program's second straight Class 2A regional crown.
Overall, Keene was 141-68 with four regional titles during his seven-year stint at the Hancock County school. Before landing in Carthage, Keene spent two seasons at Rushville. In nine seasons, Keene is 171-95, and he's never had a losing season.
Keene was not at Wednesday's board meeting and did not expect the news, adding that he felt "blindsided."
"From my knowledge, the three that voted to retain myself were at almost every ballgame this year," Keene said. "The ones that voted not to, I saw at maybe two ballgames, maybe three at the most.
"If there was even an inkling that this was going to happen, I would've loved to have the heads up. ... Or if you're going to vote this way and you had your mind made up, do it to my face. I think the school and the district at least owed that to me for as many years as we've put in."
Keene said that never during his tenure had he received anything but a favorable recommendation from his athletic director or the administration.
"I've always had excellent reviews as far as our coaching evaluations go," Keene said.
Some outsiders were as baffled by the news as Keene.
"I've met a lot of people in the game of basketball, and (Keene) has to be one of the most passionate," Seth Minter, assistant women's basketball coach at Western Illinois University and the former girls basketball coach at Canton, Mo., posted via Twitter.
Quincy Notre Dame girls basketball coach Eric Orne has known Keene since Keene's days at Rushville and said Keene always "got his players to play hard for him" and that Keene's "teams provided good, hard-nosed defense."
"It's disappointing to see someone who I truly respect lose his job the way he did, which to me seems like some politics," Orne said.
"Obviously since the consolidation, Illini West has had its fair share of success, and I think Zach is certainly responsible for that. ... When you were going up against one of his teams, they were going to give their all. It didn't matter what (the situation was), you had to be prepared for one of his teams."
Keene lives in Macomb and continues to hold his teaching position at Illini West. He said he doesn't know when or where he'll coach next, adding that he doesn't want to uproot his family unless it's the right situation.
He doesn't plan on letting this firing define him.
"It forces you to get up on your feet and say, ‘All right you can stay down and let people to continue to kick and say you can't do this or that,'" Keene said, "or you can look at it and say, ‘I'm going to get up and bounce back on my feet and prove to people that you probably made a bad decision, that you should've held onto something special that you had.'"
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