By FRED KRONER
fred@sjodaily.com
You can call him John.
Or Kenneth.
Or John Kenneth.
Or J.K.
“I answer to all, depending on who knew me and when and where,” St. Joseph resident John Kenneth Young said.
He has an unofficial name, too, which won’t be found on his birth certificate and is, in fact, more of a title.
Young is a St. Joseph-Ogden High School super fan, particularly in boys’ basketball.
The last time Young missed a boys’ basketball game — home, away or at a neutral site — was in 1975 during the semifinals of the Rossville-Alvin Holiday Tournament.
Since then, the Spartans have played 1,229 games under five different head coaches. Each game, Young was in the stands.
There were some close calls.
In December, 1983, Young’s mother, Joan, passed away.
“She had just turned 65,” Young said, “and had gotten her first social security check. She died the next month.”
Her funeral was in St. Joseph on the day of a game.
“The burial plot was in Galesburg,” John Young said. “We drove to Galesburg and drove back.
“That’s probably the only time I would have accepted a miss, but I made it back in time.”
In 2015, an unexpected problem arose as Young was traveling in his 1990 Chrysler New Yorker to watch SJ-O play on a Saturday in the Riverton Shootout.
He was on Interstate 72, between Monticello and Argenta, when his car blew a water pump.
“I poured water in the radiator and water poured straight through,” Young said.
He had managed to maneuver the car into a rest stop.
“I didn’t want to go further or I could damage the engine,” he said.
A University of Illinois student from New Berlin had also stopped at the rest stop. Young got a ride with him to Riverton.
He made it into the gymnasium by tip-off and didn’t even have to worry about getting a ride home.
“Most kids don’t ride the bus home,” Young said. “I rode the bus home.”
Young is plenty familiar with the yellow school buses.
For more than two decades, he has driven a pre-school and afternoon route, transporting students to and from Ogden.
It’s still a part of his current weekday routine.
On occasion, he has driven the team bus to basketball games.
He found he wasn’t necessarily a good fit for that role.
“Coaches like to have drivers who will warm the bus up and I’m not that,” Young said. “I’m going out (of the gym) when I know the conclusion and the game is over.
“I drive in emergencies.”
Young is a 1969 SJ-O graduate.
After he entered the working world, he attended as many games as possible, but some tournament contests were played on afternoons when his job took precedence.
That’s why he missed the Spartans’ semifinal loss to Westville in Rossville-Alvin’s 1975 holiday basketball tournament.
He worked at Maxey Motors for three years and for Champaign Auto Supply for another three years.
“Other than work conflicts, I rarely missed a game,” Young said.
In 1976, he opened his own business, J.K. Young Automotive, out of his home in St. Joseph.
He specialized in doing brakes, alignments and front-end work.
“A by-product of that is that I wasn’t so busy that I needed to do work when a basketball game was coming up,” Young said. “That’s an advantage of being your own boss.
“There was no legitimate reason to miss a game any more.”
So, he hasn’t in more than 15,760 days.
Young was there, a few rows behind the team bench for 22 Spartan boys’ teams that won at least 20 games in a season.
He was there when the 2012-13 team broke through and qualified for state, placing fourth and setting the school record for wins in a season (29).
He was right there when the 2015-16 team ran the table during the postseason and captured the Class 2A state championship.
Besides his memories, Young possesses some tangible souvenirs.
“I have a lot of programs,” he said.
Young has seen all 17 regional championship games which SJ-O has won, including one (in 1972) before his streak began.
“It’s a vivid memory,” he said. “We played at Homer. Stanley Osterbur got knocked and was falling on his backside.
“He tossed the ball up, and it went in the basket.”
Young literally grew up a stone’s throw from the high school where he has attended hundreds of games.
“I could leave my house when I heard the first bell (to start the school day), run across the yard and be in class by the time the second bell rang,” he said.
A couple decades ago, when the school was running out of space for its abundant collection of trophies, many were placed on auction.
“The ones that weren’t claimed, I bought for about a dollar apiece,” Young said.
He has a dedicated room in his home where those trophies are stored. After he reinforces and polishes them, he tries to distribute them to former players who would find them meaningful.
“I’ve passed some on already and the others need to be passed on,” Young said.
One of the trophies he found a home for was the second-place trophy from the 14th Mattoon Holiday Tournament in 1992.
“The trophy stands 3 feet high,” Young recalled.
That year’s SJ-O girls’ basketball team featured three of the area’s top 20 players.
Junior Brandi Carmien was a News-Gazette All-Area first-teamer.
The All-Area second-team included another SJ-O junior, Beth Rudnicke, as well as senior Sara Siems.
The school’s play in the ‘92 Mattoon Tournament was memorable for Young.
“Until Monday (and the school’s super-sectional win at Pontiac), that may have been as impressive of a performance as the girls’ basketball program has had,” Young said.
He made sure that Siems gained possession of that trophy.
***
Young’s own basketball career blossomed after high school.
He played on SJ-O’s junior high teams as a seventh- and eighth-grader.
“I scored in double digits one time,” he said.
He entered high school on a growth spurt.
“I grew seven inches in seven months,” Young said.
A youngster who was 4-foot-11 in eighth-grade was suddenly 5-6.
“They (the coaches) tried to make a center out of me,” Young said. “There was no sense in me continuing.
“I was light and wasn’t going to be effective as a center. I avoided having the game ruined for me by having negativity brought into it.”
Even though he continued to grow and was 6-foot-1 by his high school graduation, Young hadn’t filled out.
“I weighed 125 pounds my senior year,” he said.
Basketball became a passion that he could pursue — in addition to watching — in 1977 when the high school gym was switched from Ogden to the one currently in use at SJ-O.
“I had an agreement with (superintendent) Mr. (Ralph) Ambler and we started an adult Sunday night league,” Young said. “It’s in its 42nd year now.
“I average playing about 50 weeks a year.”
The gymnasium is Young’s home away from home.
“I’m alive when I’m in the gym,” he said. “That’s where I spend a good chunk of my life.
“My mother raised me to be a contented child and I’ve resisted influences to change that. I found what I like to do, and I do it.
“My dad got me my first basketball when I was in first grade. I enjoy it. Why would I not do what I enjoy?”
His involvement with basketball extends beyond watching and playing.
When Young unofficially shut down his automotive repair business in 1989, he began coaching YMCA teams in Urbana and worked with youngsters in St. Joseph during Sunday open gyms at the high school.
His major point of emphasis was ballhandling.
“If you can’t dribble, you can’t read the defense,” Young said. “Ballhandling is the strongest foundation you have to develop court awareness.”
The last group that he worked closely with are now high school juniors.
”Basketball became my profession and cars became my hobby, instead of the other way around,” he said.
Young also became certified to conduct ACEP coaching clinics for individuals who wanted to enter the profession, but did not have a college degree.
He did that for a decade, once starting a clinic on Thanksgiving morning for one person who needed the certification by the following week.
As a spectator, Young’s priority is with the SJ-O boys’ basketball program, but he is not a stranger at the girls’ games.
Young plans to be at Redbird Arena, in Normal, this weekend as the SJ-O girls play in the state tournament for the first time in school history.
Friday’s girls’ game against Teutopolis will start at approximately 7:15 p.m.
Young doesn’t plan to end his streak any time soon of consecutive SJ-O boys’ basketball games watched in person.
Next December will mark 44 consecutive years of being in attendance.
“I’m too close to give up before I get to 45,” Young said, “and once I get to 45, 50 is a magical number.
“I probably would have to be critically hospitalized to miss a game.”
He has a good track record on that count.
The last time Young spent time in the hospital, he said, was “the day I was born.”
