McCann joins IHSAA Hall of Fame

He’s 40 years old now. A lawyer who directs a non-profit venture started by his former Hawkeye football teammate, longtime NFL tight end Dallas Clark (see related story).

But, Kyle McCann can still hear the ringing in his ears from the many fans supporting that glorious period of Creston boys basketball in the late 1990s, when the Panthers won a state title in 1997 and nearly matched that a year earlier in a 62-60 semifinal loss to champion Western Christian.

The crowds following the Panthers were huge. Creston High School’s gymnasium would fill to capacity during the junior varsity game on most nights. The community traveled in large numbers to watch their beloved team play.

Senior guard Brady Steenhoek recalled looking behind the bus on the way home after the 1997 championship win over Pella and seeing a seemingly endless stream of car lights behind them on the rolling hills of Stuart Road. They were welcomed by a standing-room only crowd in the school gym at 11 p.m. as coaches and players spoke about their experience and presented the Class 3A championship trophy to Principal Chris Duree.

On Friday night, McCann will be inducted into the Iowa High School Basketball Hall of Fame. He joins 1960s star Randy Long, who joined the Hall of Fame last year, and 1939 graduate Bill Stauss as the only players inductees from Creston.

Former Panther Paul Loos was inducted in 2016 as a coach at longtime Northwest Iowa power Newell-Fonda.

Previously inducted into the IHSAA Officials Hall of Fame from Creston are the the late Bill Sears, the late Howard Browne, Paul Somers, the late Ron “Fox” Clinton, Steve McCann (Kyle’s father), Richard “Butch” Miller and Brad Baker.

McCann fondly recalls those winter nights more than 20 years ago, when the roar of the Panther faithful reacted to the many highlights of those teams coached by Mike Gerleman that averaged more than 80 points a game.

“Since the public announcement was made (last December), it’s been fun to visit with friends and family about those days,” McCann said. “It’s fun to share some of the excitement about it with them. The best part has been talking to old teammates and coaches about it, and reflecting on what the program was able to accomplish during those years. It’s also exciting to be the third from Creston in the Hall of Fame and represent the school.”

McCann, as a sophomore, and senior Brian Gerleman were the scoring leaders of the 1994-95 Panther team that lost to Carroll Kuemper Catholic in the substate finals. McCann averaged 25 points a game that year, 28 points as a junior and scored 30 points per game for the title team in 1997.

Versatile player

As a 6-5 guard with a silky smooth shooting touch, McCann could beat opposing defenses from the outside and inside, alternating raining in 3-pointers and stuffing fast-break dunks through the hoop. Creston raced through a 23-1 season in 1996-97, avenging its only defeat by wrapping up the Hawkeye 10 Conference title in a victory at Atlantic late in the season. McCann took a lob pass from all-state guard Ben Gerleman for an emphatic dunk that punctuated that victory.

“Kyle was a heck of a shooter,” said retired coach Mike Gerleman, who now alternates residences in Florida and Creston with wife Jan. “He shot a lot on his own outside of practice and was just a pure shooter. We’d run him off that flex cut off screens by our big guys, like Eric Owens or Jeff Finn, and he’d pop that three. Or, he could take it to the basket and he was a matchup problem for other guards with that height."

Creston’s famed half-court trap featured the 6-5 McCann and 6-3 Gerleman along with the likes of John David Weber in 1995-96 and Brady Steenhoek in 1996-97. Marc Jackson, Will Carroll and Kelly Keenan were other key members McCann’s junior year, with Finn, Owens and Conor Reed joining forces his senior year in the main rotation. Players like Jamie Johnson and Ethan Owens were at the back end of the press earlier in McCann’s career. They presented opposing teams a daunting task of getting into their offense.w

“We messed up a lot of teams with our traps and steals, because they couldn’t duplicate that kind of size in practice in preparing for it,” Gerleman said. “Kyle did a lot of his scoring in transition on the break, or spotting up for the three like you see a lot in today’s college game.”

Other varsity teammates of McCann on that championship team were Todd Stalker, Ryan Taylor, Lucas Darby, Nick Nevins, Scott Jackson, Darin Schlapia, Brian Bucklin and Cory Gerleman. Assistant coaches were Vic Belger and Matt Somers.

Camaraderie

McCann was voted a captain in both football and basketball as a Panther, but he said that group of athletes during his high school years didn’t require much prodding and pushing.

“We had a really smart group of guys who all had pretty high expectations and the coaches did a really good job of preparing us,” McCann said. “There were not a lot of instances where getting on guys was required. It was a fun group to be with. Everybody enjoyed playing and spending time together. Nobody rode home with their parents. Part of the fun for us was hanging out together.”

It wasn’t all fun and games in the substate game at Southeast Polk against Pella in the 1995-96 season, however. The Panther crowd was in a silent state of shock as their team trailed by 18 points with only 6:18 left in the game. It was starting to look like the quest for state would be turned away yet again.

“We were kind of out of sync for the first three quarters of that game,” McCann recalled. “I remember coach Gerleman calling a timeout there in the fourth quarter, with a look of frustration on his face, wondering if we could play like we were capable of playing. Over the next six minutes we got it clicked into gear, and we had some good fortune of Pella missing some free throws.”

Dramatic comeback

The game was tied late when Creston was inbounding the ball from the sideline. McCann curled off a screen from a stacked line of players and received a long inbounds pass from Ben Gerleman as he broke behind the Pella defense. McCann caught it and banked in a short shot before the buzzer.

“Kyle was just so calm. That’s what made him so good,” Gerleman said. “We got to state and won our first game and we were within an eyelash of winning it all that year. We were down two to Western Christian late in the semifinals and Kyle had such a soft shooting touch, his shot just kind of hung up there on the rim. We had Owens and Finn, our main rebounders, right there in case he missed. The ball finally rolled off and we didn’t have time to get another shot off. Western Christian went on to easily win the championship game and we won the third-place game.”

There were no such close calls in the 1997 state tournament at Veterans Memorial Auditorium, which turned into a sea of red Panther fans whipped into a frenzy by the CHS pep band playing the Van Halen song, “Jump,” as the players took the court.

Title march

Creston rolled past Oskaloosa 95-82 and whipped Mount Pleasant 75-52 in the first two games. Pella, which included sophomore Kyle Korver, who would go on to star at Creighton University before an NBA career that is still ongoing, lost to Creston 74-57 in the title game. McCann scored 21 points in that game, including a crowd-pleasing dunk in the fourth quarter.

“We had some good athletes and length that created problems for people and we were able to speed up the games and make other people play at our tempo,” McCann said. “We played fast and scored a lot of points. It was fun.”

McCann had offers to play basketball at some Division I schools such as Northern Illinois, Drake and Creighton, but opted before his senior basketball season to accept a scholarship offer from coach Hayden Fry to play football at the University of Iowa. He capped his senior season there by directing an Alamo Bowl victory over Texas Tech. He was drafted by the New York Jets and played a year in NFL Europe before enrolling in the Creighton University Law School.

As he enjoys some fellowship Friday night with former teammates and coaches after the IHSAA ceremony, McCann will share fond memories of those winter nights in packed gyms across southwest Iowa. And, nothing will top that moment in Vets Auditorium when McCann and teammates hoisted the Class 3A championship trophy.

“We’d played together since third and fourth grades for coach Gerleman,” McCann said. “It was a fun period of time, not just the year that we won it. That whole process, the expectations were high for our team and the community was excited. We had a target on our back and when teams came in, we knew we were going to get their best shot. It created a really cool atmosphere to play in. It was something everybody felt they were a part of. We all experienced it together.”

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McCann leaves his mark in Creston record books

(Information summary)

Kyle McCann was a 6-5 guard at Creston from the 1993-94 through 1996-97 basketball seasons.

He ranks first in Creston all-time scoring with 1,857 points. He also owns the top two scoring seasons of 714 points in 1996-97 and 681 points in 1995-96. He shot 83.2 percent from the free throw line for his career, ranking second in Creston history.

McCann was also a two-time all-state football quarterback at Creston in addition to being named all-state twice in basketball, and also qualified for the state golf tournament.

McCann was the scoring leader for a Creston team that placed third in the state in 1996 after a two-point loss to eventual champion Western Christian in the semifinals. The Panthers came back in 1997 and rolled through the tournament, dispatching Carroll 71-61 in the quarterfinals and routing Mount Pleasant 75-52 in the semifinals before topping Pella 74-57 in the championship game. Among the players for that Pella team were sophomore Kyle Korver, still active in the NBA for the Utah Jazz, and center Kevin DeRonde, who played football at Iowa State University.

The Panthers had defeated Pella in the 1996 substate game at Southeast Polk on a late basket by McCann after trailing by 18 points with 6:18 to play. During McCann's sophomore year, the Panthers were defeated in the substate finals by Carroll Kuemper Catholic in a game played at Council Bluffs Abraham Lincoln High School.

McCann and teammate Ben Gerleman were co-captains of the Class 3A All-Tournament Team after the Panthers won the 1997 title. Creston also won the sportsmanship award for Class 3A that year.

McCann played quarterback at the University of Iowa, passing for 4,349 yards and 23 touchdowns while completing 357 of 603 passes. As a senior he was 167 of 252 passing for 2,028 yards with 16 TDs. He passed for 161 yards in Iowa's 19-16 Alamo Bowl victory over Texas Tech in 2001, which was coach Kirk Ferentz's first bowl game victory.

McCann was also an invited walk-on member of the University of Iowa basketball team coached by Tom Davis his freshman year, but did not appear in any games. He decided to focus his attention on playing quarterback for the Hawkeye football team after that season.

McCann, son of Steve and Jane McCann, is a graduate of Creighton University Law School and was shareholding partner at Brick Gentry Law Firm in Des Moines before become executive director of The Native Fund in 2016. That is a non-profit venture of Iowans helping Iowans, founded by McCann's former Hawkeye teammate, Dallas Clark, after Clark retired from the NFL.

The organization is currently working with two communities in northern Iowa that experienced damage from flooding (Hartley) and a tornado (Marshalltown).

"We're helping in community-based recovery efforts in their fundraising to restore public buildings such as the community center in Hartley and the public library and other bulidings hit by the tornado in downtown Marshalltown," McCann said.

Kyle and Maggie McCann live in West Des Moines and are the parents of three children.

McCann will be honored at a 5 p.m. reception at the Iowa Hall of Pride in HyVee Hall Friday along with other inductees. They are former players Jason Bohannon of Linn-Mar, Nick Collison of Iowa Falls, Kirk Hinrich of Sioux City West, Dennis Pauling of Paullina, Grant Stout of North Mahaska and Brian Wildeboer of Colo-Nesco.

Coaches to be honored include Dennis Geraghty, who coached at seven schools over 39 years including Creston in 1979-80; and Ken Laffoon, who coached many years at Danville along with two other schools with an overall record of 508-181.

Geraghty also reached 500 total wins before retiring. His West Delaware team was Class 3A runner-up in 2000 and his Western Dubuque team was second in the state in 2012.

The honorees will also be introduced at halftime of the Class 3A championship game that begins at 6:35 p.m. Friday. The championship games are telecast by the Iowa High School Sports Network online and on NBC Sports Chicago, which is widely available on DISH and DirecTV satellite services. It is not a channel available on Mediacom in this region.