Legendary IVCC coach dies

    By Jared Bell
    IV Leader Sports Editor

    Former legendary IVCC men’s basketball coach Dean Riley died on Friday, Jan. 27. He was 75 years old.
    Riley was behind the bench leading the 1987-88 IVCC men’s team that finished third in the NJCAA that season. The Apaches finished the year with a 27-9 mark.
    The following year, the 1988-89 squad was ranked No. 1 in the nation for most of the season and compiled a 30-2 record that season.
    In his 11 years as the Apache coach, Riley finished with a 234-118 record and had seven years in which he posted 23 or more wins.
    While at IVCC, Riley also coached women’s tennis and was an assistant coach on the football team.
    Because of his efforts at IVCC, he was inducted into the National Junior College Athletic Hall of Fame.
    “When I was helping him coach, we usually didn’t have the best talent of all the teams in the conference,” former IVCC men’s assistant coach Steve Nett says, who coached under Riley from 1986-90, “but we competed with everyone because of Coach Riley’s ability to teach and motivate his players. Dean had the ability to get his players to buy into and believe in his system and then to go out and play hard for him every game, and that’s something that a lot of coaches don’t have.”
    While Riley’s on-the-court accomplishments are what some will remember, others will remember how Riley taught them more than just basketball.
    “I’ll remember Dean not only as someone who taught me about coaching basketball, but also as someone who taught me and so many others about people about knowing right from wrong, about doing the right thing and about living life in a positive way,” says Greg Oseland, who was an assistant coach under Riley from 1981 to 1986.
    “1990. This was my first real coaching job and I couldn’t have asked for a better situation to be in,” Nett says. “Dean understood the game of basketball, he knew the offenses the defenses and all the traps and presses, but more importantly, he understood people and he knew how to deal with people.”
    Oseland says that Riley always made the long bus trips fun with his stories.
    “In addition to being a teacher and coach, Dean was a great storyteller,” Oseland says. “He made many long bus trip easier to endure with stories from his own playing days, his coaching days at Ottawa High School and stories about his years at IVCC.
    “In addition to being very entertaining, his stories always carried an important lesson as well,” Oseland continues. “One of the reasons Dean was so special was because he was very much a people-person. At any kind of gathering, Dean would always be talking to people, meeting old friends, putting newcomers at ease or just generally working the room. He would always have a story, a compliment, a joke or perhaps some good-natured teasing for anyone he might run in to. He could always make people laugh and feel better about themselves.”
    The IVCC doubleheader scheduled for Feb. 16 against Carl Sandburg was intended to be “Dean Riley Night” in which players from his 11 teams at IVCC were scheduled to come back and honor the coach. A halftime ceremony was intended to recognize the coach but the event was postponed just weeks before Riley’s passing at the coach’s request.