Chad Keller, a man who roamed the court at St. Cloud High School as a star basketball player in the 1990s before going on to a successful career as a high school head coach and college assistant, is remembered by friends and coaching colleagues as a person who embodied the Bulldog way of getting the most out of what’cha got.
Keller, 50, passed away on July 24 after battling Stage IV cancer.
Keller was inducted into the St. Cloud Athletic Hall of Fame this past May, and appeared at the ceremony to the delight of friends.
Keller spent 21 years as an assistant to Coach Steve Ridder at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, following a playing career at Flagler College in St. Augustine. He was also a successful head coach at Leesburg High. Taking the reigns at age 25, he led the Yellow Jackets to six consecutive Sweet 16 appearances and a trip to the State Final Four in 2002.
But, before all that, he was a stellar Bulldog basketball player, playing for Tim “Coach Mac” McMullen, and the walls of “Coach Mac Gym” prove his legacy. Keller set records for assists in a game and season in 1993, his senior year, when he ran alongside McMullen’s son, Eddie Avant, who holds Bulldog scoring records.
While that 1993 team set a school record for offense in a season (71 points per game), it didn’t come easy, as he had to squeeze talent out of not-sogift ed genes, like many who came out of St. Cloud. As a player and coach, he embodied Coach Mac’s call to play with ‘GUTS’ (“Go Until They Surrender”).
It was the mold in that town, said Chad Ansbaugh, the school’s longtime girls basketball coach and a friend of Keller’s through high school.
“He was a gritty guy, he took on the personality of Coach Mac,” Ansbaugh said. “He carried that with him when he became coach at Leesburg. If he doesn’t play for Mac, and that doesn’t rub off, who knows how the story turns out.”
Ansbaugh said Keller went from a walk-on to a scholarship player to captain at Flagler.
“So Chad was a master motivator, the ‘underdog story,’” Ansbaugh said. “And he lived it, right through the cancer diagnosis. He even told people that having cancer, in a different way, was a blessing. Who even looks at it like that? It just led him to do more with his days after the diagnosis.”
Gateway High Athletic Director Travis James met Keller while taking his Panther basketball teams to the Embry-Riddle summer camp, which became an annual thing mostly because of Keller.
“It wasn’t just ‘Play five games and go home,’ it was legit coaching, film study, helping the kids, and I took to it, and we hit it off and became friends, so this hit really hard,” James said. “You just wanted to be around his positive energy, and I hope everyone who’s been around him got to learn a little of that like I did.”
Despite fighting cancer, Keller stayed on the coaching trail, speaking at annual National Association of Basketball Coaches and Coaches Vs. Cancer functions, continuing to be a source of inspiration to others as he used speaking engagements and personal connection to inspire hope and strength in others.
“Chad was truly the standard of what our University, Athletic Program and our men’s basketball program aspire to do every day — impact young people’s lives,” ERAU’s Steve Ridder said. “Chad was extremely passionate and relentless. He was a hard worker, a dedicated professional and a true difference maker. The impact he had on so many people’s lives is immeasurable.”
He is survived by his wife, Gwynne, children Kiley, Colby, and Caden, and stepchildren Colin and Vivian.
