Stromgren still a good bet
Former ESU point guard continues to use the leadership skills he honed at Emporia State
By C.J. Moore
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Ron Slaymaker says if you could buy stock in individuals, he would have bought stock in his point guard Craig Stromgren back in the mid ’80s.
Stromgren was the leader on Slaymaker’s best team in his 28 seasons as the Emporia State basketball coach. The 1985-86 Hornets finished 31-5, losing in the second round of the NAIA tournament to David Lipscomb.
Emporia State led most of that game and led by three late in the game when leading scorer Craig Robinson tweaked his ankle. By the time Robinson returned, the Hornets were down three and it was too late. David Lipscomb went on to win the national championship, beating the rest of its opponents by double digits.
“You can’t replay them, but it was a woulda, coulda, shoulda,” Slaymaker said.
The 85-86 team was built around seven Kansas kids. Robinson got most of the accolades, which is happenstance when you average 28.1 points per game. But Stromgren was the leader of that team and filled the rest of the stat sheet.
Stromgren, a 6-5 point guard, led the team in assists (7.1 per game) and rebounding (7.9 per game). Leading in both statistics is about as rare as ... well, 6-foot-5 point guards.
Slaymaker compared Stromgren to Magic Johnson, a guy who could dominate the game without scoring.
“Craig Stromgren was a 6-10 power forward on one side, and a 5-10 quick point guard on the other,” Slaymaker said.
In just two seasons at Emporia State — he played his first two at Cloud County Community College — Stromgren had 458 assists, the best mark in Hornet history, an amazing feat considering he was a two-year player at a four-year school. He also has the single-season assists record and is eighth on the single-season best rebounding list.
The numbers were important and the ability to play point guard at 6-foot-5 obviously set him apart, but Stromgren’s leadership skills were as important as anything to that 31-5 team.
“I just always had the approach that I was going to win,” Stromgren said, “and whatever we needed to do to do that, that’s what I was going to do.”
Stromgren’s competitive nature had even Slaymaker intimidated at times.
“I recall so often, at that time I was still young enough to participate in practices, and never had any problem with that until I tried to get up next to Craig Stromgren,” Slaymaker said. “You couldn’t get close to him. He’d just hurt you. He was hard and his elbows were sharp.
“He had that type of personality. He was a leader amongst a team of leaders, and he was not alone in that role, but he was certainly a leader of the leaders. We won 55 games during his two years and that speaks for itself.”
Slaymaker says he got a lot of credit for the coaching job he did those years, but it was the easiest coaching he’s ever done. He figured out pretty quickly that the best way to coach that group was to stay out of their way and just let them play.
“An awful lot of that was because of Craig. He just knew what needed to be done, when it needed to be done and then went out and got it done,” Slaymaker said. “You can talk about things, but you’ve got to go out and deliver. And he was very, very good at delivering. He would stand up to me. A lot of players wouldn’t do that, and he did it in respectful ways. If he disagreed, he’d tell me, and that was OK. That’s why I say I kind of turned it over to him, and the good coaching part of it was staying out of the road.”
“Slay and I always had a great relationship to where I was basically an extension to him on the floor,” Stromgren said. “I wanted to be the coach on the floor and sometimes we disagreed. Sometimes I didn’t run what he wanted me to run, but sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. He got in my face a few times, which was OK.”
Once Stromgren finished his playing career, he went to work building his stock so he would make good on his coach and prospective shareholder’s prediction. He had a job waiting for him in Emporia. Mike Fiehler was a fan of the basketball team and offered Stromgren a job as the construction foreman at IBP, which is now Tyson.
In 1990, Stromgren moved to Dubuque, Iowa, and worked for an insurance broker doing safety consulting work. He moved back to Kansas in 1993 to be closer to home — he’s originally from Abilene — because his mom was sick with cancer. Stromgren moved his family to Topeka and in 1994, he purchased Safety Consulting, Inc.
Stromgren still owns and runs Safety Consulting, which specializes in workplace training and safety inspections on construction sites and manufacturing facilities.
“It’s kind of like teaching,” he said. “My brother is a teacher. My mom and dad were teachers, and I didn’t really want to get into education, but really it’s what I’m doing. I’m educating people and motivating them to make sure they can get home every night.”
Stromgren is married, and he and his wife, Kyra have four kids: Marissa, 22; Caleb, 16; Miranda, 16; and Brandon, 13. Stromgren has coached them all in soccer and basketball the last 14 years.
In 2000, Stromgren was inducted into the Emporia State Hall of Honor. The 1985-86 team is still the winningest team in Emporia State history. They won the conference title that season, avenging a loss to Missouri Western by beating Western by 44 in the regular season finale in Emporia in a battle for the conference crown.
“It was probably as good a team as far as the team concept goes as any I’ve ever played on,” Stromgren said. “Everybody knew where everybody was going to be and what time they were going to be there.
“... I really enjoyed Emporia and loved the town and loved the people,” Stromgren added. “It seems like wherever I go in the United States, I run into somebody from Kansas and familiar with Emporia State.
“It was a great place to live and go to school.”