Family, former students come together to celebrate legendary North Kansas City coach’s birthday

Click here for updates on this story

    NORTH KANSAS CITY, MO (KCTV) — Anyone lucky enough to live to celebrate their 98th birthday may wonder who would be there to celebrate. One longtime local coach found out Thursday night.

After decades of coaching young athletes, family members, former students, and fellow coaches surrounded Leland O’Dell inside the Hornets Nest at Paul & Jack’s Tavern in North Kansas City.

The Hornets Nest is a room filled with NKC Hornets memorabilia. In the center of the room at a round table, O’Dell sat with his World War II veteran cap on. He was greeted by a long line of people who waited to shake his hand and chat about their good old days.

“I’m here to see Coach O’Dell who has touched so many lives,” former student Ken Nelson said.

Old newspaper articles hanging on the wall show O’Dell’s teams were rarely defeated. He coached football in Sikeston and Oak Grove before beginning a long coaching career in North Kansas City.

“Coaching football, track, basketball, anything you could imagine,” Bob Hiatt recalled. “He was also a Driver’s Education teacher. That’s back in the days when everybody took Driver’s Ed.”

While O’Dell greeted a steady stream of guests, his daughters quietly told KCTV5 News about his accomplishments. O’Dell’s Sikeston football team won five state championships and only lost one game in five years. In Oak Grove, his team was undefeated.

It was after those successes he began his life as a Northtown Hornet, “a true Hornet,” Hiatt said.

Odell’s coaching career continued even after he formally retired as he would volunteer to coach pole vaulters.

Tom Stout was one of O’Dell’s track and football players and says O’Dell is one of the reasons he went on to become a coach himself.

“He was an encourager, but he wouldn’t let you get away with much,” Stout said. “He was firm and fair, which is what we needed.”

“The way he treated people has been an inspiration for me throughout my life,” Nelson added.

O’Dell said that while he enjoyed winning, he will always remember the students who later told him he helped them set them on a path to success, recalling when he ran into one athlete at a grocery store who told him, “I think you changed me when you gave me that talking to.”

O’Dell says his sixth-grade teacher was the mentor he needed.

“She told me then you ought to be a coach,” O’Dell said. “It stayed in my mind from sixth-grade.”

His former students and athletes are thankful it did.

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.