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A half-century later, after he became the winningest high school basketball coach in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ history, McConnell reflected on his days as a professional ballplayer, saying: “I didn’t see anything stopping me from playing at Yankee Stadium.â€�

But when the Owls played the rival Joplin Miners in 1950, McConnell got his first look at Mickey Mantle, then a shortstop, who led the league with a .383 batting average.

“I was hitting .221,� McConnell told me after he coached Sahuaro High School to its fourth state basketball championship, in 2001. “The best thing that ever happened to me was that I married Clarine and realized that I wasn’t going to be a baseball player.�

McConnell quit baseball, earned a degree at Washburn University, joined the Air Force and was stationed at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. By 1958, he was coaching and teaching the Narka High Wildcats, a school with 27 students in his home state of Kansas.

He had enjoyed his military days in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥, and when he discovered that Tombstone High School was looking for a basketball coach, McConnell phoned the school. He was hired after the second of two phone interviews.

When he told the principal at Narka High that he was leaving for ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥, citizens of Narka — population: 220 — staged a fundraising campaign and offered McConnell $500 to stay.

“One of the hardest things I ever had to do was tell (Narka) no,� McConnell remembered in 2001.

McConnell, who is No. 12 on our list of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥â€™s Top 100 Sports Figures of the last 100 years, lasted one year as the Yellowjackets’ head coach. He spent the next 10 years attempting to become a head coach again. From 1961 to 1968, he was an assistant basketball and baseball coach at Rincon High School and was one of 126 applicants to be the basketball coach at the new Sahuaro High School.

It became the job of a lifetime.

For 39 years, McConnell grew his head coaching record to 774-320, coaching the Cougars to state championships in 1970, 1982, 2000 and 2001. He was the last coach in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ whose team won the state’s big-schools basketball championship.

It’s unlikely that any basketball coach in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ history, college or high school, has a coaching tree to rival McConnell’s.

“One night I was sitting with some of Dick’s former players and coaches at Kappy’s, where we would meet after most games for 20 or 30 years to have a beer and talk basketball,� longtime Sahuaro assistant coach Bob Vielledent told me. “We figured that Dick’s coaching tree had about 4,000 victories.�

McConnell’s so-called basketball offspring includes state championship coaches Brain Peabody, Jim Scott and Jim Ferguson and many others — including his son, Rick McConnell, who won more than 600 games himself at Mesa Westwood High School.

Sahuaro reached the state semifinals 16 times in McConnell’s career. His only losing season was 1969, the first year in school history. A year later, Sahuaro went 22-3 and became state champions. Modest to a fault, even McConnell could not hide his enthusiasm for the ‘69 Cougars. When asked by a Star reporter what to expect from his second Cougar team, McConnell said, “We’ll look pretty fair; we’re pretty big and strong.�

Over the next three decades, McConnell coached the neighborhood kids. He wasn’t a recruiter. One year, Rodney Peete enrolled at Sahuaro. As a sophomore, the future NFL quarterback broke into the starting lineup. Sahuaro went 25-2 and won the '82 state title. McConnell never did coach a 5-star or even a 4-star basketball recruit at Sahuaro.

He won anyway.

When TUSD named Sahuaro’s facility the “Dick McConnell Gymnasium� 20 years ago, he said, “We run a lot of the same things I ran at Narko in 1958.�

McConnell wasn’t a name-dropper, but over the years it became widely known that he was a high school teammate of North Carolina Tar Heels basketball coach Dean Smith. He would often coach in Smith’s summer camps in Chapel Hill. Each time Sahuaro won a state title, Smith would send his old friend a hand-written letter, congratulating him on his success.

After he retired in 2008, at 77, McConnell and his wife Clarine, worked together in a real estate business. He died in April 2019. His memorial service was held in the Dick McConnell Gym.

“I’ve never met a person who didn’t like Dick,� Vielledent said that day. “I never saw him treat a student without respect. He was a driver’s ed teacher for years. The kids loved it when they found out they had been assigned to Coach McConnell. Forget the 700 victories and the state championships. He was a winner at life.�