- Larry Angle coached Rushville to the 1976 state finals and won 375 career games.
- He also coached at Carmel, Tipton, Greenfield-Central and Indian Creek.
When Larry Angle asked his wife Kathy to go to the other room and grab his shoes last Wednesday, it seemed like an odd request. Larry, confined to a bed at home and in hospice care, was unable to walk.
“I was doing everything he asked me to do,” Kathy said. “So, I got his shoes.”
His wife of 45 years was confused, even a little more when Larry asked her to place the shoes under his bed.
“I’m going to need those,” Larry told her. “I got a feeling I’m going to do a little more coaching where I’m going.”
Larry Angle, 80, died Monday at his home in Greenfield. Angle, inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame in 2010, coached at Rushville, Carmel, Tipton, Greenfield-Central and Indian Creek, compiling 375 victories and a memorable run to the 1976 state finals with Rushville.
Even as he neared the end of his life, the coach in Angle never left. Five days before he died, he spoke from his bed to a seventh-grade girl, the granddaughter of fellow New Salem alum Doug Linville about her shooting form. On Friday night, as he often did when he slept, Angle dreamed he was coaching.
“He ran practice all night long,” Kathy said. “He was 20 years out of coaching, and he would still dream about what was on his mind the most, which was coaching.”
Angle was born in Rushville and played high school basketball at tiny New Salem in Rush County, where he was the second-leading scorer in the state as a senior in 1960-61, averaging 30.3 points. He scored 1,177 points at New Salem, which was consolidated into Rushville in 1968, along with the smaller county schools of Arlington, Manilla and Milroy.
The 6-4 Angle went on to play in college at Utah State, where he helped the Aggies to NCAA tournament appearances in 1963 and ’64. He averaged a team-high 16.5 points per game as a senior co-captain in 1965-66. Angle knew even in college he wanted to coach and returned to Rush County first as the junior high coach at Mays for one year, then as the Rushville reserve coach starting in 1967. He coached under Ken Pennington for six years before taking over as the Rushville coach in 1973 and leading the Lions to a 60-14 record, including the program’s first regional title in more than a decade in 1975.
The following season, in 1975-76, Rushville won the semistate for the only time in the program’s history, knocking off Richmond and Perry Meridian at Hinkle Fieldhouse. The following weekend, Rushville came roaring back from 21 points down to defeat top-ranked East Chicago Washington in the afternoon game of the state finals before falling at night to Dave Colescott and Marion, 82-76, in the state championship.
That team, led by 6-5 Rick Goins, 6-8 Brad Miley, Myron Shouse, Neville Cullum, Steve Goddard and then-freshman Dennis Goins, turned out to be the last Rushville one Angle coached. He resigned after the season as a teacher and coach to farm full-time.
“I got to know him in 1971 when he was an assistant coach at Rushville for Ken Pennington,” said Sam Alford, who was coaching at Martinsville at the time. “I think now that I very well qualify as an ‘old man,’ I can say there were certain coaches you could have a good rivalry with and bat heads on Friday night and then go out for breakfast with on Saturday morning. Larry was one of those coaches. We both wanted to compete and win but we were friends, too. Rushville had very good teams back then, but Larry had good teams everywhere he went.”
Angle’s resignation at Rushville turned out to just be a pause in his coaching career. When Eric Clark resigned to become assistant principal at Carmel in 1977, Angle was hired as his replacement. He spent five years there, compiling a 71-48 record. One of his first coaching hires at Carmel was Mark James, who was originally hired to coach middle school football. James was hired at Covington in 1982 and has gone on to win more than 600 games at Covington, Franklin Central, Ben Davis, Perry Meridian and now Triton Central.
“I learned a lot of basketball from him and that was a big stepping stone for me,” James said of working for Angle. “He was always a good sounding board for me. I could ask him X’s and O’s and we didn’t always agree, but he was a person you could trust. They threw away the mold with Larry Angle. He was an old-school type, but he cared about doing things the right way.”
Angle was hired to lead Tipton in 1983 after Dick Barr retired, coaching Indiana All-Stars Kreigh Smith and Matt Waddell during a nine-year tenure before going on to coach Greenfield-Central for three seasons.
“The thing I think about most with him is how much he helped people no matter their athletic ability,” said his son, J.R. Angle. “From the top kid to the bench kids, he was also working to teach a life lesson or give them resources to help themselves. There were football kids who wanted to walk on at Division III schools, he would take on visits or set up meetings with coaches. There were numerous occasions where it wasn’t just basketball kids he was trying to help. He would take the parents, too, just load up the vehicle and go.”
Larry came back to coach Indian Creek for four seasons from 2000-04, coaching J.R., who was an Indiana All-Star in 2004 after scoring 1,689 career points.
“Hardly any kid growing up has a parent as your coach most of your life,” said J.R., who went on to play at Iowa. “He had that perfect balance of knowing when to flip that dad ‘on’ and turn the coach ‘off.’ Yes, when we rode home, he was still coaching me, but we had a great connection. There were times before practice he would say, ‘I’m going to kick you out today. Just tolerate it.’ He was always cognizant of showing favoritism, but he knew what my potential was and wanted to push me to reach it. He always had a game plan.”
Angle was a voracious student of the game. After retirement, he bought every college basketball television package possible. He kept a whiteboard and marker next to his chair and would draw up plays he saw and share them with J.R., who was coaching high school basketball in Iowa.
“I heard this from one of his former players when I went into coaching,” J.R. said. “He said, ‘We always knew when Larry called timeout, that he had a counter. He had a solution for us. It didn’t matter the situation; he always had a counter. When I went into coaching, I always wanted two or three things in my pocket in a situation with the game on the line.”
Angle traveled to Final Fours and coaches’ clinics. Once when former Indiana coach Bob Knight was speaking at a clinic in Cleveland, he said hello to Angle, then saw him 300 miles away the next night. “Larry?” Knight said. “What are you doing here?” When J.R. was in first grade to eighth grade, the Angles spent their “vacations” in Lawrence, Kan., at Roy Williams’ clinics.
“Other coaches would be out golfing during the down time, and he would be in the coaches’ office watching VHS tapes and taking notes,” J.R. said. “He got access to the war rooms at Kansas.”
Among his close friends was former Pike coach Ed Siegel, who died in 2020. “Larry really missed Ed when he passed way,” Kathy said.
Kathy saw the softer side of her husband in 45 years of marriage. In the last week of his life, she heard a story personally from a delivery driver who dropped off a part for his hospice bed. Brian Cole, the driver, saw the name on the package when he arrived at the Angles' house and asked if it was 'coach' Larry Angle. Cole explained that Angle was his P.E. teacher in high school and he had helped him after his father died when Cole was in high school. Angle later brought him on as the team manager.
"He might be tough on the outside," Kathy said. "But that was the heart of Larry."
J.R. was able to record one of his favorite stories of his father’s coaching career while he was in hospice. It was from his tenure at Rushville when Richmond was a rival and both teams were highly ranked in the state. During the week of the game, Angle cranked up the heat in the gym into the 80s for practices. Before the game, Richmond coach Dick Baumgartner asked Angle why it was so hot in the gym. Angle pleaded ignorance.
“I heard something broke,” he offered.
Angle was preceded in death by his parents, Russell and Edith, and daughter, Allyson Leigh Angle. Services will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday at the Rushville high school gymnasium. Friends are welcome to visit the family from 10:30 a.m. until the start of the service.
Call Star reporter Kyle Neddenriep at (317) 444-6649.
