November 2024 ~
They’re running out of halls of fame to enshrine Robert Key (Marshall, 1984) in.
First there was the PIL’s, which in 2015 inducted Key for high school sports achievements that included 10 letters in football, basketball and baseball, three 1st Team and three 2nd Team All-PIL selections and a Male Student Athlete of the Year Award.
Then came his 2018 induction into the hall of fame for Lower Columbia Community College, where he made the all-league basketball team twice in addition to earning second- team all-league baseball honors.
Finally (or not), in October (2024) Key was enshrined at Western Oregon University, where he was instrumental in turning around the Wolves’ basketball program in the 80s, leading the team to 39 wins over two seasons and topping the club in scoring in 1988.
Robert Key (Marshall, 1984) current photo
Since his days as an athlete, all Key has done is add more accomplishments to his sports resume via 30-plus years of coaching. Those include three PIL basketball Coach of the Year awards and a 2018 state championship at Grant along with a state-runner-up finish at West Linn in 2023.
If there’s a coaches’ hall of fame out there looking for a future inductee, it can find Key today mentoring middle schoolers in Gladstone, returning to the profession he loves after taking last summer off, his first break from coaching in 34 years.
“I’m loving the change from high school to middle school a lot,” he says. “I’ve always said that coaching gives me the opportunity to support kids in a way that can change their futures. There’s almost a slogan you will hear around here that is ‘Coach Key loves the kids.’ I’m always looking for the kid that was me when I was young and making sure I get to know them, making sure kids aren’t hungry and that they’re safe and just finding out how I can be supportive.”
The original “kid who was me” grew up in a “pretty tough” part of north Portland, living in low-income housing with his brother, Jeff, and mother, Mae, who, Key says proudly, “made the best of it” while helping her sons understand the difference between right and wrong at an early age.
“There were a lot of drugs and other stuff around, and I lost two friends over stupidity,” he remembers. “But it was stuff I never wanted to get involved in.”
Sports, on the other hand, Key couldn’t get enough of.
“I got into sports around age 7 or 8,” he says. “I played everything, but baseball was always my first love.”
After middle school, Key had the option of attending either Roosevelt or Jefferson and chose neither.
“I was playing basketball at the Boys and Girls Club and a man approached me and said, ‘We need more athletes like you at Marshall.’ That was my road to Marshall,” says Key, who would wind up being coached by that stranger once he hit high school.
As much as Key loved and excelled in sports, he also dedicated himself to being successful in academics. He attacked schoolwork with a determination he credits, to a large extent, both to his involvement in Self Enhancement, Inc., the renowned North Portland program dedicated to helping underserved youth reach their full potential, and to the influence of a long list of Marshall coaches and mentors, particular Don Emery.
“He was like a father figure to Jeff and me,” Key says. “He taught me the importance of life, leadership and academics. I always wanted to make sure I was the first in our family to get a college degree, and I’m still very proud that I was.”
Key thought, or at least was hoping, his athletic skills would help ensure he’d get that degree at a Division I college, and he still has a clear image of walking down a Marshall hallway and “seeing all these guys in green-and-yellow sweaters walking toward me. I didn’t know what was going on.”
It turned out to be a flock of Ducks coaches coming to talk to Marshall’s star quarterback about playing football at Oregon – but not playing quarterback.
“I also played safety, and they wanted me to play defense at UO,” Key recalls. “I didn’t want to make that switch. Playing defense wasn’t fun for me. I loved slinging the ball.”
Key left football behind when he enrolled at Lower Columbia Community College, starring in basketball and baseball and earning his associate’s degree before moving on to Western Oregon, where he continued to enjoy success in the two sports. He finished his bachelor’s degree in health and P.E. at Portland State.
After working at Nike for six years, Key landed a job back at PSU with the help of one of his former P.E. instructors. That preceded his jump into a coaching/teaching career that has included 14 years as a JV basketball coach at Cleveland, eight years as a varsity coach at Roosevelt, two years of varsity coaching at Hudson’s Bay in Vancouver, eight years as Grant’s varsity basketball coach followed by two at West Linn. Interspersed throughout were additional stints coaching freshman and JV football and baseball.
This is a man who deserved a summer off. Even so, Key couldn’t wait to get back in action after his short break. And to think, he hadn’t even considered being a coach until a cousin asked if he had any desire to.
“I’d never coached and never thought about it, but one thing I knew was relationships were big,” Key says. “So, I tried it and fell in love with it. Giving back to the sports I played was one of the important things for me. Like a lot of young athletes, I was hoping to go pro and thought baseball was my ticket. But things didn’t work. So, while I was never a pro player, I think I’ve been a pro to the kids I’ve coached.”
Key says getting inducted into the PIL Hall of Fame (in the same year as his best friend from childhood, Roosevelt’s Andre George) gave him a chance to reflect positively on where he’d come from and the journey that has led him to this moment in his life.
“I’ve been through some adversity. What happened at West Linn (a surprise firing after leading his team to the state championship game) caught me off guard, but here I am, at 58, married to my wonderful wife, Jennifer, with two daughters and four grandkids. My mother is still doing well at 83. Wherever I’ve been I’ve tried to pay it forward by supporting athletes. Hopefully, one day I’ll be in the coaches’ hall of fame.”
So maybe they haven’t yet run out of halls of fames to put Robert Key in. But that day may be coming.
Do you know Robert Key? If you’d like to reconnect, he can be reached at [email protected]
