Koenig’s Loss Motivates Cardinals

At some point during Thursday’s 2A girls state basketball championship game, Kali Koenig is going to look toward the scorer’s table.

Landrum’s head coach is going to need to know how many fouls a player has, or how many timeouts she has left. She’ll catch her fiancé’s eye, and he’ll pass along the info.

But she won’t see her dad. Kalvin Koenig, dad to both Kali and her assistant and sister Kelsi Pack, died early last month. He used to fill that spot at the scorer’s table sporting his signature mullet, but he didn’t see Landrum go on the road to a neutral site and knock off two-time defending state champion Andrew Jackson. The Cardinals’ “Team Dad” won’t see them try to claim a coveted state title, one he wanted just as badly as they do.

But he’ll be watching, for sure. And the Cardinals will be playing for him.

He wouldn’t have it any other way.

Getting Back

This stage isn’t new to some of the Cardinals. Landrum played for a state title in 2024, falling to Andrew Jackson. Some of the sophomores on that team are seniors now, and seasoned by the experience. This year, Kylie Fortner, Kennedy Gardner-Speech, and Sullivan Price have taken over as leaders.

“Our sophomore year when we were able to go to state, we kind of played a part of it,” Fortner said. “This year is really different for us because we’ve come together as a group. It’s really the whole team, but I think it’s kind of personal for us seniors to say that we came back together. It’s just a really cool experience. Last year was kind of a building year. This year, Kennedy’s been scoring so much more. Sulli’s been scoring so much more. We’re figuring things out and the pieces fit, and it’s so cool to come back from two years ago and do that together.”

Price said the experience has been a rewarding one

“It’s been different, but it’s been good,” she said of the team’s road back to the title just two years after Kali took over as head coach. “We’ve grown a lot, we’ve gotten better, it’s been a big change, but it’s been good.”

Gardner-Speech was a backup to Savannah Brown, who did a little bit of everything for the Cardinals back in 2024. Now, she’s a much bigger contributor who’s making her own mark.

“She’s up there in the rafters,” she said. “Stepping in to fill that role was hard. But it’s been fun, too.”

It’s not just the seniors who are getting it done. The Cardinals have complementary players all over the court. Take Delaney Caldwell, who prides her self on doing the dirty work.

“The second-chance stuff, the loose balls, the hustle plays, that’s where I had to start,” Caldwell said. “Once I started doing that, the playing time started to go up. It’s just doing the little things.”

Still, she said the rest of the team is learning from the seniors.

“They lead us a ton in everything they do,” she said. “What they do, how they play, not just what they say. Kennedy is more outspoken and will yell a couple times. Kylie and Sulli are the silent leaders.”

The bond the Cardinals are forming goes well beyond the court. And not everything Fortner does is silent. She leads a Bible study for the group.

“To be honest with you, it’s been one of my biggest blessings,” she said. “To see the growth in these girls has been incredible. We all go through different things in our lives, and to see their stories start coming out you really start to realize who they are. It’s a really cool experience. And I think it helps us bond on the court, too.”

Kali has been thrilled to watch her team progress.

“Honestly, we got a couple good transfers in, and you never know how that’s going to go,” she said. “It went the best way it could. we have great chemistry on this team, and I think it’s been the main point and the main reason for us doing so well this year. I think it’s a compliment to our team. The girls who were here just welcomed them like they were already family. We have a big family type of environment here. Just them welcoming with open arms has been super helpful. They do a lot of stuff together off the court. They’re always hanging out together. There’s no drama.”

Kelsi said the girls truly seem to care about each other.

“They all seem to be concerned more about the success of the team than the individual,” she said. “Watching them play, watching them cheer from the bench, it’s clear they just love each other more than they love individual success.”

The Cardinals’ other assistant is Scottie Armstrong, a Broome alum who had a ton of success in his career, and who has seen the challenges a program can face as a former football head coach. He said Kali’s approach has made a huge difference.

“Overcoming things is just taking things head on and being willing to learn,” he said. “Every challenge is a lesson. You have to let kids know there’s nothing to hang their head about. Not one athlete wants to think their coach doesn’t care. The girls are learning from great people, and I’m learning from great people. Kali holds everyone accountable. There are no shortcuts. Girls hold themselves to a higher standard. You have to want to be great.”

You want to guess where Kali and Kelsi learned that?

“Probably everything,” Kali said with a grin when asked how much of her approach she took from her dad. “He was pretty hard on both of us, but I think it set the standard of what we want to be in life, not just on the court,” she said. “We want to be held accountable in life. We want to be the best we can be at anything we do. If it wasn’t for him pushing me, I wouldn’t have gone as far as I did. He set the standard for us early at a young age, and I think it’s good as generations change mindsets are different and people change, but he really set the tone.”

That tone continues to resonate with Kali.

“You can see it on the sidelines,” she said. “I’m intense. I’ll yell. But I’ll also cheer when we make a big 3-pointer or something. I think he set the culture without even knowing, because that’s just how we grew up.”

Biggest Critic, and Biggest Fan

Let me tell you a few things about Kal Koenig, things you could learn from his daughters, or his son-in-law, or the mourners at his funeral, or old newspaper clippings.

He was a First-Team All-American at Lipscomb and the MVP of the NAIA World Series, where he still holds the record for nine pitching appearances in the Series. He played professionally with a career in the minor leagues. He fell in love and was married to his wife, Barb, for 42 years. They lost a son, Tyler, at just 16 days old. They raised three girls – Kelsi, Kana, and Kali, with Kelsi and Kali excelling in basketball and Kana in soccer.

That doesn’t begin to touch the man, though. That doesn’t tell you about a person so full of joy and life that one of his friends said you didn’t dare ask him the time, or you’d find out how to make a watch. It doesn’t tell you about his love for his family, which grew to take up an entire row in church on Sundays, a row that Kal would walk down hugging and kissing each member as he went. It doesn’t tell you about the joy he felt living on a lake, being the go-to house for his children and grandchildren in the summer. It doesn’t tell you about what somebody described as a “glorious mullet”.

It doesn’t begin to tell you about 37 years with the New Orleans Fire Department, where he was assigned to Rescue 2 in the Special Ops Division. Want to know more about that? Here’s Kal, in an old interview:

“That’s a fancy way to say I’m a rescue guy – any kind of rescues: elevators, car extrications, confined space, water rescues – pretty much anything that requires rescue in the north half of the city.”

That was in addition to fire and rescue calls. That includes service during Hurricane Katrina. That includes things you and I probably don’t want to imagine.

But this is a sports story, so let’s talk sports.

“He’d always say he was our biggest critic, but our biggest fan,” Kelsi said. “He didn’t just say that. He lived it. Even just coming in and keeping the book right away. Whatever we did, he was 100 percent behind it. We have so many stories that people just wouldn’t believe. I think he missed one of Kali’s games, high school through college. For me, living 10 hours away from home, you wouldn’t have known by the amount of times he made a Saturday-Monday trip at Wofford.”

The girls excelled. Kelsi scored more than 900 points at Wofford and coached both in high school and collegiately. Kali played at the University of Mobile and professionally overseas. Kana was a standout soccer player before being injured. Kal was at everything.

So, when Kali got the job at Landrum, it was a natural extension for the Cardinals to get a new bookkeeper – and a team dad.

Or maybe a team grandpa. Because sometimes, Kali and Kelsi didn’t recognize the guy encouraging the Cardinals.

“Oh he was 100 percent easier on them,” Kali said with a laugh. “He’s giving them pep talks all the time. He’s maybe yelling from the scorer’s table when he shouldn’t be. He’s loving on them when maybe we were extra tough on them. It was just really, really nice to have him with us.”

One More Game

So now, the Cardinals will head down the road to the biggest game of them all without their team dad. And had they lost Kal yesterday instead of weeks ago, there’s no doubt that’s still exactly what they’d be doing.

“He told us,” Kali said. “There was a time when he said ‘If I die, you better go to your basketball game, and you better tell your mom to not schedule anything for me on a game day.’ I’m guessing that applies to coaching too. So we still showed up. There was never a question.”

As for that look at the scorer’s table, Kali’s had a few of them by now. They’re not easy.

“Over time you’ll get used to it,” she said. “The first game was difficult. I knew I had to go over, and it’s not him there. That was a difficult thing for me to do. But now my fiancé’s there, and that’s the person I’m going to spend the rest of my life with, so we kept in in the family, in a way.”

And now, the Landrum family wants to win just one more. For Kal.

For Kal, the team dad.

For me, it’s more personal now,” Fortner said. “There was the push, but now I’m gonna go 10 times harder. He was the team dad. When you lose something like that, you’re going to fight harder to get to the goal.”

For Kal, the encourager.

“He had so much confidence in us,” Gardner said. “I just know he’s looking down and telling us to go get those rebounds. It’s different not having him here.”

For Kal, the motivator.

“I think it’s lit an extra fire in us,” Sullivan said. “We already wanted to win state. Now, it’s like we’re doing it for him.”

For Kal, who is missed.

“It’s hard without him,” Caldwell said. “He did so much for our team.”

Kali sees the impact her father has had on the girls she coaches, even in his loss.

“We were close before, but the family dynamic and chemistry has grown,” she said. “This group is special.”

It’s also something Kal predicted.

“They want to win it for him,” Kelsi said. “He told them at the beginning of the year, ‘we’re going to state’.”

Well, the Cardinals made it. And if they can finish the job? Well, in the words of the man himself…

“It’ll be way more better.”