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He's the guru of America's 1988 Olympic track and field team. It bears his imprint. He's hard-headed yet compassionate. He's innovative yet conservative.
With a scraggly beard, knobby knees and a voice that has the decibel count of a foghorn, Bob Kersee isn't difficult to spot - or hear - at a meet in which his athletes are participating. You can find him in the middle of the drama. Kersee was born to coach. He has the touch, a magical touch it would seem if the results are considered. Seven of his athletes were in the 1984 Olympic Games. They won 10 medals - six gold and four silver. If Team Kersee was entered as a nation in 1984, the 10 medals would have tied it for fifth among all the countries that were medal winners in track and field in Los Angeles.
Twenty-one men and women who will be on the U.S. team in Seoul, South Korea, at one time have been under Kersee's tutelage.
At practices and in the meets, he rules with an iron fist. Away from the track he's a softy. His athletes believe in him, as is evidenced by the fact that during interviews they begin many sentences by saying, "Bobby said" or "Bobby suggested . . . . "
It's a balancing act he conducts with his wife, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, the former East St. Louisan who is the world recordholder in the heptathlon and one of the world's top three women long jumpers.
In practice at the UCLA track, he pushes her unmercifully. He screams at her with the same intensity he shows in getting his point across to his other athletes. She has learned she can provoke him if she feels a need to be motivated in practice. So it becomes a two-way street. They use each other.
"Bob Kersee the husband doesn't like that Bob Kersee very much," he says.
The differences they have at the track are left at the track....