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dreaming in

feastSTL.com FEBRUARY 201136

Patric Chocolate owner Alan McClure turned a consuming hobby into one of the first cra!

chocolate companies in the United States.

WRITTEN BY Brandi Wills | PHOTOGRAPHY BY Greg Rannells

If you close your eyes and picture where hand-cra!ed chocolate is made, what do you see?

“Everyone who comes to the factory is expecting Wonka,” Alan McClure, founder and owner of Patric Chocolate, says while standing in the o"ce

of his four-room, no-frills space in an industrial park on the outskirts of Columbia, Mo. “Their disappointment when they get here is pre#y apparent. You can see it on their faces.”

The factory’s bare white walls and abundant stainless steel equipment may not leave visitors oohing and ahing, but the chocolate

produced there sure does. Relying almost solely on the innate flavor characteristics of the beans used in Patric Chocolate’s bean-to-bar process, McClure adds li#le more than pure cane sugar when making his artisan chocolate bars.

“When I first started [learning to make chocolate], I was doing the things that a lot of the lower-quality chocolate companies do, and that is add a lot of vanilla or artificial vanilla and a lot of sugar. It’s hard for it to taste terrible because it’s so strongly vanilla-scented and sweet that even the bad flavors are covered up. So I said, ‘I’m not using vanilla, I’m using minimal sugar, and I’m going to try to avoid cocoa bu#er if I can.’ I wanted to make something that truly tastes good.”

Anyone who has tasted a Patric Chocolate bar would say he’s been successful in that goal. McClure founded the company in 2006, releasing just one type of bar in 2007, a micro-batch 70 percent Madagascar

chocolate made with aromatic single-estate cacao. The Patric lineup currently consists of eight bars, with its In-NIB-itable Bar winning

the 2011 Good Food Award for Chocolate last month at a ceremony hosted by Alice Waters in San Francisco.


But the road to great chocolate is long and winding. Before McClure could become one of the country’s first cra! chocolate makers, he had to travel the world, learn the inner workings of turn-of-the-century chocolate-making machinery and, unfortunately, taste a lot of terrible chocolate.

THE MADAGASCAR CONNECTIONAs opposed to a confectioner, who creates sweet treats out of chocolate, McClure is a chocolate maker, creating the chocolate itself from scratch. In order to make chocolate, you have to source cacao (pronounced kuh-cow), the dried and fermented beans from which cocoa bu"er is extracted. And if you want to make really good chocolate, you need really good specialty cacao. Since very few people in the United States were sourcing specialty cacao before McClure started Patric, it wasn’t easy to come by.

“All the large companies buy cacao from very large cacao brokers who do all the transactions,” explains McClure. “So the large companies just say, ‘Here’s what I need,’ and they don’t have to go to the source. The problem with doing it on a small scale is that all the cacao being purchased by these brokers is very low-quality because that’s all large companies really need. What we needed was specialty cacao. And because it’s so good, tastes so amazing and there’s such a small quantity of it, finding [the right] farm in the first place was so incredibly hard. I went to Mexico, Belize and Venezuela and asked around in New York City and San Francisco – places where there were people who I thought might know about chocolate or who have experience with chocolate.”

A!er returning from his fruitless expeditions, McClure finally found some excellent specialty cacao in, of all places, the United States. This cacao, from a family-owned farm in Madagascar, was initially brought to the U.S. by an arm of a large commodities company considering supplying the growing specialty cacao market here. McClure was able to procure a small amount but didn’t have a way to contact the producer to purchase more. In the meantime, he hired a cacao sourcing consultant with many more contacts in the industry and pushed him to broker a deal with the cacao farm back in Madagascar but met a lot of resistance. McClure soon learned that his consultant had been hired by TCHO, a startup dark chocolate manufacturer in San Francisco (CEO Louis Rosse"o is co-founder of Wired magazine). “So he got hired away before I ever got anything out of it,” says McClure. “I thought all was lost.” But finally, the consultant, out of what McClure speculates was a bit of guilt for taking his consulting fees without ever providing him with sources of more cacao, decided at the last minute to hand over all the contact information for the farm in Madagascar.

“And that’s how it happened for the Madagascar cacao. It wasn’t a trip that I made, and all those other trips didn’t lead to anything. I spent so much money on traveling that never turned into anything. But I didn’t know that. I couldn’t have known that.”

IT’S A TOUGH JOB…While sourcing good-quality cacao is a key to making good chocolate, it wasn’t McClure’s only quest. His personal education consisted of three components:

How a Bean Becomes a Bar1. Fermenting and drying. On the farm, cacao is harvested and the beans (technically seeds) are removed from their pod fruits. The beans are packed into crates along with the fruit’s sweet pulp, and the environment’s naturally occurring yeasts begin to ferment the pulp. Once fermentation is complete, about four to eight days, the beans are dried in the sun.

2. Roasting. Next, the chocolate maker receives the cacao, hand-sorts it to remove items such as twigs, stones or double- or triple-beans (fused beans that can cause a negative a!ect on the flavor of the finished product) and roasts it. Unlike co!ee, cacao beans are roasted at lower temperatures, around 200ºF to 275ºF for longer times, approximately 30 minutes per batch.

3. Winnowing. A"er the beans are roasted, they are placed in a machine called a winnower, which removes the shell and leaves behind the nib. Nibs are 100 percent unground chocolate. It has a nu#y texture and does not yet melt in your mouth.

4. Grinding. The nibs are then stone-ground. Frictional heat melts the cocoa bu#er in the nibs and they become a liquid called chocolate liquor (although there is no alcohol present).

5. Refining and conching. The chocolate liquor is then placed in a machine, along with sweetening agents, and is mixed and blended into a smoother texture. It is these steps that ultimately inform the flavor profiles and texture of the finished product.

6. Tempering. This process combines time, temperature and agitation to coerce the cocoa bu#er into a crystalline state. More simply stated, this step makes the chocolate a shiny bar that snaps when you break it apart and melts in your mouth.

8. Molding, cooling and packaging. The tempered chocolate is poured into molds and vibrated to release air bubbles and create perfectly molded bars. Once cooled, the individual bars are then packaged. The packaged bars must be refrigerated for two more days to ensure stability.

tasting every kind of chocolate he could get his hands on; researching all facets of chocolate making, from technique to machinery; and creating his own recipe through mass experimentation.

“I tasted as much chocolate as I could,” says McClure. “I looked at what was being done here, by Schar!en Berger and Gui"ard and other

companies, but then I looked outside the United States, to France and Italy mainly. I bought anything I could find. I kept a database and did tastings every night. I would taste and take notes on texture and

try to figure out, from the li"le that I knew about processing at that time, what the di!erent chocolate makers were doing. I was training

my palate, and so, over time, I was at least able to say, ‘I know what I’m tasting, even if I’m still not sure why I’m tasting it.’ Which led me to learning more about how chocolate is made.”

In the factory o#ce, which is really just a small section of the entry defined by McClure’s computer, some filing cabinets and a cordless phone, are a handful of books. Half are travel guides to the countries and cities he visited in search of cacao, and the rest are old, nondescript tomes from the late 1800s and early 1900s on the chemistry and manufacture of chocolate. “I was intrigued by the amazing machinery being used at the turn of the century. A lot of the machinery available today is very large-scale. It’s also been designed to do things faster and not necessarily be"er. And so I went back [to these books] and said, ‘I’m not going to be able to find these machines ... but I can learn from the way they function how to choose machinery that uses similar principles to make chocolate.’”

With his turn-of-the-century guidebooks in hand, McClure started the long process of formulating his own

chocolate recipe.

“I made a lot of chocolate that I threw away. People would say, ‘Why don’t you give it to me?’ but it really

tasted bad.” Even a!er procuring specialty cacao, McClure did hundreds of test batches. “I wanted to release it and have everyone say, ‘I’ve never tasted chocolate before. This is incredible.’”

WHEN DREAMS BECOME REALITYUnbeknownst to McClure was that the pending launch

of his cra! chocolate company coincided with the birth of four other companies – Amano Artisan Chocolate, Askinosie Chocolate (in Springfiled, Mo.), De Vries Chocolate and Taza Chocolate – all headed by like-minded, passionate entrepreneurs in pursuit of be"er chocolate. Together, they formed a coalition called the Cra! Chocolate Makers of America and started a greater movement toward fine American chocolate.

McClure’s inclination that Americans were craving a be"er chocolate was spot-on. Just a year a!er he released his first bar, Gourmet magazine took note of Patric Chocolate, and over the next nine months so did the L.A. Times, The New Yorker and Food & Wine magazine. In the spring of 2010, Food & Wine named Patric Chocolate a Best New American Chocolate.

“I made my one bar, put it online and sold it to a few local stores because I knew the owners. That first month, when I actually saw sales, I was so excited that people wanted my chocolate. That excitement lasted all the way through Christmas, when December became our best month yet. I thought, ‘The sky’s the limit. It’s just going to keep growing.’ But then January came. January’s not such a great month for chocolate.”

Currently in its fourth year, Patric Chocolate has seen a lot of growth since its first bar. “[As a business owner] you eventually realize that no ma"er how passionate you are about something, you need to do a lot of hard

work you didn’t expect to have to do,” says McClure. The challenge to make a profit at what he loves has pushed him beyond his dream of simply creating a be"er chocolate bar to creating a line of cra!

chocolate products that will elevate the U.S.’s status in the international chocolate industry and challenge

the palates of American chocolate lovers. A task that, for McClure and the few like him, has become all-consuming.

The chocolate business, it seems, can at times be bi"ersweet.

Patric Chocolate is sold all over the country, primarily on the West Coast and in New York City; Columbia, Mo.; and St. Louis, and also through a Swedish distributor. You can purchase Patric Chocolate bars at patric-chocolate.com and locally at The Garden Gate Shop at the Missouri Botanical Garden, Sappington Farmers’ Market, Local Harvest Grocery, The Wine & Cheese Place, Whole Foods Market on

Brentwood Boulevard and Northwest Co#ee Roasting Co.

Explore the savory side of chocolate in this month’s class with chef Matt Borchardt and Alan McClure. Learn to make a chile-cocoa steak rub and an authentic Tuscan

dish enjoyed by Catherine de Medici that consists of nothing but vinegar, salt, sugar, chocolate and wild boar. McClure will lead a tasting of his chocolates and be on hand

to talk cacao throughout the class. Call 314.587.2433 to RVSP for the Feb. 22 event.


When Bill Gebhart Sr. drove through the intersection ofBellefontaine and Chambers roads in the city of BellefontaineNeighbors in 1988, he envisioned it as the future home of his family-owned and -operated market and meat counter. “There were carsand people everywhere,” he says. “It was a busy, thriving area.”

That October he moved Bill’s Market and Meats into an emptyspot, which happened to be a former Schnucks location, in ashopping center at that intersection. The market was an instant hitwith customers, who couldn’t get enough of the quality meats anduniquely personal service upon which Bill Sr. had built his career.What Bill Sr. couldn’t have known, however, was that in a few

WRITTEN BY Brandi Wills AND Barbara E. StefànoPHOTOGRAPHY BY Tuan Lee

A genuineA genui ne

W h e n B i l l G e b h a r t S r. d r ov e t h r o u g h t h e i n t e r s e c t i o n o f

The relationship that has existed between this familymarket and the surrounding neighborhood’s residentsover the past 20-plus years can serve as a model for howbusinesses and customers can work together to bolsterthe future of their shared community.

feastSTL.com JUNE 201156

short years, the economy of this small city in north St.Louis County would collapse as residents followed theboom in new housing to west St. Louis and St. Charlescounties, leaving the Gebharts in a much di!erentsituation than they had expected.

“A lot of our customers [who had moved away] wanted usto move with them,” says Bill Gebhart Jr. “But we still hada great business here. In fact, business was increasing.The customers living in our community were supportingus. And as new residents moved into the area over theyears, they inspired us to diversify our selection and addnew items to the meat counter we hadn’t carried before.”

Bill Sr. says Bill Jr. was instrumental in their decisionto stay and grow in Bellefontaine Neighbors, and he’sgrateful for his son’s insistence. “It’s di!erent for smallbusinesses; they need neighborhood patronage to stay

open,” says Bill Sr. “We support the community by giving them our very best, andthey support us back by being loyal customers. We need each other.”

So what is it about Bill’s Market and Meats that sets it apart? “I truly feel thatBill’s Market is the last local market with personality … that creates a welcomingenvironment,” says Stephanie Parrish, a longtime customer and BellefontaineNeighbors resident. “The focus on fresh-cut meat makes it stand alone. And theystay contemporary with what’s on sale at the larger chains to save you money.But more than that, it just feels wonderful to be in that store. When I walk in, theyknow me. They care about me. He’s just got it right.”

Bill Sr.’s long and impressive career in the meat-cu"ing industry is reflected inthe market’s reputation for top-quality meats. The butcher counter is packedwith well-marbled beef; mouthwatering deli cuts; and enough ribs, chicken andsausage to supply even the most ambitious community barbecue. In fact, manylocal businesses, government o#ces, organizations and area churches rely on themarket when they need to stock up on cold cuts and grilling meats for large picnics.

open,” say s Bill Sr. “We support the community by giv ing them our very best, and

Friends ‘n’

feastSTL.com JUNE 201158

Tried ‘n’T ri ed ‘n’

Also popular are the deli sandwiches, but only regularsknow to ask for the Brown House Special. Made bybutcher Cory Brown, the o!-menu sandwich is piledhigh with Lebanon bologna, ham, roast beef, Provel,le"uce, tomato and onion on a white roll and thentopped with olive oil, mayo and a dash of salt andfreshly ground pepper. “My mom used to make it allthe time, and it was always so good,” Brown says. “Istarted making it for employees. Once the girls [at theregisters] starting bragging about it, the customerswere like, ‘Make me that!’”

The excellent service that’s important to Parrish andso many other customers can be a"ributed only tothe hard work and generous hearts of the Gebhartfamily, all of whom are familiar faces in the store. BillSr., the self-titled “overseer,” keeps a watchful eye onday-to-day operations, while Bill Jr. is a permanentfixture behind the meat counter. Bill Jr.’s wife, Noelle,

came aboard last year, introducing fresh baked goods to the store’s o!erings and helping outwherever needed. Bill Sr.’s daughter, Gina, manages the o#ce. They all work hard to o!er theircustomers as much personal service as they can, from down-to-the-ounce, made-to-order cutsto the much bigger job of wild game processing – they average 200 deer each year.

But their commitment to the community extends far beyond their store’s services. “Therelationship we have [with the customers] is a friendship,” says supervisor Lynne"e Fields, whohas worked for Bill’s for over 11 years and is a resident of Bellefontaine Neighbors. The Gebhartsand their sta! really get to know the customers, from their names and their families to theirfavorite cuts and regular grocery items. “Everyone gets to know us too,” says Fields. “When anyof us see customers around town, it’s always, ‘Hey, you’re one of the Bill’s Market girls!’”

Also popular are the deli sandwiches, but only regulars

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Fin� Dining

heavy metalA number of Mark’s pieces are currently on display at Washington University’s downtown art and living facility, University Lofts.

“Learning to work with metal is one of the hardest things I’ve done,” says artist Mark

Dotzler, as he examines and contemplates the pieces displayed in his studio. This

statement holds a lot of weight when you consider Mark’s past. Born and raised in St. Louis, Mark spent many years in the business field living and working in cities around the world, including San Francisco and Hong Kong. Upon returning to St. Louis, Mark got involved with the City’s redevelopment mission and rehabilitated some of the major historic buildings in the area.

So how did a world traveler and development executive end up as an artist, working in a Washington Avenue studio? “I was simply dissatisfied with the business world,” Mark says. “I wanted to do something good. I wanted to create something that would last, that would make people think about the world around them.” He spent 10 years working

with architects, craftsmen and other artists to hone his skills in high-end

fabrication. Mark found his materials of choice in metal and technological equipment. “The 21st century is the

beginning of the digital revolution,” he says, “and the materials I use impact the lives of people around the world.” From hard drives and silicon wafers to the simplicity of antennas and electrical wire, Mark’s sculptures transform everyday materials into works of art, inspiring his audience to consider their abundance and role in our society. “Art is about playing,” he says, “but it’s about inspiring others, too. These are conceptual pieces that ask you to think about the evolution of art, to look into the future and ask ‘what’s next?’”

Complex and stunning, each piece meshes beauty with brains. “I would describe the art I create as techie art. It has an elegant, cool look with a touch of digital fantasy…however you want to describe it, it’s unlike anything you’re used to seeing.”

www.markdotzler.com

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Wired for Thought

28 www.stlouishomesmag.com

Jack Henry: 75 Years of Style

ABOVE: Jack Henry brought to Kansas City a tradition of high-quality fashion mixed with personalized service that can still be observed on the Plaza today.

BY BRANDI WILLS

The story of Jack Henry’s legacy on the Country Club Plaza is one of sturdy morals and values, an appreciation for fi ne clothing and quality customer service, and it is one that starts and ends with a

few brothers.A man of modest means, Jack Henry grew up in Liberty, Missouri, and

began his career in the clothier business working for a small haberdashery in Liberty Square. Jack was a hard worker, proving himself knowledgeable in the industry of men’s clothing and bringing an unparalleled level of per-sonal service to the customers of the small shop. The shop’s owner showed his appreciation by arranging an appointment for Jack with the owner of Woolf Brothers in Kansas City.

A sharp and impressive man, Jack quickly climbed the professional ladder at Woolf Brothers and was soon recruited by Wilson Bros. to open a location in Kansas City. He was well known among local cloth-iers and well loved by his clientele. So, when Wall Street took a dive and the store closed, Jack felt he had found the perfect place and time to start up his own store. Although it seemed like an ill-fated decision, Jack was smart enough to buy on a falling market and, in 1931, opened his own men’s clothing store.

While Jack Henry was a business-savvy man, luck played its part in the store’s success as well. About the time Jack was concepting his new ven-ture, he was introduced to a budding young developer named J.C. Nichols, who was working to build a commercial district in an area south of down-town Kansas City.

At the same time Nichols and Henry were building a friendship, the country’s fi rst outdoor shopping center was born as the Country Club Plaza. Here, Jack Henry opened his fi rst shop, handling only hats and furnishings, on the north side of 47th Street. It was a prominent location for the store and an exciting time to be a retailer in Kansas City. Jack’s reputation, as well as his client list, was growing and improving exponentially.

Jack Henry had high regard for dressing well, and he instilled this value in his customers, his employees and his family. “My dad always said to me, ‘Judy, people act the way they dress. If you dress well, you will act better than if you put on a pair of jeans,’” recalls Jack’s daughter, Judy Hunt. “I remember when he and J.C. Nichols would walk down the street on their way to lunch, wearing their fi ne suits and hats. Everyone watched them.

125L U X U R Y L I V I N G & F I N E H O M E D E S I G N

They looked wonderful.”But more important to the success of Jack Henry

was the store’s high standard of quality. From the fi ne clothing they sold, to the impeccable service received by customers, to the creative and eye-catching window displays and print ads, Jack Hen-ry spared no expense to create an image that was respected by even the most discriminating tastes. Soon, the 300-square-foot shop on 47th Street could no longer comfortably accommodate Jack’s growing number of customers, so he decided to change locations.

Faithful to Nichols and the success of the Pla-za, Jack Henry moved just a short distance, to a 14,000-square-foot space at 4740 Broadway. The architecturally impressive new home of Jack Hen-ry combined spaciousness with intimacy, touting broad archways and six individual bays for each of the main departments: hats, shoes, suits, sports-wear, formal wear and luggage.

This beautiful new building was the perfect set-ting for the fi ne clothing sold at Jack Henry. Jack recognized the importance of quality materials, pristine tailoring and custom-fi t service. Every man that entered Jack Henry was treated as though he was the most important man in Kansas City and as though he was there to make the most important decision of the day.

“Dad had the reputation of being so fair and kind and considerate to everyone he came across that an associate of his, in the ‘40s, gave him a

ABOVE: Photo from The Independent, September

13, 1947. Pictured are (left to right) E.M. Barnard,

president of the Country Club Plaza Association,

Jack Henry and J.C. Nichols.

126 K C M A G A Z I N E

gift,” remembers Jack Henry, Jr. “It was a brass ruler, real brass so it was pretty heavy, and the in-scription read ‘To Jack Henry—A Man Who Lives By The Golden Rule.’ And that philosophy sums up my dad perfectly. His approach to his fellow man was based on the Golden Rule, and he was extremely considerate of everyone.”

That philosophy resonated with everyone who worked for Jack, and the store’s reputation for sterling customer service was a testament to that. Owner of a successful advertising and public rela-tions fi rm, Rick Hughey, recently recalled stories of the legendary “Jack Henry service.” His wife’s parents, Morrie and Helen Fogel were frequent patrons of Jack Henry, and Morrie would always turn to Jack for emergency alterations. Hughey retells, “When Morrie and Helen arrived at the

store in the pouring rain, Jack dashed out to greet them with umbrella in hand.”

That unparalleled commitment to service car-ried through to the days when Hughey started his career as a copywriter for Jack Henry in the ‘70s and ‘80s. He recalls, “Jack Henry taught me that quality was the attention you give to detail, the way you treated people, the honor of your commit-ment, the way you lived your life.”

And like most who spent a signifi cant amount of time in the store, Hughey was affected by those ideals that defi ned Jack Henry. “When I was hired, I had no idea that I was being adopted into a fam-

“My dad always said

to me, ‘Judy, people

act the way they dress.

If you dress well,

you will act better than

if you put on a

pair of jeans.’”


ily,” he says. “In my new family that included aunts and uncles, great aunts and uncles, siblings and cousins, I learned lessons of the workplace and of life.”

Jack Henry set a standard in Kansas City for men’s fashion, as well as for retailers and entre-preneurs in the area. This standard was recog-nized nationally, and in the late 1960s Jack sold the Broadway store to his largest supplier, Hart Schaffner Marks, a clothing manufacturer. The new shopping trend sweeping the nation was in closed regional shopping centers, and this parent company had huge plans for expanding the store into other cities.

Over time, Jack Henry stores took many forms, including becoming a commonly found area mall retailer and an affi liation with Graham & Gunn in Wichita and Omaha. Without the emphasis on high-quality clothing and personalized services that had established the reputation of Jack Henry, the store just couldn’t keep up with increasing competition.

Luckily, however, a group of brothers whose fa-ther had once worked for Jack Henry refused to let the legend die, and in 1995 the fl agship store on the Plaza was saved from bankruptcy. The Arvanita-kis brothers already owned an area men’s clothing store, Peter’s Clothiers, named after their father, in Overland Park.

Peter Arvanitakis fi rst ran a small men’s cloth-ing store in Raytown where, much like Jack Henry, he set a standard for fi ne clothing and personal-ized attention. Peter eventually worked with Jack Henry in his Plaza store as a tailor. The two men had a lot in common when it came to standards and philosophies for running a business, and both men inspired a sense of pride in dressing well and maintaining client relations.

At the time of the sale, George Arvanitakis stated, “The Jack Henry store is an institution. We want to bring to it the entrepreneurial spirit that it needs. Unfortunately, it was part of a corporation that just wasn’t sensitive to the grand old institu-tion that it is.”

Hence, the Arvanitakis brothers have strived to reclaim the essence that once elevated the name of Jack Henry to national acclaim. “Part of being in a family business is doing everything in the store,


from gift wrapping to buying in Europe to mak-ing sure a customer’s trousers are properly pressed before he leaves the store,” says Spiro Arvanitakis. “Our target customer is the man who values ser-vice and wants to look his best.”

According to George, they provide this for their customers by having the best tailor shop in the city. As was taught to him by Jack Henry, their father Peter instilled in the Arvanitakis brothers the value of making sure each customer knows he is the cen-

ter of the universe for their business.“I feel very proud that we have taken Jack

Henry, a store that’s been a part of Kansas City for a long time, and made it more vibrant, a suc-cess that continues to grow,” says Jerry Arvani-takis. “We are glad to be able to extend this store into future generations.”

As Jack Henry prepares to celebrate its 75thyear on the Country Club Plaza, you can learn more about its history and hear from many more life-long patrons and members of the Jack Henry family in a beautiful, hardbound coffee table book, published by Anthem Media. The book will be available at the Jack Henry store and at local book-stores in 2006. ■

Luck also played a

part in the store’s

success. About

the time Jack

was concepting his

new venture, he

was introduced to

developer J.C. Nichols.


1. What word do you love the sound of?Sacrifice.

2. What CD or book are you currently enjoying?The book is Season of Life by Jeffrey Marks and the CD is Bruce

Springsteen’s Greatest Hits.

3. “There ought to be a law ...”Against slow drivers in the left lane.

4. What is your guilty pleasure?Anything sweet.

5. If you had to leave Kansas City forever, where and what would your last meal be?

A filet at Capital Grill.

6. Who has most influenced your life?My parents.

7. If all your loved ones were safe, what one object would you rescue from your burning home?

My children’s photo albums.

8. What advice would you give someone who wants to follow in your footsteps?

Reevaluate, and if you come to the same conclusion, know that being the

coach at Kansas is not a 40-hour a week job. Though I love what I do, it is a

24-hour a day, seven day a week job because every conversation you have and

the thought of everybody who comes in contact with you is about your job.

9. What is your motto?Spin a negative into a positive.

10. Where would you go on a fantasy vacation? A Caribbean Island with no cell phone access, on a golf course with my

family and four of my best buddies. I would golf all day with my buddies and

spend the evenings with my family.

Bill Self

O ne of the most impressive young coaches in college

basketball today, Bill Self has led two successful

seasons as head coach at the University of Kansas.

Named eighth head coach in Kansas basketball history on

April 21, 2003, he has since wowed Jayhawk fans with his

abilities as a coach, and the community with his support

and involvement. Self’s debut season at Kansas saw 24 wins,

tying him with former coach Dick Harp for the most wins

by a first-year KU coach. His second season showcased Self’s

intuitive recruiting abilities. He and his wife Cindy have two

children: daughter Lauren and son Tyler.

Ahead of the Game


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