Spec Keene
Keene in 1928
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| Sport(s) | Football, basketball, baseball |
|---|---|
| Biographical details | |
| Born | July 1, 1894 |
| Died | August 24, 1977 (aged 83) Corvallis, Oregon |
| Playing career | |
| Baseball | |
| c. 1920 | Oregon State |
| Position(s) | Pitcher |
| Coaching career (HC unless noted) | |
| Football | |
| 1926–1942 | Willamette |
| Basketball | |
| 1926–1937 | Willamette |
| 1942–1943 | Willamette |
| Administrative career (AD unless noted) | |
| 1947–1964 | Oregon State |
| Head coaching record | |
| Overall | 84–51–6 (football) 159–100 (basketball) |
| Accomplishments and honors | |
| Championships | |
| Football 9 Northwest Conference (1929, 1934–1938, 1940–1942) Basketball 7 Northwest Conference (1927, 1929–1931, 1933, 1937, 1943) |
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Roy S. "Spec" Keene (July 1, 1894 – August 24, 1977) was a football, baseball, and basketball coach at Willamette University and an athletic director at Oregon State University.
Keene graduated from Oregon State University in 1921, where he was a pitcher on the baseball team, and was chosen as team captain in his junior year.
After graduating from Oregon State, Keene signed on with Willamette University's athletic department, where he coached three sports: football for 17 years, baseball for 16 years, and basketball for 11 years. Combined, Keene's teams won or shared 19 Northwest Conference championships, and in the 1929–30 academic year, each of his three teams were undefeated and won conference championships. Keene is considered the "father of Willamette athletics" and was a charter member of the University's Athletic Hall of Fame in 1991.
On December 6, 1941, Keene's Willamette football team was in Honolulu, Hawaii, where they lost a game to Hawaii, 20–6. The following day, the players and fans had intended to do some sightseeing around Hawaii, but instead, were witness to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. The players, now stranded in Hawaii, were enlisted to string barbed wire on Waikiki Beach and were given rifles and assigned to protect the beach and later the hills above Honolulu. Keene, along with future Oregon governor Douglas McKay, who had traveled with the football team, finally arranged passage home for the players on December 19 on an overloaded luxury liner, the SS President Coolidge. The team arrived in San Francisco on Christmas Day after taking a circuitous route to avoid Japanese submarines. In 1997, the entire team was inducted into Willamette's Athletic Hall of Fame.
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