Former Belleville West coach David Shannahan remembered as relentless motivator

Longtime metro-east high school basketball and golf coach David Shannahan died Sunday at the age of 91.

Shannahan helped found the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association in 1970 and was inducted into its Hall of Fame in 1990.

He received the St. Louis Sports Hall of Fame’s Metro Legends award in 2018 for achieving more than 500 wins, seven regional championships and one sectional championship in his 40-year coaching career. He had only three losing seasons in his first 29 years as a basketball coach, according to the Hall of Fame record.

Roger Mueller was Shannahan’s successor as head coach at Belleville West High School and served as his assistant coach for six years. Mueller said the Shannahan’s greatest strength was motivating his team — and his fellow coaches — to succeed.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a coach that could get players to play harder than he did,” Mueller said. “Momentarily, they might not have been real happy about it. But I think in the end, they realized how much he believed in them and that they could do more than they might have realized themselves. He was really good at getting people to perform at their highest level.”

Mueller said Shannahan carried on a legacy of high-performing Belleville West basketball coaches who were always a call away when the next coach needed help.

“There was one thing you could always count on, and that was Dave,” Mueller said. “He pursued everything with great intensity and enthusiasm, and that intensity and enthusiasm rubbed off on the people around him.”

Shannahan’s longest-running coaching position was at Belleville Area College, now known as Southwestern Illinois College, where he taught physics and led the basketball team to more than a hundred victories.

Shannahan played on the first basketball team at his high school in Branson, Missouri, before becoming a multi-sport athlete at Drury University in Springfield, Missouri. Shannahan received his master’s degree in physics from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

After graduating with a bachelor’s degree, Shannahan coached at schools in Missouri and Nebraska for two years before becoming a coach in Johnston City, Illinois, near Carbondale.

After a five-year stint in Johnston City, he taught physics and coached basketball at Sparta, Belleville West, O’Fallon Township and Waterloo high schools.

Shannahan’s Belleville West teams went 110-79 over seven seasons.

Bill Schmidt was an athletic director and basketball coach at Belleville West after Shannahan left the school. Schmidt also played on the freshman and junior varsity basketball teams at Belleville West during Shannahan’s tenure and later played for him at Belleville Area College.

Schmidt said he might not have stayed in basketball as long as he did without the coach’s influence.

“I heard that I was probably going to get cut as a sophomore basketball player, but Dave, as the head coach, would not let that happen.,” Schmidt said. “He said, ‘We’re going to let the kid mature and see what he becomes,’ and my whole life probably would have been changed if Dave hadn’t done that.”

Schmidt said he leaned on Shannahan’s guidance when he became head coach at Belleville West.

“He was a very excellent mentor my entire career,” Schmidt said. “In this area, Dave Shannahan’s name is one that you’ll hear quite frequently and stands out as being somebody who is well-respected.”

Joe Muniz is the current athletic director at Belleville West High School and served as head coach of the school’s basketball team when it won its first state championship in 2018.

Muniz said one of most prized memories of his athletic career was seeing the five most recent Belleville West head basketball coaches, including Shannahan, in the same room when the team won its first state title.

“To only have five coaches since the ‘50s is remarkable,” Muniz said. “The Belleville West coaches were exceptional people, and were serious about teaching, and Dave was that kind of guy. They were educators first and coaches second.”

Shannahan was an avid golfer in his free time and led the Belleville West golf team to three state championships and one second-place finish. The St. Louis Sports Hall of Fame reported he and his son, Larry, won two Father-Son District Golf Championships in the 1980s.

Muniz said Shannahan was instrumental in establishing the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association’s annual golf tournament in Southern Illinois.

He is survived by his wife, Sandra, two siblings, three children, three stepchildren, eight grandchildren, four stepgrandchildren, and eight great grandchildren.