Go Roos sympathies go out today to the family of Ken Krause (AC ’63), who passed this week. Ken Krause was the father of Roos Kevin Krause and Kellye Krause Daniel. Kellye was a little sister of my fraternity, a group which included a lot of baseball players. Kevin, recently inducted into the AC Hall of Honor for baseball, might as well have been an unofficial member of my fraternity.
Back in the 1990s, we would sometimes talk nostalgically about AC’s past with Bob Mason, including the 1981 National Championship game. Kevin mentioned at the time that he was in attendance as an 11-year-old that cold day in 1981. We were jealous he was there, but for a long time did not know why. Today we know. Because his AC legend of a Dad took him.
Ken Krause played AC football from 1959 to 1962, and he did a little bit of everything. He was a quarterback. But in one game he was also the leading rusher for the Roos. In an era when players were called upon to go both ways, Krause played defense as well as offense. One of those defensive tackles was captured in a photo at Jerry Apple stadium.
And Krause did even more than offense and defense. He is also the last Roo to ever perform the lost football art of “drop kicking.” From “100 Years, 100 Yards, the story of Austin College Football:”
“In a game that [AC Coach] Floyd Gass said, ‘we had no business playing those folks,’ Southwestern Louisiana overpowered the Kangaroos 38-12. In the last period, after the second AC touchdown, Gass knew they were whipped and, just for fun, gave Ken Krause permission to drop kick the kickoff. Krause had been fooling around with drop kicking in practice for weeks.”
Krause spent the rest of the 1962 season drop kicking extra points; no Roo has attempted a drop kick since.
Condolences to the entire family, Kellye & Kevin. I’m grateful I got to meet Dad at Kevin’s AC Hall of Honor induction. I know he will be missed by many Roos.
In 2006, Doug Flutie of the New England Patriots successfully converted a drop kick extra point in his last professional game. No drop kick had been converted in the NFL since 1941. I’ve included the video of Flutie’s kick in the comments as a tribute to Ken Krause, the patriarch of a great Roo family.
