Prolific Columbus high school basketball player dies at 69 years old
Dan Kirkland, considered by some observers to be the best high school basketball player in local history, died Tuesday while receiving care from his family and Columbus Hospice, according to Colonial Funeral Home.
He was 69.
According to his obituary, Kirkland was a Parade All-American basketball player at Columbus High School, where he graduated in 1969. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Orlando Sentinel honored him as their Player of the Year in the sport.
The Ledger-Enquirer’s story about him in 2010, when he was inducted into the Chattahoochee Valley Sports Hall of Fame, reported Kirkland scored 2,236 points in 104 games as a four-year starter at Columbus High, becoming the Bi-City’s all-time leading scorer and a Ledger-Enquirer All-Bi-City selection as a basketball and baseball player.
In the run-and-gun style used by Columbus coach Joe Sparks, he had freedom to shoot when he wanted. Kirkland averaged 16.4 points per game as a sophomore, 24.9 as a junior and 33 as a senior — including 61 in one game.
Speedy Gilstrap, one of Kirkland’s teammates at Columbus, spent a combined 17 years as a basketball coach at Brookstone School and Spencer High School after graduating from Alabama as a college tennis star. Gilstrap said Kirkland’s feats were still unparalleled on local basketball courts.
“For 44 years I’ve been involved in Columbus and Bi-City basketball, and I’ve been fortunate enough to coach three Ledger-Enquirer All-Bi-City Players of the Year,” Gilstrap told the L-E in that 2010 story. “But I’ve never seen anyone who could run, jump and rebound in those 44 years like Dan could. He just ate up baskets. There’s never been another male basketball player whose done what he could do around here.”
Kirkland was a 6-foot-4, 190-pound forward at Auburn University, where he averaged 23 points per game for the freshman team and was named a freshman All-American. But after Kirkland tore a ligament in his left knee that season and had surgery, he never was as prolific a scorer on the basketball court again.
“Dan Kirkland could have gone to any college he wanted to,” former Enquirer sports editor (1973-77) Sam Heys told the L-E in an email Thursday. “He was even recruited by UCLA, which was in the midst of winning seven straight NCAA titles at that time.”
Heys, now an author living in Atlanta, recalled an anecdote about Kirkland that shows his character was as impressive as his athleticism.
“He told me a few years ago that he took a recruiting trip to Kentucky,” Heys said, “but once he saw how Adolph Rupp (Kentucky’s legendary coach) talked to the woman serving them breakfast, he decided he was not going to Kentucky.”
Heys interviewed Kirkland for his 2019 book “Remember Henry Harris: Lost Icon of a Revolution.” Harris was the first Black student athlete at Auburn, and Kirkland was a teammate.
In an earlier interview, in the 1970s, Kirkland shared with Heys his view about sports helping racial integration.
“Dan’s career came at a special time in local high school athletics,” Heys said. “Historically white high schools were playing historically black high schools for the first time, and huge crowds would turn out for games. Carver had 7-foot Fessor Leonard, and Columbus High had Dan Kirkland, and the auditorium would be packed. . . . You could tell from the joy he had in describing those games and that era, that they were some of his greatest memories.
“It turned out that high school sports helped ease racial tensions and prove that blacks and whites could get along, not just in Columbus but throughout the South.”
After graduating from Auburn in 1974, Kirkland worked as an assistant pro at Bull Creek Golf Course in Columbus. Then he taught at River Road Elementary School and coached basketball and baseball at Chavala High School (now Russell County High School) and Glenwood School in Smiths Station.
Kirkland also coached his children’s teams in YMCA basketball and Dixie Youth baseball. Since 1986, he was a full-time cattleman and farmer in Seale.
Due to coronavirus pandemic precautions, the funeral will be private.
This story was originally published July 9, 2020 at 11:53 AM.
