By RICH FISHER
Contributing Editor
To the Christian Brothers Academy community and beyond, Dan Keane will always be remembered as a good man who loved his work as an educator and a sports coach.
Mr. Keane, who had retired from the Lincroft school in 2016 after nearly 40 years of service as a history teacher and coach of soccer and tennis, died Jan. 18 in St. Peter Hospital, New Brunswick. He was 76.
Funeral services were held in the school with visitation taking place Jan. 23 and a Mass of Christian Burial celebrated Jan. 24.
“I don’t think he’ll be remembered for his coaching strategies or techniques but he’ll be remembered as the person that a coach should be,” Tom Mulligan, the Lincroft school’s current soccer coach, said of Mr. Keane.
“He was supportive, he was always in your corner. He never focused too much on the wins and losses. He focused more on the kids’ well-being,” Mulligan continued. “He wasn’t too serious about anything in life. For that, he was respected. In this world we live in today, he was ahead of his time. He put things in perspective, and he enjoyed being around the kids. He called them young people and young men that he surrounded himself with.”
Mr. Keane was born in Kearny and raised in North Arlington. He graduated from Queen of Peace High School and furthered his studies at Seton Hall University, South Orange, and Montclair State University, Montclair. His teaching career began at Paramus Catholic High School, Paramus, before moving to CBA as a history teacher and coach in 1977. Over the next 38 years his tennis teams won 669 matches and 17 NJSIAA Non-Public A state championships – including seven straight from 1980-86 and eight straight from 1988-95. In soccer, his teams won 545 games, five Non-Public A state crowns and nine Shore Conference Tournament titles.
Mulligan recalled that he played for Keane at CBA from 1979-82 (his son also played for Keane). He returned as a Colts assistant in 1992 and in 2016 inherited the head coaching job from his mentor. Keane touched thousands of lives, including Mulligan’s, who termed the coach as “somewhat of a character,” who had “a big personality.”
In discussing Keane’s influence on him, Mulligan said, “You try to grab something from his positive demeanor. Your perspective is that they are just young adults, and you’re trying to help them experience their teenage years in a positive way.
“Everything other than the sport itself is what coach was all about,” Mulligan continued. “I’ve done this for over 30 years, and it takes a career for coaches to figure out those connections you make with people that are everlasting. Coach made connections with so many people and they’ll have those memories forever.”
Mulligan noted that when it came to his Catholic faith, Keane took the LaSallian education seriously.
“He always believed in it,” Mulligan said. “He would always comment at faculty meetings that he tried to [emulate] everything that St. John Baptist De La Salle tried to exemplify going way back to the founding of the Christian Brothers.
“One of the mottos of St. John Baptist De La Salle is to touch the hearts and minds of the student,” Mulligan said, and “Dan Keane definitely touched the mind of everybody he came in contact with.”
Noting that Mr. Keane had received a Catholic education and saw to it that his children did as well, Mulligan added that Mr. Keane “was a Catholic school guy through and through.
“He believed in Catholic education. He carried out the mission of LaSalle as well as any teacher at a LaSallian school,” Mulligan said.
Keane’s memory is honored at CBA in several ways, as the soccer field is named after him, as is the “Keane Cup” that is awarded to the winner of the annual alumni soccer game. He was also a CBA Hall of Fame inductee.
And while he didn’t get his name in the paper for teaching as much as he did for coaching, being a classroom educator was his truest gift.
“The one comment I get from every person I talk to is that he was a nice man,” Mulligan pointed out. “He was a good friend to me and a true gentleman. If we had more Dan Keanes in the world there would be a lot less problems.”
Mr. Keane is survived by his wife, Barbara Keane; two children, Daniel J. Keane Jr. and Anne (Todd) Gallagher, and three grandchildren.
Memorial contributions may be made to Christian Brothers Academy, https://give.cbalincroftnj.org/campaigns/coachdankeane/give/steD-1.
Memorial contributions may be made to Christian Brothers Academy, https://give.cbalincroftnj.org/campaigns/coachdankeane/give/steD-1
Keane returned to the CBA campus for a ceremony in which the soccer field was dedicated in his name. Larry Levanti photo