On Saturday, December 6, 2025, the family, friends, and greater
Whitewater community will gather to celebrate and memorialize Ken
Nehring, a good man and a life well lived. Coach Nehring was a teacher by
trade but a basketball coach at heart, and he made a lasting impact on
countless young men as a coach, mentor, and friend.

For the past five decades, basketball has been my vocation as both a
player and a coach. Over those many years, I have had the privilege of
playing for and working alongside some truly outstanding coaches, and
Coach Nehring stands at the very top of that list. With time, I have come to
appreciate even more the way he taught the game with discipline,
enthusiasm, empathy, and class. Athletics can sometimes become
transactional, and when that happens, the transformative life lessons the
game can teach are diminished. Coach was never transactional, and he
never compromised with what mattered.

Coach, thank you for teaching us the skills of the game and, more
importantly, instilling in us the values of discipline, perseverance, and
teamwork. Your mentorship helped us become better players, but even
more so, better men. Your countless acts of kindness, many of which
were never publicly acknowledged, will never be forgotten.

Coach Nehring was inducted into the UW-Platteville Hall of Fame as a
player and into the Wisconsin Basketball Coaches Association Hall of
Fame as a coach. For many of us, he was far more than a Hall-of-Famer.
He was a role model and a friend. Each time I returned to Whitewater, I
made a point of stopping by to visit with Coach. Those conversations and
that fellowship were always a blessing. Future trips home will not be the
same without him, but the memories will last a lifetime.

Coach, thank you for believing in us, inspiring us, and leaving a profound
and lasting impact on our lives.

Michael Murphy
Whitewater Whippet, Class of 1980