Bill Snyder ’59, head football coach at Kansas State University in Manhattan, was honored with the Missouri Western Alumni Association Distinguished Alumni Award at the student-athlete awards banquet last spring.

Snyder, a native of St. Joseph, attended St. Joseph Junior College and earned his bachelor of arts degree from William Jewell College in Liberty, Mo. in 1963, where he was a three-year letter-winner as a defensive back.  He began his full-time coaching career in 1964 as an assistant at Indio High School in California and earned his master’s from Eastern New Mexico University in 1965.

In 1974, Snyder became the offensive coordinator and head swimming coach at Austin College in Sherman, Texas. He joined the University of North Texas staff in 1976 and helped author an impressive turnaround with a three-year record of 26-7. He left UNT for the Univeristy of Iowa in 1979, where he served as offensive coordinator.

Snyder became head coach at Kansas State in 1989 and the team went 1-10 that first season. He has since created a 177-80-1 record with 15 bowl games. He led Kansas State to 11 straight bowl games between the 1993 and 2003 seasons, making the university one of only seven programs in the nation to appear in the postseason every year during that stretch.

He left Kansas State in 2005 and returned in November 2008.

While coaching at Kansas State, he has earned eight national Coach of the Year Awards and  seven Conference Coach of the Year Awards, and is ranked 12th nationally in wins among active coaches. He has coached nine Consensus First-team All-American selections, 79 First-Team All- Conference selections and 108 First-team Academic All-conference selections.“I’ve known Bill Snyder nearly all my life,” said Charlie Burri ’55, former Missouri Western athletic director who introduced Snyder at the banquet.  “As far as native sons go, I think we can place him on the top of the list.”

Distinguished Alumni Award recipients are normally honored at Homecoming, but Snyder was unable to attend because of his game schedule in the fall.