Delaware Park: The Home of Many Legendary Buffalo Basketball Battles

“There were battles at Delaware Park. If you lost, you might as well go home because you may not get back on the court – that’s how Delaware used to be!”

The Meeting Place for Basketball Players in Buffalo

This essay is another promotional essay for my book project entitled, The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story, for which there are two parts. I created a page for the book and for the numerous promotional pieces I created surrounding it. I interviewed 43 players and coaches from Section VI and Europe for this project. My research revealed several interesting facts. The 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team is one of the major bases for my story. The team went on a magical run winning our city league championship, the Yale Cup with a 13-0 record my freshman year. They then won the Section VI Class B sectional, coming within one game of berth in the State Final Four in Glens Falls where the elite teams gathered every year. It was a big deal from my vantage point at that time, and I dreamt of doing what they did.

My story follows my up and down four-year basketball journey at Hutch-Tech High School. It further chronicles the seasons of other players and teams in my area. It discusses where players learned to play the game around the city of Buffalo at times. Delaware Park was a basketball hub that most players in Buffalo had in common in terms of playing the game.

Basketball players who seriously played the game in Buffalo will mention Delaware Park if you talk to them. I didn’t play in Delaware Park in its glory days though I mention the once great basketball battle ground in my story and played a little bit there. Some of the players I interviewed for The Engineers did, however. I reflect on Delaware Park and its legendary basketball battles in this promotional essay.

My First Basketball Experiences at Delaware Park

I did not become familiar with the sacred basketball courts of Delaware Park the way the great basketball players who emerged from Buffalo did. It was, for the most part, out of necessity. There was a stretch just before middle school when my pediatrician shared that I would become obese if my eating wasn’t controlled. I further needed to increase my exercise. My mother subsequently made me go to Delaware Park with her on Saturday mornings to get some exercise. I took my basketball to the courts, which were typically empty in the early morning hours while she ran around the park.

“DO IT AGAIN!” An older black man shouted out to me from the road one cold and wet Western New York Saturday morning. He wore a sweat suit and glasses. He saw me make a basket. I took a couple of dribbles towards the key and then launched up a two-handed shot which banked off the metal backboard and into the netless basket. The ball went through the basket by pure luck.

I didn’t understand fundamentally how to shoot the ball with consistently. I took the man’s challenge though and tried doing it again the exact same way. The ball came close to going in for me but rimmed out. It hit the backboard and rim and ricocheted off the basket. I looked back at the man who smiled and kept walking. This is my first memory of those sacred basketball courts. My basketball journey started formally (or informally) shortly afterwards at the nearby Campus West/College Learning Laboratory as a player-manager. You can read my essay about that at this link entitled, A Player-Manager.

In the Heart of the City

Delaware Park is literally in the heart of the city of Buffalo for those of you who don’t know. I don’t know the exact dimensions of our city. The park is smack dab in the center of it though, touching all sides—north, south, east and west. You can see if you look at a map. It is surrounded by the 198 Scajaquada Expressway which takes you to the Niagara River on the west side in one direction. The expressway takes you to downtown Buffalo and to the airport in the opposite direction. The park is boxed in by Parkside Avenue, West Amherst Street and Delaware Avenue, in terms of the main thoroughfares. It was not until learning about the 50 states in the Union that I knew that Delaware was actually a state.

The beautiful and hilly park consists of a two-lane track forming a circle around baseball diamonds, a golf course and lots of greenery. The arboreal foliage makes it a thing of beauty for runners, walkers, bike riders and rollerbladers alike, especially in the pleasant weather months. Go at any time and you will see people out and about of all ethnicities and age groups. You see The Buffalo Zoo and actual real-life Buffalo minding their business as visitors, inside and outside of the zoo, stop and peer at them in amazement near the East Amherst entrance.

Delaware Park was one of our many natural escapes during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Walking through the park near the 198 Expressway on my visits home, I smelled a combination of outdoor aromas. They were distinctly those of Western New York and reminded me of years past.

Sacred Basketball Battlegrounds

The basketball courts lay on the eastern side of the park on Parkside Avenue. There are six to eight of them each with two baskets. They are nestled into a forest-like patch of trees as the road of the park ascends upwards towards the 198 Expressway. Think about a combination of nature, pavement, and steel when you think about Delaware Park. The steel was perhaps created in the now closed, but one-time famous, steel plants south of downtown Buffalo.

The pavement on Delaware Park’s basketball courts was and is to this day a mixture of red and green. The outside of the courts and the free throw keys are green and the courts themselves are all red. Many parts of the courts are cracked and warped due to the four seasons of the region. Water pools in certain areas as described when it rains.

The backboards are made from a glass-like material with ‘breakaway’ rims today. The backboards were made of steel with holes in them with standard rims in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The ball made a distinct crashing noise when it hit those backboards. I think the city put nets up in the late spring-early summer. They’d get torn up to the point where there weren’t any eventually. They hung from the rims by a single thread by the time the fall months arrived. I think the nets being ripped and torn by the end of the summer was indicative of the number of games being played there daily.

Legendary Basketball Battles

“There were battles at Delaware Park. If you lost, you might as well go home because you may not get back on the court – that’s how Delaware used to be,” said Edmond Harris, a star player at Riverside High School in the 1990s. I remember playing against him on one of my trips to the park between my sophomore and junior years. A call was made by someone which he didn’t like. Ed didn’t give the ball back to us to let us resume play until it was overturned. He was ultra competitive.

I knew who Ed was when he showed up to the park because the Riverside Frontiersman won the Yale Cup with a record of 11-2 in my sophomore year on the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team. Their Yale Cup league-clinching victory was a heartbreaking loss for us. They won the Class C sectional that year. Curtis Brooks was one of the key players on the 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team described above. He said the same thing about the games at Delaware Park. You did not get back on the court if you lost.

I didn’t know those Delaware Park basketball courts were battle grounds for basketball going into middle school. Players from all the surrounding neighborhoods (and the suburbs) gathered there and played for hours and hours. They built their reputations and sharpened their skills. You would not get back on the courts any time soon once again, as legions of players and teams lined up for the next game.

Older and Younger Players

“I like playing with the older men at Delaware Park,” said one of my teammates at Hutch-Tech. It was Earl Holmes of the Class of 1995. He enjoyed physical play which he probably learned there often stating, “If you’re not fouling anybody, then you are not playing any defense!” I played more at the parks in my neighborhood and at the William-Emslie YMCA with kids my own age. I was more comfortable with that, though I should have pushed myself into the other basketball circles and more at Delaware Park.

Players played there day after day, sharpening their skills and learning to compete. The basketball played there was very physical as there were many grown men competing there. They used all kinds of tricks that you might not learn in an organized basketball program like ours at Hutch-Tech, or at a teaching camp like the Ken Jones Basketball Camp. I did not understand that the younger boys who consistently played with the men improved their games simply by acclimating themselves to the contact, physicality, and speed of those games. For those who played organized basketball, the time they spent playing at venues like Delaware Park gave them an advantage in the winter months indoors in the organized high school games.

Where Legends Played

“In terms of Laettner, I got to see him at Delaware Park. So you see this big white boy playing with us. He pushed the point and did everything. I was like, ‘Wow! Who is this guy? Oh, that’s Christian Laettner and he plays for Nichols.’” Keith Hearon was one of my teammates from Hutch-Tech High School. He reflected on seeing the future Duke University star before he became a star at the Delaware Park basketball courts. Laettner was from the Town of Angola just south of the City of Buffalo for those unaware. He attended the Nichols School near Delaware Park. He played at multiple venues in the city and sharpened his game before going off to Durham, NC.

“There was talk about Cliff Robinson. My stepmom was friends with him, and I still remember him pulling up in his black sports car, cheesing ear to ear. We went to Delaware Park and played a couple of games there. I couldn’t believe that I was playing with the caliber of a player like Cliff Robinson, a legend in Buffalo.” Ryan Cochrane was a star point guard at Cardinal O’ Hara High School. He reflected on getting to play with Cliff Robinson at Delaware Park. The late Cliff Robinson played basketball at Riverside High School in the 1980s before helping to put the men’s basketball program at the University of Connecticut on the map. He was drafted into the NBA in 1989 where he played 18 seasons with multiple teams.

Another important aspect of Delaware Park was that the stars would sometimes show up and play there. Note that I’m referring to the era after the Buffalo Braves moved to Los Angeles to become the Clippers. Buffalo had a more vibrant basketball scene overall at that time than the one I experienced in the late 1980s and early 1990s. If you hung out at those Delaware Park basketball courts enough, or you knew to do so, chances are you would see players like Christian Laettner, Cliff Robinson, Trevor Ruffin and others. It was the basketball Mecca in the city and a proving ground. You were likewise much better off if you played there regularly than the players who didn’t.

It Wasn’t the Rucker but Competition was Fierce

“It wasn’t the Rucker, but there was competition down there. If you didn’t have any confidence in your game, you really didn’t get out there and play. As a matter of fact, I didn’t play down there much, until the reputation was gone.” My Uncle Tony shared his Delaware Park experiences with me when I interviewed him. I discussed how my uncle played at Burgard High School in the 1960s in my Yale Cup piece. He and his peers knew a different version of Buffalo basketball than me and my peers did.

“Back in the day? No. You didn’t get out there unless you could hoop. It watered down the competition for a while when they built all those other courts and remodeled the park,” Uncle Tony continued. “Yes, there was just one court down there at first. But I’ll also never forget when the professionals came down there!”

Buffalo’s Other Basketball Battlegrounds

Delaware Park, the Perry Projects and the Langfield Projects. The Lanigan Field House. The Perry Projects have been there for years, but the Lanigan Field House, it was indoors, so we played there in the wintertime,” Uncle Tony said. “Also, when the John F. Kennedy Center was first built on Clinton, that was a great indoor place for ball players. It was new when I was coming up, but not when you were coming up.”

I thought of writing this promotional essay on Delaware Park somewhat at the last minute. Those sacred basketball courts on Parkside Avenue deserved an essay dedicated to them. I would’ve played there more if I could go back and do it all over again. The great basketball players traveled all around their cities (and to other cities) to find the best competition and observe other players in most metropolitan eras.

The Masten Boys’ Club

“There’s nothing like that now, that Boys Club over there (the Masten Boys Club). There was someone over there who I think had a key. They could keep that gym open for invited players until midnight if they wanted to. It collected all the best players and they would be there playing pickup games,” said former Riverside High School Head Coach Bill Russell.

We discussed how places like the Masten Boys Club were training grounds for basketball phenoms like Buffalo Traditional’s Jason Rowe and Damien Foster. The people in those basketball circles knew about them before they got to Buffalo Traditional. They burst on the scene surprising everyone else, myself included. “There are no more places like that. That doesn’t exist anymore.”

Other Training Grounds

There were other pockets and crevices in Buffalo where the great players trained. Jason Rowe and Damien Foster shared that they spent a lot of time sharpening their skills at the Masten Boys Club in my interviews with them. They played with a lineup of elite older players there who were willing to pass on what they knew to the young upstarts. There were other training guards though.

Ryan Cochrane embarked on a magical championship basketball run at Cardinal O’ Hara High School in 1994. I shared that he learned a lot about playing the game from Coach Dean in the Central Park neighborhood. There were also church leagues, community centers, and other parks around the city of Buffalo. The players in nearby Niagara Falls trained at their local community centers, YMCAs, Boys and Girls Clubs in the “Biddie Leagues”. The suburban kids played in their locales as well. Most, at some point though, made their way to those sacred basketball courts at Delaware Park.

Street Basketball Dominated at Delaware Park

There are two types of basketball, organized and street. Combining the two styles is a cheat code that isn’t obvious to many young players starting out. I did not understand this in my early years. Coach Ken Jones taught us the organized style of basketball at Hutch-Tech High School and didn’t emphasize the street style. He was a fundamentals coach. His 1990-91 team had players on it that understood both styles which is in part what made that team so successful.

Street basketball was the style played at Delaware Park which is another thing that made the games there so valuable. The basketball also falls under the term ‘survival’ basketball, a principal introduced to me by Coach Ronald Wolfs from the Netherlands. He received early fundamental lessons about basketball from Coach Jones as well before discovering the different styles. Watch our two-part interview at this link if you want to learn more about his experiences and what basketball is like in Europe.

Closing Thoughts

Thank you for reading this piece. I took the pictures in this essay myself. I took them in the Buffalo winter months. No, the Delaware Park basketball courts are not cold and wet during the summer months, nor are the skies continuously cloud covered and gray. These pictures captured the essence of playing there though in addition to the essence of the city of Buffalo. That essence is tough, gritty, and weathered.

I will create more promotional/teaser pieces for The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story, via print and video, as I journey through the final steps of the book’s completion. I created a page here on Big Words Authors for the purpose of giving a background of the book and grouping all the promotional pieces such as this in one place for interested readers.

There are interviews on my first blogging platform of some of the most accomplished Section VI players from my era. They include Jason Rowe, Tim Winn, Carlos Bradberry and Damien Foster. I also interviewed legendary LaSalle Head Basketball Coach, Pat Monti. Other basketball-related essays related to my book project are there as well. If you liked this piece, please share it on your social media and leave a comment below.

The Big Words LLC Newsletter

For the next phase of my writing journey, I’m starting a monthly newsletter for my writing and video content creation company, the Big Words LLC. In it, I plan to share inspirational words, pieces from this blog and my first blog, and select videos from my four YouTube channels. Finally, I will share updates for my book project The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. I will protect you personal information. Click this link and register using the sign-up button at the bottom of the announcement. If there is some issue signing up using the link provided, you can also email me at [email protected] . Best Regards.

The Basketball Legend of Lenny Bias: An Excerpt From Chapter Six of The Engineers Part One

“Anwar, Lenny Bias was supposed to be the continuation of the Boston Celtics’ dynasty! He was going to take over for Larry Bird and those guys and the Celtics were going to keep winning!”

My Uncle Jeff, Len Bias, Basketball and Learning about Sports

“HEY NEPHEW! I’m hungover from the weekend of drinking and watching sports for three straight days! With college basketball, the NBA and the NFL, it literally went until last night!” My Uncle Bodine, better known as Uncle Jeff greeted me on the phone, telling me about his weekend. He sounded like he was coming off some sort of invigorating experience. ‘Bodine’ is a reference to the one of The Beverly Hillbillies. My mother and her siblings affectionately called him that.

Uncle Jeff’s excited voice indicated that he was worn out from something. After sharing what happened over the weekend with me, I understood. Uncle Jeff loved sports and bathed in them like all my uncles. We discussed a potential visit out west to one of the mountain states. We had not spoken in years. Our discussion reminded me of my book project The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story afterwards. It reminded me specifically to start sharing excerpts here and there as authors do when giving samples of their final books. Uncle Jeff appears briefly in the story of my early and brief basketball journey.

The following passage comes from Chapter 6 of The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. My first lessons in accountability, grades and academic eligibility came that year and culminated in not being eligible for the junior varsity boys’ basketball team as a freshman. That had long-term ramifications. My Uncle Jeff was in Buffalo that year and he taught me a lot about sports for a short but valuable stretch of time.

Chapter 6- Unqualified For The Junior Varsity Team

My uncle Wesley J. McKinney living in Buffalo made the 1990-91 school year, my freshman year, very special. Uncle Jeff was the sixth of my grandmother’s eight children. He attended Hutch-Tech High School in the 1970s. Afterwards he entered the United States Air Force where he served overseas. He later settled in Omaha, Nebraska. I had no knowledge of Nebraska, but I kept hearing my mother and grandmother talk about it. It could’ve been a foreign country as far as I was concerned at the time.

At some point he left the Air Force and like a lot of people who left Buffalo, Uncle Jeff returned to regroup and figure out his next moves in life. He found a job at one of the University Plaza Tops Friendly Markets store, our major local supermarket chain and worked in the bakery. It was a logical fit as he was always inclined in the Culinary Arts and was unofficially our family chef.

Uncle Jeff had a brown complexion and wore his hair short. He was usually clean shaven though sometimes there were small growths of a beard on his face. He had a genuinely positive disposition whenever I saw him and had a happy and wide smile. Uncle Jeff was bowlegged and walked with a slight bounce. His voice was tenor kind of like David Ruffin’s from the legendary group the Temptations. He often wore a sweatshirt, t-shirt, jeans, sneakers and sometimes a baseball cap turned backwards.

What was great was that he stopped over our house regularly. We would sit and watch sports as he would sip on his beers and tell stories about the Air Force. He insisted that they made real beer in Germany for example unlike our watered-down beers in the United States. I was too young to know what he meant. Any beer I’d sipped up to that point tasted terrible. It was cool though because I was able to bond with a male figure and partake in his experiences.

The most powerful thing though was his knowledge of sports. Uncle Jeff knew a lot about football, basketball, and baseball – both college and professional. We never went out and played anything the way I did with Uncle John and Uncle Scotty on their visits, but I learned so much just listening to Uncle Jeff. He was an invaluable resource, and for that short period of time, he filled in something that had been missing up to that point in my basketball journey. Sitting and talking sports with my Uncle Jeff was one of the best times of my life.

“Anwar, Lenny Bias was supposed to be the continuation of the Boston Celtics’ dynasty! He was going to take over for Larry Bird and those guys and the Celtics were going to keep winning,” Uncle Jeff said one day. I had seen a picture of a guy named Len Bias in one of the NBA yearbooks I had purchased from Tops. It was on his draft night. He wore a cream-colored suit and a Boston Celtics baseball cap in 1986 after Commissioner David Stern announced the Celtics’ pick.

Lenny Bias? It always stood out to me that Uncle Jeff talked about Len Bias like he knew him personally. He got excited when he told that story like every other sports story and fact he shared with me. It may also have been the enthusiasm from his level of fandom spilling over into his telling the sports history.

Len Bias was uber-talented, and I heard he went toe to toe with Michael Jordan when the University of Maryland played the University of North Carolina. The stories were that he held his own against Michael and did not back down. Some argued that he was better than Michael, something I could not fathom at the time. He died tragically of a cocaine overdose shortly after being drafted in a dorm room on the University of Maryland at College Park Campus. Again, some said he was better than Michael or would have been better.

Michael Jordan is not the best basketball player in the world Anwar,” Uncle Jeff said. It was something me and Dad also discussed. The significance of the statement was that Michael, while great, was the simply the best player who stayed in school, stayed healthy, did not get snatched away by violent crime, and made it all the way to the proverbial basketball mountain top.

There were countless other players who did not make it for any number of reasons. For young black men, two of the main hindrances were poor academics and crime. It was around that time that I first started hearing of a player named Ritchie Campbell, a local phenom who was arguably the best basketball player Buffalo had ever produced. He did not reach his full potential due to academics and something crime related. He was talked about like a basketball God though.

Uncle Jeff hung around Buffalo for about a year before leaving again. He went down south somewhere, New Orleans, I think. While I wished he were around longer to pour more of his knowledge into me, the times that we sat and watched sports were special. For young people like myself who were still relatively new to athletics and competition, hearing stories about players like Len Bias from people who had seen him play, was very valuable. There was value in knowing about basketball and its history, in addition to playing it.

Closing Thoughts

A major theme of the book is who is and is not in your ecosystem when you are launching your life as a young person. This is critical in sports which are a metaphor for life. Some of my favorite childhood memories were watching sports with Uncle Jeff for that short time he lived in Buffalo. Becoming good at sports is knowing about them and their history in addition to mastering your skills. I learned a lot about them watching sports with Uncle Jeff. I would have learned infinitely more with more time around him.

It turns out that learning about sports is only part of learning to compete in athletics. You must also log the hours in practice and in real game situations to win games and eventually championships. There is no other way. The same goes for the game of life. I have embedded a promotional video as a bonus below from my sports YouTube channel entitled, Big Discussions76 Sports. Please consider giving the video a like and subscribing to the channel if you watch it. I plan to create more video content on the book there as well. Yours in good sports.

One Of The Biggest Lessons Sports Can Teach Us

The Big Words LLC Newsletter

For the next phase of my writing journey, I’m starting a monthly newsletter for my writing and video content creation company, the Big Words LLC. In it, I plan to share inspirational words, pieces from this blog and my first blog, and select videos from my four YouTube channels. Finally, I will share updates for my book project The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. Your personal information and privacy will be protected. Click this link and register using the sign-up button at the bottom of the announcement. If there is some issue signing up using the link provided, you can also email me at [email protected] . Best Regards.

Contributors To The Engineers: Funny Quotes and Laughs From Western New York Basketball Coaches and Players

“Frankie Harris got the award for passing on an UNCONTESTED layup at Grover Cleveland High School but it was better than getting the ball SHOVED down your throat!”

Humorous Basketball Stories

The following are funny quotes from the many contributors to my book project entitled, The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. Telling this story with depth and substance the way I wanted to tell it was truly a team effort. I could not have done it on my own. Telling this story was furthermore a long process. There were bouts of self-doubt where I wondered if this was a waste of time. Each contributor though reminded me in their own way that I was creating something worthwhile and to stay the course. Thank you to all of you.

My story (and the contributors’) had high points and low points. There were likewise many humorous memories, reflections, and stories shared during our discussions. To further promote The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story, I thought it would be fun and worthwhile to share some of the funny excerpts from my 40 interviews. Please note that while real names are used in this offering, many will be changed in the final book to protect. This will be to protect the privacy of those who did not agree to participate.

Context and a Disclaimer

The excerpts below are from a few of my interviews and I decided there was room left in this piece for more discussion. For context, I added commentary underneath each quote to give insight into what was said. I hope you get a chuckle out of some of these as I have. And to the contributors, thank you all again. I finally want to give a disclaimer as the creator of this content. Some of the stories shared below are a little bit on the edge and reflect the emotions and memories of the interviewees. Thus, while I am sharing these stories, they do not necessarily reflect my views. The images used throughout this are likewise from a variety of sources. Thank you to everyone who shared your materials and pictures. Best regards and yours in good sports!

Adrian Baugh, Player, Buffalo Traditional High School

“Those schools were not even a match for us. It was not the Section VI schools, but the Section V schools from the Rochester area that were the issue. I think every year we would just clown John F. Kennedy (JFK). JFK was usually our opponent in the overall Section VI Class C final. Newfane? We smacked them!”

No. 30 Adrian Baugh was one of the unsung heroes on the Jason Rowe– and Damien Foster-led Buffalo Traditional Bulls teams in the early 1990s. The Bulls put strangleholds on the Yale Cup and the Section VI Class C playoff bracket for a four-year stretch. Adrian shared that he and the Bulls were not concerned with the Section VI Class C schools, especially those from the suburbs like JFK and Newfane. Their true competition was from Section V (the Rochester area) in the Far West Regional, and any team they faced in Glens Falls.

Carlos Bradberry, Player, LaSalle Senior High School

“Oh, I was pissed off and Coach Monti made a point of it too. He would play mind games with us to piss us off. He would say, ‘Look at this guy. He’s got ‘DA MAN’ on the back of his head!’ I was ready to go nuts just when I saw him. I was thinking this dude thinks he’s really THAT GUY! I got enraged before the game because we were all sitting in the stands watching the game before ours and he’s laying down sleeping in the stands! I’m going nuts saying, ‘Look at this dude, he’s over there sleeping, and he’s got to play us!’ Everything he did made me go sort of nuts, but he backed everything up though.”

No. 50 Carlos Bradberry was one of the top guards in the LaSalle Senior High School basketball dynasty. He led the first Explorers team that I saw in person during the 1991-92 season. In the 1992 postseason, the Explorers matched up with the Greece Athena Trojans from Rochester, NY. It was the Class A Far West Regional. The Trojans were led by the All-American and Syracuse-bound star No. 44 John Wallace (pictured above and at the end of this piece). Wallace went on to play in the NBA after college. In this excerpt from our interview, Carlos talked about the hype and the perceived disrespect from Wallace leading up to the game. The match up was nicknamed ‘The Meeting of the Perfect Strangers’ as both teams rode into the game 22-0 with a trip to Glens Falls on the line.

*To read the full interview with Carlos Bradberry, see parts one and two.

Curtis Brooks, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“He always had those damn throat lozenges (Coach Ken Jones). He was hoarse and it was probably because he was always screaming!”

Two of the key figures in The Engineers are Coach Ken Jones and Curtis Brooks. I describe Brooks as the ‘engine’ that drove the 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team. He led them to a 13-0 Yale Cup record and the overall Section VI Class B Championship. Brooks played under Ken Jones for three years. He was there when Ken Jones took the reins as the head coach. All of Coach Jones’ players remember his hoarse and raspy voice which was the product of his passion for the game. He yelled at his players at practices and in games. He yelled at the officials in the games. One of the characteristics most of his players thus recall about him is his voice. Coach Jones wore many hats and in one-on-one settings, his voice took on more of a patient and grandfatherly tone.

Modie Cox, Player, LaSalle Senior High School

“That was the game he had that bad game in Glens Falls (Eric Gore). Yes I remember that and I was a freshman and I knew I was not playing. I was from the eastside of Niagara Falls. I grew up around drug dealers, prostitutes and hustling, getting over and things of that nature. That was my mentality. As a freshman I was thinking we are out here and I am trying to get some money. You know some guys you can hustle. I grew up trying to hustle because that is what you see all the time. So I felt like I could hustle, so I would hustle other guys. So sometimes I would try to hustle, those guys would beat me and I would be like, ‘Okay I will be right back.’ I would go into somebody else’s room and hustle them out of some money. It is funny. That happened in 1988. That is 30 years ago and Eric Gore remembers that. I am glad Coach Monti did not know that!”

Maurice ‘Modie’ Cox was one the great guards to play in Head Coach Pat Monti’s LaSalle basketball dynasty. I only heard of Modie’s legend and never saw him play like many of the great players in Western New York. Modie was the leader of the LaSalle dynasty between the Eric Gore- and Michael Starks-led 1988 Class B Federation Championship Team and the Carlos Bradberry-led teams of the early 1990s. This excerpt comes from Modie’s visit to my sports YouTube channel Big Discussions76 Sports. It gave the other side of the same story Coach Pat Monti told me about Eric Gore’s tough semifinal game against the Gloversville Dragons in 1988.

*My live interview with Modie Cox is on my YouTube channel Big Discussions76 Sports.

Francis Daumen, Coach, Hutch-Tech High School

“NO, I did not reach them. I am not talking about everybody on the team. The key players were mavericks or renegades if you want to call them that. They were not necessarily bad kids. All of the forces of – On judgment day if the good Lord asks, ‘Why did you yell at all of those kids?’ I will say, I will tell you what JESUS, you sit on that bench and see if it brings the good side out of you! The game by nature brings out the bad in people. You are required to be violent and to be a team player. You are required to run, and hit, and SMASH into one another – to jump and run and to be physically and mentally exhausted – and that is only practice. The games are fun, it is the practices – the day-to-day grind. It is a tough sport!”

Coach Francis Daumen took over for Coach Jones for my senior basketball season at Hutch-Tech High School. In my chaotic junior year I had to play on the JV team for Mr. Daumen. My circumstances led to my having to play on the JV team as a junior and I did not want to be there. Coach Daumen’s yelling was also different from Coach Jones’ and I did not know how to take it. A team’s energy and environment can change drastically with the head coach. This was the case for our transition on the boys’ basketball team. Coach Daumen’s quote gives insight into how he saw coaching the great game of basketball. As opposed to being an art or a craft, it was battle.

Demoan Daniels, Player, Seneca High School

“I think that was the best game that I ever had (against Damien Foster and Jason Rowe’s Buffalo Traditional team). I scored 26 points in that second half. My totals were 35 points and 12 rebounds. I still have the clips. We beat Traditional and we still did not get the respect we deserved. We were going home on the bus and people said, “How many did you lose by?” I looked and I said, “LOSE? We did not lose. We WON!” They said, “You won?” I said, “Yes we won!” Nobody knew who we were. They said, “Well who is this Demoan Daniels dude?” I did not say anything. “Whoever he is, he is putting up buckets,” they said. I did not say anything. My boy Chuck said, “That is him right there.” They said, “That is you? I did not know who you were.” I said, “WELL YOU ARE GOING TO KNOW WHO I AM THIS YEAR!”

No. 32 Demoan Daniels emerged as the leader of the Seneca Indians in the 1992-93 season, his senior year. Daniels gradually ascended as a player in the Western New York high school basketball scene and reached his apex in his senior year. He learned about the complex but exciting world of high school basketball gradually like a lot of Yale Cup basketball players. Demoan put Seneca basketball on the map and helped ascend to heights it had not seen in a long time. His senior season coincided with the rise of Damien Foster, Jason Rowe, and the Buffalo Traditional Bulls. He led the Indians to victory over the Bulls that 1992-93 season. They did not receive the respect deserved immediately after the victory as humorously described in this story.

Dewitt Doss, Player, LaSalle Senior High School

“We would get some shots up, play and workout in the gym. I remember the first time playing against Tim (Winn), and saying, ‘Awe man he can play. I did not know how fast he was and I think I got lucky, crossing him over one time and making a jump shot. Roddy Gayle was in the gym at the time and was just like, ‘OOOOOHHHH!’ He cracked jokes and laughed at Tim at the time (laughing), but he was one of the best defenders I have ever played against in my life. I thought that if I crossed over Tim Winn, then I could do it to any other high school kid. That was going into my junior year of high school.”

No. 11 Dewitt Doss was the last of the great guards in the Niagara Falls LaSalle Senior High School basketball dynasty. He was further on one of the last LaSalle Explorers teams before the school permanently closed its doors in the late 1990s. Dewitt shared how the mentorship from the older LaSalle players was instrumental to his own growth and success as a basketball player in this excerpt. This story involving Tim Winn and Roddy Gayle was one of the funny stories involving the LaSalle basketball players, most of which involved the fierce competitive nature of the program and its players.

Damien Foster, Player, Buffalo Traditional High School

“Well, my understanding back in the day is that the Yale Cup did not even have the three-point line (laughing). Curtis Aiken (of Bennett) and those guys played when there was no three-point line. You play in some of the gyms in some of these schools and it was like you were playing in a bowling alley –.”

Damien Foster and Jason Rowe seemingly burst onto the scene together the 1992-93 season as freshmen. I was amazed by their play when I first saw them. In The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story, I describe what it was like playing in the Yale Cup in the late 1980s and early 1990s. During that era, the Yale Cup players and teams played in less than stellar facilities and had meager resources. Most of our jerseys did not have our school names on them for example. Some of the gyms were also abysmal. Damien Foster jokingly recalled in this excerpt that the gym at Performing Arts Academy looked like a bowling alley. It actually did. Buffalo Traditional coincidentally closed and Performing Arts Academy now occupies the former home of the Bulls.

*To read the full interview with Damien Foster, see parts one and two.

Dion Frasier, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“He was intense and would go off sometimes. He was sometimes a little bizarre. There was one time he was shooting in the gym and I came in and he said something and I started laughing. He said, ‘What are you laughing at? You think I’m a joke?’ He got all in my face and I said ‘dude what is wrong with you?’ Curt was a little – I don’t know what to call him (laughing). He was on the spectrum, I don’t know, but like I said you get him on the court man, that dude could ball. That dude could ball……..”

Reverend Dion Frasier was a four-year player for Coach Ken Jones. No. 24 was a key role player on the 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team that won the city and the sectional championships. Finally, he was a senior on the 1991-92 team my sophomore year. I did not know the Class of 1991 seniors personally. I initially knew of them only through stories. In this story, Dion reflected on the intensity No. 13 Curtis Brooks played with when they were teammates.

Anthony Harris, Player, Burgard Vocational High School

“I went to Burgard because I followed the idiots to Burgard! Ma was like, ‘Go to Tech. Go to Tech!’ I was like, ‘I don’t want to go to Tech.’ Everybody was going to Tech. Jimmy, Chippy, Squirrel, Brian, everybody, I didn’t know anything about Burgard. I was just going with them. Ma just got tired of me and said, ‘Go ahead to Burgard.’ Come to find out, going to Burgard, Brian changed his mind, Squirrel changed his mind, and it was me, Jimmy and Chippy. Chippy flunked out freshman year. He got thrown out for tardiness and absences, so they let him go. Jimmy left after the first year too, so out of everybody, I was the only one there after one year. And back then after my freshman year, I was tired of this and said, ‘I’m going to Riverside.’ It was overcrowded and I couldn’t get in, so it was back to Burgard again and I was stuck at Burgard. And that is how I got into Burgard.”

A key character in my story is my Uncle Anthony ‘Tony’ Harris. He appears in the beginning and then towards the end. Uncle Tony knew a lot about sports like all of my uncles. I later found that he played a considerable amount of basketball when he was younger and even played a little bit in college. I wondered how having his mentorship would have impacted my own journey afterwards. He had multiple stories to tell about growing up in Buffalo, playing basketball and life in general when I interviewed him. Consistent with his personality, many of them were funny. I knew he went to Burgard but I had no idea about how he got there until our interview.

Ed Harris, Player, Riverside High School

“We came into Traditional, had that game won. Mush (Damien Foster) shot a fucking shot from half court and the ball bounced in. That was right after one of their players died and so it was an emotional game for them (Cameron Calvin). Cardinal was happy. He met us at the door. ‘COME ON IN 5-0!’ This is what he said when we walked in the building. ‘COME ON IN 5-0. COME ON IN! COME ON IN 5-0!’ This is what Cardinal said as we walked in the door. ‘COME ON IN 5-0! COME ON IN!’ We were waiting for this. We want this one. I had a good game. It was just that half-court shot that won it for them. It was their time, and I think they went on to do great things after that. We went the opposite way and they kept soaring. He knew he had a squad! Cardinal knew that he had a squad!”

Edmund Harris was one of the key pieces on the Riverside Boys’ Basketball Team that won the 1991-92 Yale Cup and Section VI Class C championships. They had most of their pieces coming back for their 1992-93 senior season. Like many teams in the Yale Cup that season, they ran up against the young Buffalo Traditional Bulls led by No. 33 Damien Foster and No. 12 Jason Rowe and lost on a legendary buzzer beater by Foster. This memory involved the infamous Coach Joe Cardinal of Buffalo Traditional and made me laugh as the interviewer. I think it amused Ed Harris when he reflected on it himself.

Frankie Harris, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“I remember. Did he used to get out there and practice with ya’ll (Coach Ken Jones)? He would take his shirt off and get in the action with us and play pick up and anything like that. He would tear you up (laughing)!”

Frankie Harris was a part of Coach Ken Jones’ rebuild of the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team. He was a member of the Class of 1990, so I missed him by one year. I saw pictures of him in my brother Amahl’s yearbooks though. When I joined the team, Coach Jones talked to us regularly about ‘Frankie Harris Syndrome’. It involved being too unselfish on offense. Frankie told me his version of where the syndrome came from. We also talked about what it was like to play basketball with Coach Jones who was a physical, gritty and tough player. He would put his body on you for rebounds and use his forearms in the lane. His physical play surprised me initially but eventually you learned that was how he played the game.

Derrick Herbert, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“I mean the voice first. It was raspy and it seemed like he smoked eight packs of Newports (cigarettes) and drank Jack Daniel’s (whiskey). It was just really raspy! You know what I mean? That is how it came off to me. So his commanding voice hits you at first, and then I noticed how good a shape he was in for his age (Coach Ken Jones).”

Derrick Herbert was a player from the Class of 1990 like Frankie Harris. We were put in touch by Pep Skillon shortly after Coach Jones’ passing. In our interview, we discussed a lot of things. I asked him about his first impressions of Coach Jones like I did with all the guys who were there when he took over. Most of us noted his unique physical attributes first, his voice being one of the most notable. He was also in tremendous physical shape in his early 60s.

Earl Holmes, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“I mess with Adrian every time I see him. I told him, he let you do whatever you wanted to (Coach Francis Daumen). That almost got Calhoun cut our senior year when Coach Richardson took over. Do you know who stopped him from cutting Adrian and Reggie? It was my Dad. He said, ‘I don’t think you want to do that because Adrian could stroke the ball and Reggie could handle the ball!’”

Earl Holmes was a teammate from the Class of 1995. He seemed to really like picking on classmates at times, myself included. Earl always told you what he thought and gave it to you straight. He was the same way 20 years later. Part of our discussion involved reflecting on our 1993-94 team my senior year at Hutch-Tech. That was the year after Coach Jones retired and where Coach Francis Daumen took over. It was a tough year where some unusual things happened. Many of the team dynamics changed. Some things were allowed to fly that would not have been allowed in previous years. Some players were at the center of those changes, and it was very, very reflective of dynamics I and others would see in the adult world in the years to come.

Dr. Kenneth Leon Jones, Coach, Hutch-Tech High School

“If you can beat your man one on one, you beat him. When you can’t, then pass the ball! If I say we do not shoot anything except uncontested layups, you don’t force it! Frankie Harris got the award for passing up an UNCONTESTED layup against Grover Cleveland HIGH SCHOOL but it was better than getting the ball SHOVED down your throat (rejected). Getting an uncontested shot is better than getting it driven down your throat! So that is when Brother Brooks was sitting next to me early in that game!”

Coach Jones’ spirit is all throughout this project. We talked about the challenges he experienced when establishing his program at Hutch-Tech High School throughout my research. There was a learning curve for the players on his teams. One surprising example involved No. 13 Curtis Brooks, the engine that drove the 1990-91 Yale Cup and Section VI Class B championship teams. Coach Jones’ story about Brother Brooks involved learning how to run his offenses. The centerpiece of one of his most successful teams had to learn how to play in his program and how to run his offenses.

*See the Engineers book page for more promotional materials discussing Coach Ken Jones.

Pat Monti, Coach, LaSalle Senior High School

“Well what was great was that Sal Rizzo who was the nicest guy you will ever want to meet, God rest his soul – I honestly don’t think he knew a lick about the game of basketball. He had so much talent year in and year out – he should’ve been in the Far West Regionals every year – that’s how talented East High was. He got so ticked off because the score at halftime was something like 17-15. Coach Rizzo came out at halftime and came over to me and said, ‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING? THIS ISN’T BASKETBALL!’ I said, ‘Coach, I’m doing the only thing I can do to give our team a chance to win!’ He said, ‘WELL TWO CAN PLAY THAT GAME COACH!’ And guess what he started doing –. HE STARTED DELAYING THE BALL (laughing)! I said to my assistants, ‘Oh my God! Can you believe this? He’s playing right into our hands!’”

Coach Pat Monti led the Niagara Falls LaSalle Senior High School basketball dynasty to a decade of domination in Western New York. The Explorers won the Section VI Class A championship for 10 years straight and were regular visitors to the Far West Regionals where they matched up with the Class A Champion from the Rochester area. One team they matched up with regularly was the East Orientals. In this excerpt from our interview, Coach Monti discussed the year he attempted to slow the game down to negate the Orientals’ athletic ability and size. Coach Sal Rizzo responded in the most unexpected way by also delaying the ball. He helped create a memorable game with lots of laughs for years to come.

*To read the full interview with Coach Pat Monti, see parts one, two and three.

Phillip Richardson, Player, Bennett High School and Coach, Hutch-Tech High School

“Well, first off. We had our first meeting. We are going to run, run, run. You are going to be in shape and you are going to have to be in shape. So we are practicing and I am seeing Reggie and Adrian do this and that, and Earl trying to do his thing, and trying to squeeze Andre in there. I stopped practice and sat them on the floor at half court. I told them, ‘One of you three motherfuckers, I am going to kick off the team! I do not care who it is! I am just waiting for you all to do something DUMB! What I mean by dumb is that in a game, if I tell you to do something and you don’t do it, that’s dumb and you’re DONE! So from that point in time, they fell right in line and did everything I wanted them to do.”

Coach Phillip Richardson took over the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team the year after I graduated. He inherited the highly confident and talented players from the Class of 1995 and brought on his own younger players. New coaches must establish their culture and control over teams whenever they assume the reins and take over. In this funny excerpt, Coach Richardson shared an exchange with his 1994-95 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team which had me rolling when he told it to me. I knew the players he referred to well so it had extra significance for me. Under his leadership, they went on to have a great year. Coach Richardson was also my cousin. I did not discover his athletic pedigree until late in my short basketball journey due to family circumstances and dynamics.

Bill Russell, Coach, Riverside High School

“I do not remember. I know he had an interesting life story (Coach Ken Jones). He was out of the school system for a little while and then he came back. That would have been the time that you were with him. I thought he was quite an interesting guy – fanatical but in a good way. And I think he was a fanatic about physical fitness. I heard one story – I do not know where I heard this. He challenged any player on his basketball team, I am thinking about one All-High player, but with one stipulation and that was it had to be a full court game. I do not remember where I heard it, but normally I would say that was ridiculous but not in his case. I think he was just a bit eccentric enough and in great shape where he would go like that. It very well could be true. I do not know, but I heard that.”

Coach Bill Russell led the Riverside Boys’ Basketball Team in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He coached the legendary Cliff Robinson before starting his college and professional basketball careers. All 14 Yale Cup coaches knew each other or knew of each other. In some instances those relationships were contentious and in some instances they were amiable. In my interview with Coach Russell, Coach Jones came up and he shared this funny story which I vaguely remembered about him. Challenging a player to a full court one-on-one game sounds like something Coach Jones would have done, especially with the remarkable shape he was in for his age.

Jermaine ‘J-Bird’ Skillon, Hutch-Tech High School

“Mike (Brundige) was on the ‘BENCH MOB’ (laughing). We were playing in practice, and we always used to go at his boys, but he hates Mike (Coach Ken Jones). Mike was never getting in. He would get in at garbage time with the rest of the Bench Mob. Like I said he shits on Mike all the time. Mike had a little attitude too, he was a little ass holeley. We go to another gym and Mike does not have a jersey, just a white t-shirt. This is when I knew Jones was full of shit. Pep gets hurt and all of a sudden it is, ‘That a baby Mikey!’ Now he loves Mike! Mike is his man!”

As described in my essay entitled, Lasting Lessons Basketball Taught Me: Different Things To Different People, some of Coach Ken Jones’ biggest detractors were on the bench with him wearing maroon and gold uniforms. I knew that J-Bird Skillon may not have had the most positive experience with Coach Jones but I thought it was still critical to listen to his story. Good writers look to create a balanced perspective.

J-Bird referred to himself and some of the other players that did not play much as the Bench Mob. It was a play on words. Those who are familiar with the West Coast rap scene of the 1990s know that Ice Cube led a rap group called Da Lench Mob. J-Bird also shared something about another player who had a contentious relationship with Coach Jones, the highly talented Michael Brundige. In J-Bird’s account, Coach Jones ended up having to play Brundige late in the 1989-90 season when Jerrold ‘Pep’ Skillon went down due to an ankle injury.

Jerrold ‘Pep’ Skillon, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“You come up playing in the summer leagues with all of these guys, so a lot of the best hoopers, I knew. They saw the way we warmed up, and we did not just have the regular layup line like everybody else. Jones had other stuff going on, and we were like, ‘What the hell is this? This is crazy! Why can’t we just do a regular layup line?’ So Jones had his little program and it’s funny, he had his dribble, drive, reverse pivot and handoff – and don’t get me wrong, Jones’ fundamentals, to this day, to this day – I learned more from Jones fundamentally than any coach I played for, even college. From the basic fundamentals – drill after drill after drill – no question, I teach kids stuff I learned from Jones. At the time there was pushback. It was like, what is he doing? I mean this is crazy! Why can’t we have just a regular layup line? We never had that, we never did. Everything we had was structured, our layup line was structured, our pregame was structured – structure, structure, structure – like I said he was creating the culture!”

My interview with Pep Skillon was arguably one of the most of fun of them all. Pep was a key piece of the 1990-91 Yale Cup and Class B sectional championship teams. He was a two-sport athlete like his brother Jermaine (football and basketball). You could hear his enthusiasm about those times throughout our discussion. Pep jokingly shared his disbelief when Coach Ken Jones arrived at Hutch-Tech and established his culture and program. Pep played basketball long before being exposed to Coach Jones’ basketball teachings and it was unusual for him and his teammates. Coach Jones was my second basketball coach, so I assumed his methods were typical.

Christain J. Souter, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“There was one time – I don’t remember the school, but I remember getting on the NFTA metro bus from downtown. I had to walk from the school, walk to the metro and I caught whatever bus that took us to Kensington High School or to Burgard or whatever we were doing that day. And I just remember it was probably my sophomore year, maybe the first time it happened, but I got the, ‘Yo. You the white boy that plays for Tech? You need to come sit back here!’ And you’re on the bus with people you don’t know that you get recognized because you played basketball or you know that you’re the white kid who plays for Hutch-Tech.”

Buffalo and the Western New York area have both a history of racism and segregation as do many cities in the United States. This is discussed subtly in The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. The students in the Buffalo Public Schools system were mostly black when I came of age in the 1980s and 1990s. Our high school basketball teams were likewise mostly black with a few exceptions. No. 44 Christain Souter was one of the captains on the 1991-92 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team. In our interview he told a story about a memorable experience on a metrobus on the way to a game. There were in fact a handful of non-black players in the Yale Cup at that time. We laughed about it as it was consistent with what we saw.

Tim Winn, Player, LaSalle Senior High School

“Yep, it is. It always starts at the top. The players these kids look up to – they’re all friends. Kevin Durant and LeBron James are really, really good friends. For me, I could never be that good a friend with someone to where it will impact my approach on the court. It didn’t matter who you were, I wanted to go through you on the court – family included, friends included, it didn’t matter – my MOTHER couldn’t get a bucket on me!”

No. 11 Tim Winn is one of the most storied players in the Niagara Falls LaSalle Basketball Dynasty and Western New York basketball. Tim was one of the first players I interviewed and he even returned to my sports YouTube channel for a follow up. In our first interview, we talked about many of the professional layers being friends. I thought about LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and Dwayne Wade during our discussion as they were the players today’s youngsters looked up to. Tim agreed that many young players are taking their cues from the above-mentioned players and are all friends. Tim jokingly shared that there were no friends for him when it came to the great game of basketball, not even his beloved mother.

*To read the full interview with Tim Winn, see parts one and two. Also my live interview with Tim on my YouTube channel Big Discussions76 Sports.

Bonus- Eric Gore’s Modie Cox Story from Glens Falls in 1988

“This guy here (Modie Cox) as a youngster in Glens Falls was brought up from the junior varsity team to support the squad. We as a team were excited but knew we belonged there. This guy would not allow me to sleep for the first game because we started a dice game that went on into the wee hours of the morning. HA, HA. This guy continued to leave my room broke but would return back with a pocket full of paper. I would get that too and this went on until the morning. Needless to say I did not contribute my normal game because of exhaustion. We still won and I knew I could not mess with this dude the following evening. Experiences like this last a lifetime.”

I did not interview Eric Gore, but his name came up in interviews with Coach Pat Monti and players from the LaSalle Senior High School basketball dynasty. No. 50 was one of the key players in the Explorers’ magical 1988 Class B federation championship run. Coach Pat Monti described Eric struggling in the Explorers’ state semifinal matchup with the Gloversville Dragons due to quick whistles by the officials. Gore jokingly attributed it to not getting enough sleep the night before the game years later on Facebook when he saw that I was going to interview Modie Cox on my sports YouTube channel. A mischievous freshman Modie Cox from the JV team kept him up all night playing dice. The Explorers fortunately went on to win everything and go undefeated.

Closing Thoughts and Memories

A common saying is, “It’s a small world,” which in many cases is true. Later in the 1990s, I met the mother of one of the players on the Gloversville Dragons team that the 1988 LaSalle Explorers outlasted in Glens Falls. I came to know her well. I first saw a Final Four program with a picture of Coach Pat Monti and the LaSalle Explorers in it. Later on when interviewing Coach Pat Monti, that team came up. That player on the Gloversville team was Robert ‘Bones’ Francis, the son of my stepmother Pam Dunbar.

The opening excerpt/quote for this piece comes from Coach Jones himself. He told us lots of jokes as a team in addition to many basketball strategies and life teachings. He particularly enjoyed the Frankie Harris story. Frankie laughed about it as well when I met him at Coach Jones’ memorial service.

More Promotional Content

Thank you again to the other coaches, players and teammates who shared your stories with me. This project would not have been possible without you. This was a long process, and with each interview I gained the strength to keep going, and resolved within myself that I was doing the right thing.

I have created other promotional/teaser pieces for The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story, both via print and video as I journey through the final steps of completing the book. I created a page here on Big Words Authors to give a background of the book and grouping together all the promotional pieces such as this in one place for interested readers.

There are interviews with some of the most accomplished Section VI players from my era on my first blog, The Big Words Blog Site. Those interviews are with Jason Rowe, Tim Winn, Carlos Bradberry and Damien Foster. I also interviewed legendary LaSalle Head Basketball Coach, Pat Monti. Finally, there are several other basketball-related essays related to my book project. If you liked this piece, please share it on your social media and leave a comment beneath this piece.

The Big Words LLC Newsletter

For the next phase of my writing journey, I’m starting a monthly newsletter for my writing and video content creation company, the Big Words LLC. In it, I plan to share inspirational words, pieces from this blog and my first blog, and select videos from my four YouTube channels. Finally, I will share updates for my book project The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. Your personal information and privacy will be protected. Click this link and register using the sign-up button at the bottom of the announcement. If there is some issue signing up using the link provided, you can also email me at [email protected] . Best Regards.

A Player-Manager: The Start of Many Basketball Journeys at Campus West and Early Lessons on Craft Mastery

“Okay here is the deal Dunbar. I am going to keep you on the team as a player-manager! You are not going to play, but you will be on the team, and will come to practices. You may potentially get into some games.”

Basketball Journeys Starting at Buffalo State College

Your work is never done as a writer and an author. There are endless edits to your blog posts, essays and books. Ideas further come to you out of the blue sometimes even after finishing a work. While making the final edits to The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story, I decided to create this hopefully last promotional essay. I created a page on my writer’s blog for the book. There is a summary of it and numerous promotional essays and videos. This essay involves the start of my basketball journey as a player-manager.

I want to salute the members of the Campus West Alumni Group on Facebook. Not everyone went on to Hutch-Tech High School or played varsity basketball. Most of the group has been supportive of what I have shared there. I have further tried to make sure that everything I have shared is germane to the group. I thought the members of the group would find this particular essay to be both fun and nostalgic.

I wrote this essay though because my basketball journey started at Campus West/College Learning Laboratory. Campus West was both a school and a training ground for education majors at Buffalo State College where our school was located. It was many other things as will be described. Our school sat on the western-most part of the campus, hence the name.

A Player-Manager

“Okay here is the deal Dunbar,” Mr. Cook said in his stern and low-pitched voice one day after tryouts. He always addressed me by my last name. He peered at me almost suspiciously out of the corner of his eyes. “I am going to keep you on the team as a player-manager! You are not going to play, but you will be on the team, and will come to practices. You may potentially get into some games.”

Mr. Cook watched me struggle during tryouts and mercifully gave me a roster spot. It is something I remember to this day as I wanted one badly. Nothing looked more appealing to me than playing on the basketball team at our school at that time. I also wanted to be a part of a brotherhood. He knew me from years of gym classes. I attended Campus West since the first grade and he saw me grow up over the years. I will always be grateful to him for putting me on the team my seventh grade year. I started following the National Basketball Association (NBA) closely that year. It was the year Michael Jordan hit the shot against Cleveland. It was the Golden Age of the NBA and basketball in general. It was a magical time.

Surprise. You just read an excerpt from an early draft chapter from The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. The start of every journey is important. My basketball journey did not start at Hutch-Tech High School, but instead at the Campus West/College Learning Laboratory, Campus West for short. It was set in motion by the boys’ basketball coach there at the time.

Our Middle School Basketball Coach

Our Campus West Boys’ Basketball Team was coached by Mr. Walter James Cook. He was the Skipper for the team for most of my years at the school. I seldom recall anyone referring to him as Coach Cook, only Mr. Cook. He was a tall and thin Physical Education teacher with brownish-black hair. He frequently wore t-shirts and sweatpants. He often wore his blue and gold Empire State Games sweat suit at school. Finally he wore a pair of low cut 1980s-style Converse or Nikes. Mr. Cook could have been from Western New York, a small town in Middle America or somewhere out west.

Mr. Cook saw that I had one of the lowest experience and skill levels of all the boys trying out my seventh grade year. With my chubby build, he also saw my struggles with the cardiovascular demands of tryouts and basketball in general. I was easily winded when running sprints in our gym and the stairs immediately outside of it. Still though, he decided to give me a spot on the Campus West Boys’ Basketball Team.

The Campus West Gym

Much of The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story takes place in the gyms in the Yale Cup. Most of them were abysmal and older. Our big gym at Hutch-Tech was a small box in the basement of our school. We had to split our practices with the girls’ team most afternoons. We had a smaller room with a hoop in it which was our small gym.

Campus West was a large central building with four wings. One of the wings was our gymnasium complex. Our main gym was vast, like those in the suburban and private schools. It had two main window-style backboards with several other retractable halfmoon backboards around the gym. It had wooden bleachers on both sides of the court to host large crowds. It was a large space that my maturing adolescent body had to get used to running around in. At practices, a curtain extended across half court so that Mr. Chritman’s girls’ team could practice on the other side.

A Mixture of Grade Levels

Our team would have formally been called a ‘modified’ team in one of the suburban or private schools. My best friend transferred to Cleveland Hill in Cheektowaga and I first heard the term from him. Our team nickname was the Bengals for the sports teams at Buffalo State College. I did not have any official duties as the name player-manager might imply. I simply practiced and sat at the end of the bench, watched and observed.

Our team was a mixture of seventh and eighth graders that year. Ronald Jennings from my class was one of our leaders that year. He was one of the 40 players I interviewed for my book. Ronald wore the No. 21 for the Atlanta Hawks’ Dominique Wilkins when we ordered our blue and white jerseys. I chose the No. 3 for the Boston Celtics’ Dennis Johnson. The other guys chose their numbers for any number of reasons. Jason Holman chose No. 33 for Larry Bird. He was one of a handful of white kids on the team, like most of the basketball teams in the Buffalo Public Schools.

Another fun aspect was the shorts that came with our uniforms. We wore the John Stockton-length shorts that year and the next year. Most teams did at that time and basketball fans will understand the reference. The Michael Jordan/Michigan Fab Five-length shorts had not yet started dominating the basketball world.

Sitting, Watching and Learning

“West Hertel is playing a zone against us,” one of my teammates observed in a game. It might have been John Barron or Marcus Perkins. I learned a lot that year watching from the bench. One of my big learning points involved zone defenses and how they worked. Zone defenses are used to prevent dribble penetration. They are valuable against teams that do not have outside shooters. They are also useful for coaches when multiple defensive players are slow footed and are liabilities in man-to-man defenses. In the latter defense, each player has an assignment and talking is critical. It was a key learning point for a novice like me.

“Clarence needs to do a better job rebounding the ball!” Our tallest player was a kid I will call Clarence. He wore glasses in the eighth grade and stood 6’3”. That was tall for all of us at the time. I saw that there were taller players later in the Yale Cup. Clarence played the center position for us and was expected to rebound the ball and control the middle. He grabbed at the ball like a butterfly or a ping pong ball when going for rebounds which my teammates observed in several plays.

I learned a lot too just by talking with my teammates. John Barron was a fan of the Showtime Lakers and knew a lot about the NBA. One day he explained to me that players in the NBA had to be drafted. They simply could not try out as I unknowingly said in a conversation one day. He did not laugh at me though I am sure it sounded silly. When you are new to something, you just do not know until someone corrects you.

Team Camaraderie

“The back of Anwar’s jersey says ‘DRA’,” Basheer Cross joked during my first year on the team. Our tanks tops read ‘Bengals’ across the front and curved over our numbers. Mr. Cook encouraged us to use nicknames on the back of our blue and white jerseys. I chose the nickname given to me by my Uncle Scottie, ‘Dr. A’ in honor of Dr. J in the NBA. Unfortunately, the manufacturer left off the period so it just said DRA. Basheer had a good time with it along with other teammates. Dion Frasier shared in the Campus West Facebook group that the same thing happened to him years earlier. That year I wore a pair of blue and white Converse sneakers and pulled my blue and white striped sox up over my calves.

“What is a Swingster? Is it a Chalk Line or a Starter jacket?” While waiting for the bus on our way to a game my eighth-grade year, some of the guys grabbed the collar of my white Chicago Bulls Swingster jacket. Starter and Chalk Line jackets were the popular college and professional sports jacket brands for young people at that time. I initially felt singled out but was later amused by it. There was quite a bit of healthy clowning of everyone. Our team had a strong camaraderie amongst the players. Years later I learned that camaraderie was an important ingredient to most successful teams.

Coming Back the Same Basketball Player

My first coach at Hutch-Tech High School was a ‘fundamentals’ coach so I know the difference when looking back at the coaching we received at Campus West. Mr. Cook knew a lot about fundamentals but there were probably time constraints in terms of what he could do with us after school. Coach Ken Jones packed as many drills and strategies as he could into those two and a half hours after school at Hutch-Tech. Those took place twice a day for some stretches of our basketball seasons from October to March.

“I think we are finally starting to click a little bit,” Mr. Cook said, pacing in front of us in his t-shirt, sweatpants and Converse sneakers. We typically sat on the floor and listened to him talk between drills. The wood floor sharply creaked with every step. His comments about our team clicking was my first time hearing that reference for teams gelling chemistry-wise.

In the time he had with us after school, Mr. Cook taught some basics. I recall learning some iteration of the ‘motion’ offense. I also remember the ‘Three-Man Weave’ drill. There was not much in the way of individual skills development, or guidance for developing those skills outside of school though. I thus finished that season with no concrete plan to improve going into that summer of 1989. Most of my basketball playing consisted of neighborhood pickup basketball games and games of Twenty-One. I thus came back for my eighth-grade year close to the same player skill-wise.

When You Go On to Play Varsity Basketball

“When you go on to high school to play varsity basketball – ,” Mr. Cook often said during practices. Again he paced around in front of us talking about this and that. He talked about some amorphous nebulous thing called varsity basketball. But what was this varsity basketball?

He discussed it in terms of things that we would experience once we got to high school. It was like another world, or a wonderland but he seldom contrasted it to the level we were at. I will describe later that around the time I became a player-manager at Campus West, I was unaware of the great high school basketball being played in Western New York. There were a number of great players in our area, some of whom would go on to the national stage.

The next year Mr. Cook left for Riverside High School. We would reunite at Hutch-Tech High School my sophomore year. He took over for the late Coach Joseph Girard. Mr. Cook’s other specialties were swimming and volleyball. I served as a linesman for him for the girls’ volleyball team my senior year. He also smacked some of my shots around when playing pickup basketball in our tiny gym. He was not a bad player himself.

A New Coach Takes Over and More Lessons Learned

Mr. Dennis Rozlowski took over for Mr. Cook my eighth grade year at Campus West, and the overall feel of the team changed. Mr. Rozlowski looked kind of like a hippie. He had longer hair, a mustache and wore glasses. He typically wore a sweatshirt, shorts and sneakers. His overall approach was looser, and the team was now dominated by players from my eighth grade Class of 1990. He interestingly encouraged us to put our last names on the backs of our now orange jerseys instead of nicknames. This gave us a more business-like feel. That year I wore a pair of black Nike ‘Flight’ sneakers with my uniform.

I learned another important basketball, sports and life lesson that season. Age and time on the team did not necessarily determine skill level. While I had been on the team the previous year, a seventh grader named Muhajer Alwakeel joined our team and got regular playing time. Though a year younger, he was more developed, experienced and comfortable on the court than I was. He thus played more.

Going Up Strong and My First Basket

“Just go up strong,” Ronald Jennings said, encouraging me in gym class. I grabbed a rebound and used multiple pump fakes before laying the ball up that day. His underlying message was to play stronger around the basket and with less fear. His words stayed with me afterwards and were a major learning point early on.

Ronald also assisted my first ever basket in an organized game. Mr. Rozlowski put me into a game after we established a large lead. On an offensive possession, Ronald advanced the ball into our half court. Our opponents were in a zone defense and I ran the baseline flashing with my hands up. While open on the right side of the basket, he threw me a two-handed over the head pass. I caught it in one motion and shot it. The ball dropped into the cylinder, rattled around and fell through the net for me.

“WAAR, WAAR, WAAR!” My Bengal teammates exploded on the bench at my accomplishment as I ran up the court slapping hands. ‘Waar’ was the nickname my classmates gave me by removing the first two letters from my first name. Most everyone had a nickname in my class that year. I exited the game within the next few minutes feeling good and on top of the world. Those were the only two points I scored that season.

My First Basket and Jason Rowe’s Revelation

A couple of things come to mind looking back at my first basket at Campus West. First, it was a big deal for me to get those two points, not eight, not 10 points, not 16 points, but two points. I had not developed the competitive mentality to push myself further and to want more. I further did not know how to push myself to develop so that I could regularly play alongside Ronald and the other guys in a sustained way.

My interview with Buffalo Traditional basketball legend Jason Rowe caused me to think about this years later. Jason shared that he could not come home and say that he simply scored 10 or 12 points in a game. He had to show more. He had to produce and win games. Jason likewise came from a basketball family. He was immersed in the culture and trained hard at an early age. The bar was thus set very high for him and he developed a killer instinct on the court early on. I will discuss this later.

A Good Eighth-Grade Year

We had a good year that year winning the Public School Athletic League (PSAL) championship. Our season came to a tough ending though at the hands of a team led by Jeremiah Wilkes and Shareef Beecher. Their school might have been North Park. We lost to them first in our regular season finale. We then lost to them in the Gold Dome Tournament. The pair would go on to lead the Burgard Bulldogs for the next three to four years in the Yale Cup. After our final game, Mr. Rozlowski treated our team to McDonald’s which I enjoyed.

We had a sports assembly at the end of that season as most teams do. Ronald Jennings not surprisingly won the Most Valuable Player Award. There was one surprise though. I won the Most Improved Player Award. I could not believe it as I did not do much besides sit on the bench that year. Someone saw something though whether it was Coach Rozlowski, my teammates, or both. Someone thought I deserved the award. I always knew how to give effort regardless of the results. I similarly won the Best Practice Player Award two years later after my first year on the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team. That was my sophomore year, the 1991-92 season.

Leaving Close To the Same Basketball Player and Developing

Even being on the team my eighth-grade year, I went on to Hutch-Tech as a bit of a project skill-wise. I wanted to play varsity basketball, but did not have a solid plan for development. Whose job was it to create that though?

The Buffalo News published a series of articles discussing why Buffalo did not produce many Division-1 college basketball players. The series was published the year after I graduated from Hutch-Tech prior to the 1994-95 season. A big factor was the lack of formal early developmental systems. These were the above mentioned modified and junior varsity teams (JV) to feed the varsity teams. We arguably had modified teams in Buffalo, but there was no formal JV program in the high schools for kids like me to go directly into for continued development.

Coach Ken Jones talked about the lack of ‘feeder’ systems extensively in our discussions before he died. The Ken Jones Basketball Camp was the first basketball camp I ever attended. I learned about it firsthand my freshman year as he was my coach and it was his camp. There were others around Buffalo but me and my family just did not know about them. In summary, my early basketball journey was impacted largely by personal circumstances just like other kids. We were each dealt different hands and had to do the best we knew how with them.

Mr. Amoroso, Derrick Coleman and the Syracuse Orangemen

“I LOVE Derrick Coleman from Syracuse. I tell you I just LOVE Derrick Coleman,” said Mr. Amoroso. Mr. Amoroso was a bearded, shorter, muscular Italian teacher. I do not recall what he taught at Campus West, but he was very excitable and playful. He beat up some of us boys playfully and regularly. He probably wanted to toughen us up, not something I think a teacher could do in modern times. He learned that I took an interest in basketball. He went on and on about some player named Derrick Coleman from Syracuse University some days. The school was two hours east going towards Albany where my father lived. They were coached by some guy named Jim Boeheim.

You just read another excerpt from The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. When revising the book, I added Mr. Amoroso’s love for No. 44 Derrick Coleman for a number of reasons. First, Mr. Amoroso was a memorable teacher at Campus West. Secondly, I did not know who the best player from our nearest big time Division-1 college basketball program was at the time. This is something I would change if I could go back.

This was both pre-internet and social media. I also learned about John Wallace from Greece-Athena High School from Rochester late. I saw him play in the Far West Regional game against Niagara Falls LaSalle in my sophomore year at Hutch-Tech at the end of the 1991-92 season. Who was John Wallace? He was from our sister city Rochester, only an hour away and became the next Syracuse star after Derrick Coleman. He also wore the No. 44, probably in tribute to Derrick Coleman.

Just One of Many Great College Players in the Golden Age of Basketball

Derrick Coleman was just one of many highly talented Syracuse basketball players at that time. Dwayne ‘Pearl’ Washington, a wizard with the basketball was another one. There was also Sherman Douglass and Rony Seikaly. I was still new to basketball and did not know about them. I was wrapped up in the Michael Jordan craze and the bright lights of the NBA. As a result, I did not take a hard look at the college players, the best of whom would eventually make their way to the NBA. Mr. Amoroso did, and his favorite player was Derrick Coleman.

It is also worth noting that arguably the greatest college basketball player of all time, Christian Laettner was from our area. He recently finished his storied high school basketball career at the nearby Nichols School. He moved on to Duke University where he exploded onto the national scene. Cliff Robinson played at Riverside High School and went on to the University of Connecticut (UCONN) to play college basketball a few years earlier. He helped start the ascension of the program in the old Big East Conference.

I was unfamiliar with high school basketball in Western New York in general as described. I thus missed seeing Laettner play (and the South Park fight). I further missed seeing other great players play like Ritchie Campbell when I was at Campus West (pictured below with Carlin Hartman on the 1990 All-Western New York First Basketball Team). I will discuss this later. There also was not a lot of encouragement to do so though that I recall.

Craft Mastery

I am sharing all of this because it contributes to the mastery of one’s craft. Mastery of your craft involves at least partially watching the greats of your time and from past years. Basketball is no exception. Skills development and playing are critical too. But watching and studying is key as well. The college game was the next level up after high school before getting to the NBA. A family friend encouraged me to study the college game as I transitioned into high school. It was something I needed reminding of, but there were not any men around to do so. This underscores another key theme of my story, the importance of male figures for boys especially, and the importance of mentors.

How Did Other Kids in Western New York Learn the Game?

Some kids are born with natural attributes and abilities such as leaping ability, height and quickness. Mastery of any craft however requires honing a set of skills. The great game of basketball is the same way. Some kids in Western New York started their development early. My research for my book revealed how many of the more successful players in Western New York developed their basketball games. This development usually involved some sort of mentoring and or exposure to the game.

I also later observed that the great players developed outside of their academic schools. In the ESPN 30 for 30 The Fab Five, the producers showed footage of Jalen Rose playing and developing outside of his school. The same was true in the ESPN 30 for 30 Benji. Benji Wilson honed his game outside of school. This was long before winning the Illinois State Championship at Simeon Vocational High School and becoming the top high school player in the nation in 1984.

Mentoring in Basketball and Life

Many of the players I interviewed for The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story had mentors guiding them early. The late Kevin Roberson mentored Ronald Jennings from my teams. The same was true for the core of our 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team that won the Yale Cup and the Class B Sectional Championships. Chuck Thompson was one of those players.

Jason Rowe grew up in a basketball family. They taught him how to compete early in his life. The legendary Trevor Ruffin mentored Jason as well. Ruffin played Division I basketball at the University of Hawaii and played in the NBA. Jason Rowe and Damien Foster both got more mentoring in a bit of a basketball ‘dojo’ as described below. William Gates had his brother Curtis, and Arthur Agee had his father Bo in Hoop Dreams.

Training With the Best Players

Some of the players I interviewed received mentoring and trained relentlessly at specific locations around their cities. Jason Rowe and Damien Foster described getting rigorous training and mentoring from multiple coaches and players at the Masten Boys’ Club. They played basketball there late on many Friday nights. I will repeat myself. They played late on Friday nights while other kids played video games, partied and did other things. This training accelerated their growth and mastery of the game. It further made them varsity prodigies when they got to Buffalo Buffalo Traditional in the 1992-93 season.

Tim Winn, Darris Thomas and other Niagara Falls players trained early in the Biddy Leagues at the YMCAs and other recreational centers in Niagara Falls. This is largely why the Niagara Falls teams became dominant in that era. Ryan Cochrane from Cardinal O’Hara gained considerable experience playing for his Central Park neighborhood team under his coach, Coach Dean. There were also several leagues around Buffalo such as the Bob Lanier and Randy Smith leagues, and church leagues.

The Bengal Tigers and the Campus West Gymnasium

There was a long line of players who played for Mr. Cook before I became a Bengal Tiger. Each experienced varying levels of success at and beyond playing at Campus West. Carlin Hartman experienced tremendous success afterwards at Grand Island High School (pictured in the back row in blue). This essay keeps expanding, so I will list out the names that came up in my interviews with Dion Frasier and Quincy Lee in the comments section below. I will also shout out the guys I played with in my seventh and eighth grade years. If you know any of them, please pass this essay on.

I captured the pictures of Campus West gym in this essay in a recent visit to Buffalo. I sought to take some pictures of that particular wing of the school and I saw two Buffalo State College undergraduates enter it after hours. I followed them in and went down the stairs to the gym just like old times. I thought I would only be able to take pictures of it through the glass doors, but one of them was partially open so I walked in for the first time in 30 years. Campus West is now the ‘Buckham Building’ or the ‘Buckham Campus’ and is just another college building on campus.

Starting Off as Basketball Player-Managers

I created this essay after the original batch of promotional essays for the book. The inspiration grabbed me as I was doing a final edit of The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. Sometimes journeys start by chance and sometimes they start due to the generosity and mercy of someone else. Mr. Cook saw a chubby seventh grader who really wanted to be on the team and decided to make him a player-manager. That led to other things for me.

It is worth noting that some great players started off as managers or player-managers. No. 23 Michael Jordan’s sidekick No. 33 Scottie Pippen served as a manager at Central Arkansas University before his talent was realized. Pippen also became one of my favorite players as I watched Michael’s ascension. Pippen’s story along with others is example for young people that success is not always a straight line. Sometimes it is a winding road.

Closing Thoughts

Thank you for reading this essay. I was one of several of Mr. Cook’s players to go on to Hutch-Tech to play a little bit more. Others were the above-mentioned Chuck Thompson, the late Quincy Lee, Paul Saunders, Dion Frasier, and the late Jason Holman. Ronald Jennings played a little bit at Turner/Carroll High School. Jamel Brown played at Amherst High School. His Tigers defeated my Hutch-Tech team at the end of my tumultuous junior year. Many of the guys did not go any further with the game.

I mentioned the players by their real names in this essay for the sake of nostalgia and remembrance. If you purchase copies of the books, you will see that I have changed many of the names as they did not agree to be characters. Thank you to those who agreed to interviews and to being mentioned in the final story.

I think the lessons shared in this essay and my book project are important for people in general, but particularly for young men. Many struggle in our country today more so than is being discussed in larger arenas. Sports are more than just games that are played. There is a spirituality to them and they are microcosms of life as stated by Alice Jones, the wife of the late Coach Ken Jones.

The Big Words LLC Newsletter

For the next phase of my writing journey, I’m starting a monthly newsletter for my writing and video content creation company, the Big Words LLC. In it, I plan to share inspirational words, pieces from this blog and my first blog, and select videos from my four YouTube channels. Finally, I will share updates for my book project The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. Your personal information and privacy will be protected. Click this link and register using the sign-up button at the bottom of the announcement. If there is some issue signing up using the link provided, you can also email me at [email protected] . Best Regards.

Coaches Who Build Basketball Programs and Teams: Another Story From the Engineers

“In a good basketball program teams with lesser talent will win games they should not win and beat teams they should not beat!”

The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story

This story is another promotional essay for my two-part book project entitled, The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. As described on the introductory page I created for the book, and the numerous pieces I created surrounding the book, I have interviewed 30-40 players and coaches from Section VI. My research revealed several interesting facts. Many stories paralleled mine, even those of the more successful players. One area that many of us had in common was that we played in basketball programs and not just teams. I discuss the differences between basketball programs and teams in this piece. We had a mini-college basketball program at Hutch-Tech High School.

This essay and my story are based out of Western New York, but the themes apply to your locality as well. There are videos from my sports YouTube channel throughout this piece related to my basketball story. Some of the images in this piece were personally shot by the author. Others were donated during the research for this book project from Coach Ken Jones and his family.

Basketball Programs and Teams

The late Dr. Kenneth Leon Jones created a mini-college basketball program during his tenure as coach at Hutch-Tech High School. He did not just assemble teams of players every year and roll the balls out to let them play freely. Me and some of my interviewees made this connection during my research. In writing this project and all the promotional pieces for it, I want to acknowledge something important. Not everyone looks back on Coach Jones and his efforts with appreciation and reverence like I and others do. He had his share of detractors in building his program and running it his way. Some were on the bench with him. Some were in the student body and others were his fellow coaches in the Yale Cup itself. Modie Cox said the same thing about Pat Monti. Coach Monti was the architect of the Niagara Falls LaSalle basketball dynasty.

Blowing Off Steam on the Hardwood at West Hertel

My research for The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story started with a visit to see Coach Jones and his wife in 2012 or 2013. Some fellow alumni said that they saw him in stores like Walmart around Western New York so I knew he was still alive. Adonis Coble gave me his phone number ultimately. He got it from Michael Mann who regularly had lunch with Coach Jones. No. 23 and No. 11 were seniors on our 1991-92 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team, my sophomore year.

I had not spoken with Coach Jones in almost 20 years. Seeing him was just like old times despite how my final year playing under him ended. I interviewed him in the back of his San Antonio, Texas house. I asked him how he came to be at Hutch-Tech High School in the first place among other things. Someone of high influence thought he would be the perfect ‘Skipper’ for the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team. He thought Coach Jones could build a successful basketball program. It was someone all of us from those times knew quite well.

He was at West Hertel Elementary School on a late Friday afternoon according to the legend. Faculty members gathered from schools around the city late on Fridays to play pickup basketball. I helped Coach Phil Richardson with the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team during breaks after initially graduating from Tech myself. I too played with the faculty late on Friday afternoons a handful of times. It was a fun way for them to blow off steam and communicate after long weeks of teaching the children of Buffalo.

Recruited to Build the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Program

“He tore you up when he got out there and played with you,” said Frankie Harris of Hutch-Tech. He was a player from the Class of 1989 and jokingly recalled playing basketball with Coach Jones during our interview. Coach Jones shared with me there was one faculty member who was a very good leaper. He did not like being guarded by Coach Jones because of his physical play. Those of us who played basketball with Coach Jones know that he was in fact a physical player. He was not shy about using forearms to impede your movements or to put his body into you when going for a rebound.

“I want you to come to Hutch-Tech to coach the boys’ basketball team!” Mr. Joseph Gentile was one of the participants of those games. He presided over Hutch-Tech as Principal when it achieved the ‘National School of Excellence’ distinction in the late 1980s. Mr. Gentile ran Hutch-Tech with an iron fist. He arguably witnessed its ascension as a school and its decline to a certain degree. That was my brother’s freshman year and Coach Jones’ first year. In any case the bearded, olive skinned, bow-legged administrator, saw something in the hoarse-voiced basketball enthusiast. He likewise recruited him to coach the boys’ basketball team at the H-shaped building at 250 South Elmwood Avenue.

I knew Mr. Gentile for running our high school but not running up and down basketball courts shooting hoops. I laughed thinking about it. Again, I guess even school principals needed to blow off steam after a long week of managing schools and dealing with students.

Creating a Boys’ Basketball Program

“It was like Hoosiers!” Quincy Lee was among my 40 interviewees for The Engineers before he recently passed away in 2022. No. 11 was one of the key players on the 1990-91 Yale Cup and Class B sectional championship team. Coach Jones arrived at Hutch-Tech and started building his program two years before I arrived there in the fall of 1990.

His approach and methods were unlike anything the players on the 1988-89 team and the student body had seen before. They played mostly street basketball at local parks and in leagues like the Randy Smith League in Buffalo. No. 13 Curtis Brooks whom I have cited in many of these pieces made an insightful observation when we talked. He noted that in ‘The Randy’ as many former players affectionately refer to it, athletic ability and size were the keys to winning. It was not the fundamentals of basketball, which were the hallmark of the Engineers’ new coach and his program.

An Extravagant Pregame Warmup Routine

“We were not doing just the regular layup line. Jones was on some other stuff. Players from other schools were looking at us strangely. I could not understand why we could not just do the regular layup line for warmups!” Jerrold ‘Pep’ Skillon noted in our candid interview, one of my favorites, Coach Jones’ pregame warmup routine. It was more intricate than any other in the Yale Cup. “I wondered to myself, what is this?”

I took Coach Jones’ ‘Seven Pass Drill’ and his pregame warm up routine for granted my sophomore season. I assumed that it was all normal when I earned my roster spot. His methods of teaching basketball were a culture shock for his initial crop of players. It was a very different way of playing the game and assembling a team than anyone was used to. It emphasized patient and controlled offenses and disciplined man-to-man team defense. There was another hallmark to his program aside from his fundamentals-based approach though. He looked for a certain kind of kid which was controversial in and of itself.

Establishing a Code and Looking for a Certain kind of Kid

“Jonesy looked for a certain kind of kid!” I first heard the term ‘a certain kind of kid’ from another faculty member who worked alongside Coach Jones in the athletic department. This faculty member asked to remain anonymous, but this phrase was echoed numerous times throughout my research for The Engineers. What kind of kid was he looking for? He handed out packets with an exhaustive list of attributes he was and was not looking for before tryouts. See the picture below for a sample of his list.

I looked back at the list while finishing my final drafts for The Engineers. I saw something I missed as a high school student athlete and in earlier drafts. He explicitly wrote, “We want players that are loyal to each other, the coach, and the school. We will go with boys, if necessary, with lesser ability to have team loyalty.” The last sentence said so much. It explained much of what I and other players involved with the program experienced during that time.

You can infer a lot from that one quote. Winning was the number one objective, but he looked to do it in a certain way. He wanted kids who listened, obeyed, and submitted. He looked to establish a specific code and a culture, an environment in which many players did not fit. He was different things to different people and not everyone appreciated him and his methods. To learn about Coach Jones and to hear what some of his players said about him, see the video below.

Maintaining a Program

Once you set up such a program, how hard is it to maintain it and to keep it rolling? Depending on the conditions in which you are coaching, it can be quite difficult. Our league did not have a formal ‘feeder system’ for the varsity basketball teams. I described this my piece looking back at the Yale Cup. The varsity basketball coaches in our league at the time thus had to do more work. They did extra work try keep their programs successful from year to year, often without extra pay.

The coaches in the Yale Cup also did not have paid assistant coaches. Assistant coaches are important for numerous reasons. They help guide teams in practices. They help with things like the Xs and Os standpoint and tracking fouls. Finally, they help manage the psyches and personalities of the players. Managing and monitoring the personalities/struggles of 10-15 players is a lot for one coach, in addition to doing everything else.

Another aspect is getting a steady stream of talent and developing the talent that you do get. My book, The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story, takes place at the lone technical high school in Buffalo. Admittance to Hutch-Tech required passing an entrance exam. Not just any kid could go there. The coaches at our school thus only had access to a certain segment of kids in the city. Every class at Hutch-Tech in my era had talent. But how many kids in each class wanted to make the three-to-four-month commitment to play basketball each year? And which kids would listen and submit to the coaching?

The Riverside Boys’ Basketball Program: Championships, Conflicts, Fundamentals, Injuries and Repeating

“I hoped to build a perennially strong program at Riverside. Injuries really hurt us the year after we won the Yale Cup and the Class C sectional!” Coach Bill Russell shared his aspirations with me for his early 1990s Riverside teams in our insightful interview. The 1991-92 Riverside Frontiersman won the Yale Cup championship with a record of 11-2 the year after our Hutch-Tech team won it (pictured below). I interviewed Coach Russell and one of his star players, Ed Harris and learned a lot. I found that they too had a program at Riverside with many of the same aspects we had at Hutch-Tech.

They returned their core group of players for the 1992-93 season after winning the Class C sectional the previous year. They lost their 6’7” center, Walter Gravely, for most of that season due to a pelvic injury. This hurt their chances severely of defending their two titles. Injuries decimated many programs and seasons across sports, and they are something that cannot always be planned for. The Frontiersman also experienced their own personality conflicts and squabbles just as we did at Hutch-Tech.

These negative events arguably helped with the ascension of other teams in the Yale Cup at the time. McKinley and Seneca shared the Yale Cup title that 1992-93 season. They also paved the way for the ascension of the young Buffalo Traditional Bulls who began their rise that season. They logged upsets over both Hutch-Tech and Riverside, on their way to ruling the league for the next three years. See my interviews with Jason Rowe and Damien Foster to read more about this.

Players’ Skill Levels When You Get Them

Finally, what are the skill and talent levels of the kids that you are getting as a coach? Another major consideration is the level players are at when you get them. Many kids wanted to play basketball and excel at it in Buffalo in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Not everyone knew how to develop their abilities and skills though.

Not every kid had access to the tools to allow them to develop. Some came from homes that did not necessarily favor them developing their basketball skills. Coach Bill Russell from Riverside noted that many of his kids came from homes with no fathers which is significant. Once again the lack of a feeder system was significant too. We had a middle school boys’ basketball team at Campus West which I played on in seventh and eighth grades. It was not designed though for kids like myself who needed more development to excel. This meant that development had to come from someplace else.

And again, even if you get a crop of kids with some talent, are they coachable? And can you mold them into a cohesive unit? One coach in Section VI created a program that consistently won during that era. Read on to learn some more about how he did it.

The Buffalo Traditional Bulls: Athleticism, Talent and Skill

There were three teams that were strong every year during my short high school basketball journey. I will start with Buffalo Traditional from the Yale Cup. The Bulls were coached by the legendary but controversial Joe Cardinal. Coach ‘Card’ was loved by his players despite his many critics outside of the school. See my interviews with Damien Foster and Jason Rowe to learn some more about the Bulls teams under his leadership. Coach Cardinal’s name also came up in interviews with coaches and players from other schools.

“I am going to write a book called, All of The Way Without a Play!” Damien Foster shared that Coach Cardinal joked at times about not using any structure with his teams. Murmurings outside of Buffalo Traditional were that Coach Cardinal was always the benefactor of tremendous talent. Likewise, he never really coached his Bulls teams in the classic sense. Instead, just let them play and show their brilliance. They likewise rewarded him for it.

“When we played a St. Joe’s, we never beat them. My three years of playing at Traditional, we never beat them and that is because of the fundamentals part of it. We did not have it!” Adrian Baugh from Buffalo Traditional reflected on their matchups with St. Joe’s in our interview. “St. Joe’s had it, we had way more talent than them, but fundamentally they were better than we were at that time!” As successful as the Bulls were during those times, there was one team they frequently struggled with and there were reasons why.

The St. Joe’s Marauders: Consistency, Dominance and Fundamentals

“Sophomore year I played JV. We had a good year. Both years were pretty good. We never could beat St. Joe’s! I made varsity as a junior, so I was backing up Delwyn (Rhines). I was on the team with Delwyn Rhines, Shondell Dupree, Gerald Brown and Malik Campbell,” Dennis Wilson said reflecting on his days playing at Turner/Carroll High School.

“We always kind of – and I do not know if this is a public-school thing or an African American thing, but we always had problems with Joe’s. We did not understand the Xs and Os of basketball,” he continued. “They were good athletes – they were probably as good as athletically. We were probably a little bit more athletic, but they just understood the game. They just understood the game period.”

St. Joe’s Collegiate High School was a perennial power in the Monsignor Martin League. They competed with formidable foes like Turner/Carroll, Canisius and Cardinal O’Hara, to name a few in their conference. I did not have a lot of experience playing against the Marauders aside from one JV game my sophomore year. They had a distinct heritage. They also had modified, JV and varsity teams (the above-mentioned feeder system). They played disciplined basketball, and their players were always well trained by the time they became seniors. Two names that stand out to me from those years are Eric Eberz and Jeff Muszynski.

The LaSalle Explorers Basketball Dynasty: Structure, Discipline and No Nonsense!

“Our program was built on structure, discipline and no nonsense!” Finally, there was Coach Pat Monti’s LaSalle Explorers in Niagara Falls. LaSalle was the ‘bully on the block’ for Western New York basketball for 10 or more years, winning their Class A sectional and regularly making trips to Glens Falls in March. My interviews with Coach Monti, Carlos Bradberry and Tim Winn revealed numerous things.

First. Basketball was almost a religion in Niagara Falls and the players there trained early in the Biddie Leagues. Coach Monti thus had a steady crop of hungry and trained players. He got them into his system early, established his culture and expectations and they just kept winning.

Second. Coach Monti ran a program like Coach Jones that emphasized structure, discipline, and no nonsense in his own stern words. The players who came to him at LaSalle loved the game and wanted to develop, win, and continue to build the heritage of the program. They bought into what he taught them and as Carlos Bradberry shared with me, “Everyone had a role and accepted it.”

Coaches, Cultures and Systems

Pat Monti was like the Greg Poppovich of high school basketball back then. That was the biggest thing. Talent-wise, body for body and person for person, we had some players, but they just were coached tremendously well,” Darris Thomas said about the coach of their crosstown rivals in Niagara Falls. “We summed it up by saying that they knew their roles and we did not.”

LaSalle and Niagara Falls Senior High Schools both played in the Niagara Frontier League, but they had a fierce rivalry within the city. My research revealed that Niagara Falls usually had the more talented rosters. The difference though was the coaching, game planning and the structure at LaSalle as described by Darris Thomas. It was the program that Coach Pat Monti ran.

A heritage was built at LaSalle over the course of 10 years. It was understood that there was a history and standards for the program when new players came in. There was regular contact with the older players even after they graduated, and it was always understood what the standards were. They never had to reinvent the wheel as they say, as other programs did. In The Engineers, I note that there was not a lot of interaction with the core of the 1990-91 championship team at Hutch-Tech in subsequent years. This would have been helpful for those of us charged with following in their footsteps. That is not to throw shade at anyone. It just is what it is.

What Makes a Good or a Bad Coach?

“Well at least you got to work with Kenny for a couple of years. I thought he tried hard and had everyone’s best interests at heart.” Coach Francis Daumen took over for Coach Jones the year after he retired. He served as an assistant coach my junior year. My basketball journey involved a coaching change which is not unusual in sports. Based upon my coming into the program under Coach Jones and what I expected for my final year, basketball just was not the same after he left. My senior season was an eventful year for Coach Daumen as well whom I realized was a good coach himself in retrospect.

“It sounds like he just was not a good coach if you ask me!” I shared my writing project with a friend years ago. I tried explaining the intricacies and nuances of running a basketball program. I tried explaining what happened surrounding our Hutch-Tech basketball program during my journey, the basis for my story. She responded with a snap judgement about Coach Jones which chapped my hide as they say.

That exchange taught me two things and I can laugh about it now. First, people sometimes want to respond without thinking and just want to be heard. So be careful of who you share your ideas with. Secondly, not everyone understands the intricacies of establishing a basketball program vs. assembling a basketball team.

A Basketball Program

The opening quote for this piece underscores the approach Coach Jones took to teaching the game to myself and others. He was a ‘fundamentals’ coach who did not believe in running a star system. He believed in teaching the game, instilling values, and mentoring his kids through the game.

The clergyman at his memorial service said that he ministered to us through basketball. This was true as most of us remember his many anecdotes, quotes and stories. We also remember his jokes. This is in addition to all of his basketball drills and strategies.

He wanted to win games through galvanizing players under a common culture and a system. Over a course of years this is no minor undertaking. It is not easy, especially when it involves subjugating individual agendas.

“If I scored 15 points and it takes points from someone else or leaves time on the clock – I would rather win than get mine. I still think some guys also wanted to win, but they wanted to get theirs. And that is a hard thing to balance when kids are 15, 16 or 17 years old.” These words were from Christain J. Souter. He was a member of the 1990-91 Hutch-Boys’ Basketball Team and a captain my sophomore year. His words epitomized the challenges in attempting to create and maintain a program like the one Coach Jones and others created.

Coaches Wanting Better for Their Players

“I do not want to be that type of coach where when kids leave, they do not remember anything positive about the experience!” Coach Samuel ‘Quinn’ Coffey discussed his coaching philosophy during our interview. Quinn was a Kensington Knight and graduated in the Class of 1992. He now coached the game in Baltimore, Maryland.

I attended SUNY Brockport for one year and we played some intramural basketball together, long before I started writing The Engineers. I saw his enthusiasm for the game and that he cared about the kids he would coach one day. His experience at Kensington High School motivated him. He strove to be the best coach he could be for all his players, not just the most talented ones.

“I was more concerned with it being a good experience and having the kids get something out of it.” Coach Bill Russell from Riverside shared his top priorities when coaching with me during our interview. His words surprised me. His revelation motivated me to add his and Coach Coffey’s reflections to this piece. They underscore the fact that there are multiple approaches to coaching, some of which do not often show up in the box score and on the statistical sheets.

Playing in Basketball Programs: An Important Tip For Younger Players

“If I could do it all over again, I would ask myself, ‘What is the most natural thing I could do right here on the basketball court now versus just playing in the system,” Carlos James Gant from City Honors said in our interview. “I think the guys who do that have excellent careers and might still be good players.

“We had a motion offense, but you have a three or four role. You also have more liberty to find these gaps, and the more you find those gaps you are going to score. The games where I did that, I had big games. The games where I did not, they were all over the place. That is what I would do. I would just be more aggressive.”

Basketball programs use specific offensive and defensive plays and strategies. Coach Romeo McKinney was known for his defenses for example (pictured above). Players are coached up in specific ways that do not necessarily come into play when playing street basketball. Many players must learn how to play organized basketball in a program. At the end of the day, the goal is still to put the ball in the hoop more than your opponent.

Carlos James Gant’s words underscore a lesson I also personally had to learn. That is the importance of combining your organized game with your street game so that you are just naturally playing and being both aggressive and smart. It is a little-known secret to playing in basketball programs, but an important one. Arthur Agee and William Gates showed the blending of organized and street basketball in the documentary Hoop Dreams. I wrote essays in tribute to them. The following video is another offering from my sports YouTube channel and it discusses another important basketball and life lesson.

Having a Vision for YOUR Game and YOUR Life

Jones did not teach the one on one-type stuff. We rarely did the one on one (isolation basketball). All of the great dribble drive moves and basic handles – I did not have that. I did not have a freaky handle but that was Jones. Jones did not teach us that,” Pep Skillon said reflecting on his time as an Engineer.

“You know what Pep? You are right!” I thought about my own basketball education as Pep reflected on his. Another teammate made the observation the year after Coach Jones retired but in a different way. He pointed out that I had a basic game in a sarcastic tone. It was true. I developed into a system player. I was a good role player in Coach Jones’ program. I did not seek to develop myself beyond his program though. It did not occur to me. No one in my immediate circle called it to my attention either.

After high school I learned to experiment with my game. I found that I could do some fun and imaginative things on the court. I had fun doing them too. It is a lesson that translates forward into the adult and working worlds. You should always have a vision for yourself and your life. Your employers and supervisors may have their own plans they may fit you into. The same is true for your parents and significant others in some instances. But what do you want? What is your plan for yourself and your life? You should always have a vision for yourself, or develop one.

Closing Thoughts

Thank you for reading this promotional/teaser piece for The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. I intend to create more, via print and video, as I journey through the final steps of completing the book. I created a page here on Big Words Authors for the purpose of giving a background of the book and grouping all the promotional pieces such as this in one place for interested readers. On my first blogging platform, the Big Words Blog Site, there are interviews of some of the most accomplished Section VI players from my era including: Jason Rowe, Tim Winn, Carlos Bradberry and Damien Foster. I also interviewed legendary LaSalle Head Basketball Coach, Pat Monti. Finally, there are several other basketball-related essays related to my book project. If you liked this piece, please share it on your social media and leave a comment beneath this piece.

The Big Words LLC Newsletter

For the next phase of my writing journey, I’m starting a monthly newsletter for my writing and video content creation company, the Big Words LLC. In it, I plan to share inspirational words, pieces from this blog and my first blog, and select videos from my four YouTube channels. Finally, I will share updates for my book project The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. Your personal information and privacy will be protected. Click this link and register using the sign-up button at the bottom of the announcement. If there is some issue signing up using the link provided, you can also email me at [email protected] . Yours in good sports. Best Regards.

Contributors To The Engineers Part One: Excerpts from My Interviews Of Basketball Coaches And Players From Western New York

“Basketball taught me that your hard work isn’t always recognized. But that doesn’t mean you give up working, because somewhere down the line, it’s going to have a benefit to you.”

The following are quotes from the many contributors to my two-part book project entitled, The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story who were gracious enough to each tell their stories. The contributors will also be acknowledged in the books themselves and these are being shared for promotional purposes. To tell this story the way I wanted to tell it with depth and substance, I couldn’t have done it on my own. Telling this story was a long process and there were times when I felt self-doubt and wondered if this was a big waste of time. Each contributor reminded me in their own way that I was creating something worthwhile and to stay the course. Thank you all again.

Adrian Baugh, Player, Buffalo Traditional High School

“It was all new to me, just the process. I’ve had people tell me, ‘If I had you,’ like when they had Jason, Damien and Malik (Campbell), there’s no telling where I’d be, and I believe that. When we played St. Joe’s, we never beat them. In my three years of playing at Traditional, we never beat them and that’s because of the fundamentals part of it. We didn’t have it. St. Joe’s had it, we had way more talent than them, but fundamentally they were better than we were at that time!”

The 6’6” Adrian Baugh was one of the key cogs in the Jason Rowe– and Damien Foster-led Buffalo Traditional Bulls teams. He was also one of their unsung heroes. The Bulls literally took a stranglehold of the Yale Cup partway through my time as a Hutch-Tech Engineer. In this excerpt from our interview, Adrian described how he gradually learned about organized high school basketball at Buffalo Traditional. While they were extremely talented, he discussed how the Bulls didn’t fare well against fundamentally sound teams like the perennial powerhouse from the Monsignor Martin League, the St. Joe’s Marauders.

Carlos Bradberry, Player, LaSalle Senior High School

“My senior season was satisfactory, but I hate to lose so that last game wore on me for a long time. I probably sat there for a week or two and thought of every play I could’ve done differently. I still remember it to this day. We lost by three points, and I missed five or six free throws. I said to myself, ‘If I’d made those six free throws, we would have won the game!’ For me it was bitter-sweet because we got there and showed well, but I thought we could’ve gone one step further. What made it worse was, I think Hempstead either won or had a very close game with Mount Vernon. I thought we could’ve been the state champs if I’d played a little bit better.”

No. 50 Carlos Bradberry was one of the many great guards in the LaSalle basketball dynasty. He had been a LaSalle Explorer for several years and emerged as the leader of the team as a junior. I first saw him play in a lopsided loss they handed our Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team in December of 1991. His Explorers team broke through and advanced to the final four in Glens Falls his senior season. There they fell short against Hempstead from Long Island by a narrow margin. In this excerpt Carlos lamented the free throws he missed in his final game. They likely would’ve helped them advance to the state final game against Mount Vernon.

*To read the full interview, see parts one and two.

Curtis Brooks, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“I wasn’t an Alpha Dog. Just growing up, I knew Pep was athletic. I knew Chuck was the big man. I knew Frankie and all of them. We grew up in Central Park. Central Park was four streets away from me. I used to cut over the tracks and play at Central Park and I used to go to my old School 68. It is called Westminster now. I just knew what I could do, and I grew up with everybody. So I just had to trust that, you know I’ve got the ball, and if a teammate is open, I’ll give it to him on the fast break, and then let’s play D! But I wasn’t an Alpha Dog at that time.”

No. 13 Curtis Brooks was one of the leaders of the 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team, one of the bases for my story. That season he was one of the statistical leaders of the team in terms of points and assists and hit several big shots for them. I considered him to be the engine that drove that team. I was still in awe of him 20 years later when I interviewed him. Only seeing him play from the sidelines as a freshman, I never got to know him personally. When we talked about those times, he was both humble and wise. That season, he made the Buffalo News’ All-Western New York Second Team. In this snippet from our two-part interview, he shared that he didn’t consider himself to be the star of that team and didn’t look to be. He was a pass first point guard who looked to set his teammates up first offensively.

Adonis ‘AD’ Coble, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“That was a great feeling being around a group of guys who played together and really liked being around each other. Those guys were great, they were great teammates as well as great guys off the court. They were a very close-knit group that were friends as well as teammates (the 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team).”

The first player I interviewed for this project was No. 23 Adonis Coble. Adonis was one of the seniors on the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team for the 1991-92 season, my first season. He and the Class of 1992 seniors showed a lot of leadership that year. Interviewing Adonis led me to several other players and Coach Jones himself. He was also a member of the 1990-91 team. One of my questions involved what being on that team was like. His answer described some of the secrets of championship teams, camaraderie and togetherness. This was a recurring theme throughout my interviews. While important parts of the equation, talent and skill aren’t always enough to win consistently.

Ryan Cochrane, Player, Cardinal O’Hara High School

“Being a part of the team is everything, whether its basketball or the team I have at work. It’s a team. I can go back to my O’Hara team in my junior year. There were plenty of teams that were way more talented than us. Turner-Carroll, St. Joe’s and Lackawanna were more talented than us. But as a team putting all of our pieces together and putting the team first, that was what got us winning the championship. It’s weird because you can take not all, but some of us – some players may not have started on another team, but our team together as a whole, we were way better than anybody else.”

No. 12 for the Cardinal O’Hara Hawks, Ryan Cochrane reached out to me on Facebook after publishing my Jason Rowe interview. Knowing of his legend, I immediately asked to interview him to which he agreed. Prior to the 1993-94 season, I hadn’t heard of Cardinal O’Hara, Ryan Cochrane or Calvin Price. I became quite familiar with him that year though. He led the Hawks on a magical run through the Monsignor Martin League and in postseason play his junior season.

Samuel ‘Quinn’ Coffee, Player, Kensington High School

“It taught me that your hard work isn’t always recognized (playing on the Kensington Boys’ Basketball Team). But that doesn’t mean you give up working, because somewhere down the line, it’s going to have a benefit to you. I never gave up, I never slacked in practice, I never missed practice!”

I met Coach Quinn Coffey my first and only year at Brockport State College. He played at Kensington and was a member of the Class of 1992, two years ahead of me. We reconnected on Facebook years later, and I knew that I wanted to interview him for my book project. He loved the game and now coached both boys and girls in the Baltimore era. As a coach, he wanted all the kids he touched to get the most out of their playing experience. This is something he questioned about his playing days at Kensington. His quote gets to the essence of my book project. Everyone’s playing experience was different depending on your coach, teammates, and your overall life circumstances. In life, your hard work may not always be appreciated initially. Somehow you must find ways to keep going as someday it might.

Maurice ‘Modie’ Cox, Player, LaSalle Senior High School

“We were very familiar with them (Ritchie Campbell and Marcus Whitfield from Burgard) because we felt like second class citizens. We were not getting the respect that the Buffalo basketball players were getting. So, whenever we came to Buffalo, we knew that it was going to be different. It was going to be a track meet and we were going to show what Niagara Falls was all about. I know that at least for myself, I played with a chip. I knew that when we went to Buffalo, we had to come with a certain mentality and a certain attitude. Again, we looked at Buffalo as the big city and we are little Niagara Falls and nobody knows about Niagara Falls basketball. We do not get the big headlines and we do not have the big players that they had in Buffalo, so we were well aware of the players in Buffalo. And when we had the chance to go to Buffalo it was straight business!”

Of the great guards to play in Head Coach Pat Monti’s LaSalle basketball dynasty, perhaps the greatest guard was Maurice ‘Modie’ Cox. Like many players in Western New York, I only heard of Modie’s legend and never saw him play. Modie was the leader of the LaSalle dynasty between the Eric Gore and Michael Starks-led 1988 Class B Federation Championship Team and the Carlos Bradberry led teams of the early 1990s. This excerpt comes from Modie’s visit to my sports YouTube channel Big Discussions76 Sports.

Francis Daumen, Coach, Hutch-Tech High School

“The game (basketball) by nature brings out the bad in people. It requires you to be violent. You’re required to be a team player. You’re required to run, and hit, and smash into one another – to jump and run and to be physically and mentally exhausted – and that’s only practice. The games are fun, it’s the practices – the day-to-day grind. It’s a tough sport!”

Coach Francis Daumen took over for Coach Jones my senior season at Hutch-Tech. I didn’t know how to handle the coaching change and struggled through that year. I don’t think we understood one another that 1993-94 season. When I interviewed him 20 years later, we shared what was happening in each other’s lives and it all made sense. His approach to the game was different than Coach Jones’. This snippet from our interview reveals how he viewed the game of basketball, battle.

Demoan Daniels, Player, Seneca High School

“I scored 11 points in the first game which was cool. I could have done better. His guy Karl got hurt in the second game and in comes me. We are playing Riverside with Ed Harris and Ben Rice. That was the year Riverside won the Yale Cup. They also had Walter Gravely. We got destroyed. We lost by 42 and it was the worst loss I ever had playing organized basketball in my life. I told Ricardo Jackson, ‘Ric this is the last time we are going to lose like this. We have to turn this around.’ Ric was like, ‘Yeah we have to turn this around.’ I scored 25 points in the next game we played I believe. I took off after that. My confidence was up. Now it is affirmation. After that I had all kinds of 30-point games. I had 30 against Grover. That’s the year I had 38 and 22 against Kensington. I had 27 against Emerson and just took off. Being young, I told Knozz, ‘SEE I should have been playing last year. I could have contributed to the team last year!’ He said, ‘I didn’t see it.’ He said, ‘You’re going to go as far as you and Ricardo take us. You two are our best players.’ We were not good that year, but we made progress.

No. 32 Demoan Daniels emerged as the leader of the Seneca Indians in the 1992-93 season, his senior year. Daniels gradually ascended as a player in the Western New York high school basketball scene and reached his apex in his senior year. He learned about the complex but exciting world of high school basketball gradually like a lot of Yale Cup basketball players. He packed a lot into his time playing and was 35 points short of the 1,000-point milestone. Demoan discussed getting onto the court for the Seneca Indians and getting meaningful minutes for the first time in this excerpt. Once he got started, he and his teammates never looked back.

Dewitt Doss, Player, LaSalle Senior High School

“We did not have a lot when Coach Monti finished his last book my junior year. Monk kept all the stats and he passed away. I always wondered what happened to the last book. They never finished the last book. When you put all the numbers together, I think Tim Winn is first, followed by Carlos Bradberry, Elon McCracken, Carlos Davis and then it was me. Or it was Eric Gore and then it was me. Coach Monti had books starting from 1984, which I think was his first year as head coach. It had points per game, points per season, assists per game, assists per season. If you were in there three to two times starting from your freshman season, you were in there. Everything was in there from what you did your sophomore year, junior year and senior year. He had you ranked based upon where you finished. He tracked rebounds, steals, assists, blocked shots.”

No. 11 Dewitt Doss was the last of the great guards in the Niagara Falls LaSalle Senior High School basketball dynasty. He was on the last LaSalle Explorers team before the school permanently closed its doors in the late 1990s. He was the last great guard, and he was mentored by the players that preceded him and was trained by them. A pillar of solid basketball programs is the statistical records kept. The Niagara Falls LaSalle Basketball Dynasty was no different. Dewitt Doss discussed Coach Monti’s tracking of his players’ statistics and where he ranked in the pantheon of great LaSalle boys’ basketball players in this excerpt.

Carlton Ford, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“That’s something that was never really clear to me from varsity practices. I don’t recall Coach ever saying, ‘Take that shot. You could’ve taken that shot at the top of the key!’ On the junior varsity (JV) team it was a different story. I was in double figures scoring, and it was known that I could score and get to the basket. On the varsity team, there was never a green light given. I just think that over time, I realized that I would take this shot and there would be no complaints and I would just get back on D. But I think by senior year I learned how to play in that offense.”

Carlton Ford was a two-year teammate on the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team. A member of the Class of 1993, he was a year ahead of me. We were similar in terms of temperament and personality. Our interview revealed that we viewed our first year on the varsity team similarly, a learning year. I discovered later that some kids looked at their first year differently. They demanded to get on the court and play immediately. He was a mature and unselfish pass-first guard who like me, had to learn to play in Coach Jones’ fundamentals-based offense.

Damien Foster, Player, Buffalo Traditional High School

“I’ve heard it 1,000 times! Coach Cardinal heard it 1,000 times and we all heard it. Most of the time you’d hear it from the suburban coaches and schools. My opinion on that is that Cardinal wasn’t trying to be something he wasn’t. Cardinal was more so a father figure to us. He was there for us. We could come to him for anything, and he’d give us advice whatever the case may be. You’re dealing with city kids – kids that come from single parent homes. You’re dealing with a lot of things and lots of these kids don’t have structure in terms of playing organized basketball, so they come to the city schools and play on these teams. With their attention span, you draw up a play and they get in the game, and they might forget the play. Or they might not have that discipline to run a play.”

Damien Foster and Jason Rowe seemingly burst onto the scene together the 1992-93 season as freshman. They had prepared for a while, and only those who were unaware of them were astonished by their brilliance. It was always whispered that their coach, the late Joe Cardinal wasn’t much of a coach. He simply inherited talented players every year and let them go while he sat back and racked up the wins. According to Damien though, he cared about his players and looked out for them as best he could. Furthermore, he knew what and who he was in terms of coaching and didn’t pretend to be something else.

*To read the full interview, see parts one and two.

Dion Frasier, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“Anwar. You know it’s one of those deals where I talk about it – when I talk about a team, when I talk about buying into a system, when I talk about leadership, when I talk about being a part of something that’s bigger than yourself, when I talk about everybody has to play a role. I talk about that season (the 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team). That’s my go to sermon, and it’s so engrained in who I am and it’s a matter of me knowing I played a vital role on that team and so it’s something that’s extremely special.”

Reverend Dion Frasier was a junior on the 1990-91 Yale Cup and Section VI Class B championship teams. He was a senior my first year on the team, the 1991-92 season. In my book project, I credit Dion and two other seniors for helping keep the 1991-92 team together. It was a tough season which could’ve easily come off the rails. He and his peers were sorely missed once they graduated. In our interview, he discussed how the 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team regularly comes up in his Sunday sermons 30 years later.

Jermaine Fuller, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“I know that Coach Jones always suggested that we ‘get in shape’ and maybe lift weights, etc., but nothing was ever mandatory or scheduled. Schools today I have actual WEIGHT PROGRAMS, something we did not have at Tech (maybe it did not exist at any Buffalo Public Schools?). I do agree that Jones kept us aerobically conditioned during the season. He did keep us running, etc. And I always appreciated the early morning free throw shooting. Until this day I remember that and think that was an excellent practice.”

No. 30 Jermaine Fuller and I were teammates for the 1991-92 and the 1992-93 seasons. I didn’t interview him verbally as I did most of the other players. He graciously answered the questions I shared with him electronically though. He pointed out that Coach Jones indeed highly encouraged us to lift weights and get stronger. “A good strong player is better than a good weak player,” Coach Jones told us all the time. There was however no formal weight training program for us though. This meant that most of us were left to our own devices and had to figure it out, if at all.

Carlos James Gant, Player, City Honors High School

“If I could do it over again, I would – I think one of the things I personally conceded was – it had to be the system. I think the system helped us be successful. What I learned more in my senior year is that you still have to be you as an athlete as well. As an example, there were times when you had to sacrifice parts of your game for the team and I’m all for that. But I think you can also get lost in that. There were times when I could’ve been more aggressive offensively and defensively. We played within the system.”

When I was at Hutch-Tech, the City Honors Boys’ Basketball Team followed a similar trajectory to our 1990-91 team. They improved every year and matured into a competitive team by the time the core of their team were seniors. One of them was Carlos James Gant. In our interview he spoke to something that I didn’t figure out during my short window playing the game. That is figuring out how to play in a system versus just playing and then switching between the two. It’s something many players struggle with and don’t figure out until they’re done playing.

George Gayles, Player, Bennett High School

“After the Festival of Lights game, Veronica (Coach Larry Veronica) said I had a nice arc on my shot. He said, ‘I have him because he shoots really well.’ My shot was terrible at that time. He also may not have had enough people, and he saw that I had an eagerness for the game and a heart and a willingness to learn. Students like that, you can’t not let them on the team. I would rather have ten kids like that than a couple who have a horrible attitude and are uncoachable. The two people we had on our team that year were really good. Years later when I met up with them at Shoshone Park, one asked, ‘It’s like that now?’ I was able to keep up with them now and it wasn’t like that in high school.”

Like Coach Quinn Coffey, I met George Gayles at SUNY Brockport. George played for the Bennett Tigers under Coach Larry Veronica. George described himself as a ‘project’ in high school like me at Hutch-Tech. He wanted to play but was undeveloped and learned where he could. In our interview, he described how Coach Veronica saw that he wanted to play and had a willingness to learn. George further went on to discuss how he looked for coachable players himself years later. He further talked about how he met up with two of the best players on his Bennett teams years later and had grown to their skill level. Our growth as players continues often times beyond our organized playing days.

Anthony Harris, Player, Burgard Vocational High School

“But back then when we were juniors, there were some pretty good ball players. Emerson had a good team. They had Glen Mayfield, Paul Tolbert. As a matter of fact, do you remember Bernie Tolbert? The FBI guy? His brother played basketball. He was a guard. Paul Tolbert, he was sweet. They were some pretty competitive dudes back then. As a matter of fact, Phil came out after me and was playing. I think he got rookie of the year on the freshman team at Bennett. As a matter of fact, he might’ve cracked the varsity team when he was a sophomore. I’m not sure but oh yeah, they were pretty competitive back then. And then Lafayette had this guy named George Stevens, a dark skinned brotha. He was bad!”

A part of my story is discovering key information about family by accident and after it’s needed. I didn’t discover that my Uncle Anthony Harris was himself an accomplished basketball player back in his day. He played alongside Eugene Roberson at Burgard and even matched up with Bennett’s Bob Lanier during those years. During our interview, we discussed the Yale Cup and Buffalo basketball from years past. It was the era of the Buffalo Braves and when there was only one court at Delaware Park.

Ed Harris, Player, Riverside High School

“I went to camps every year. Russ made sure of that. Most of all of us went to the local camps, the Canisiuses, the University at Buffalos and the Buff State camps. We all went to those. I don’t know if Russ and those local colleges had some sort of agreement, but we were all at those and I can’t say that was the case for all the other city schools. Like I said, we were one of the only schools that had a 20-game schedule. Russ did a little bit more than the other coaches did. I think he knew the significance of it, I would say – to get that exposure, to get us out into those games to see those different environments which helps when you go away for school. You’re not just out in the city playing city games. You’re experiencing their culture, the suburban culture.”

The 1991-92 Riverside Frontiersman won both the Yale Cup title and Section VI Class C Championships. One of their leaders was the versatile Edmund Harris. Like a lot of teams, the Frontiersman ascent was gradual. During our discussion, Harris’ description of Coach Bill Russell reminded me of Coach Ken Jones. They were both students of the game. They cared about their players, gave thorough instruction and meticulously their schedule their games each year. In both instances, their efforts weren’t always appreciated at the time.

Frankie Harris, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“Mike Brundige had a lot of talent. He also had a little attitude, you know what I mean? He was about 6’5”. And he can still get up and down the court right now. In the 40 and over league, he can get up and down, and I think he can still dunk! But he didn’t always buy into what Coach Jones was trying to do. With Coach Jones you had to be disciplined in terms of being a team player and sometimes he would just get on you. And he didn’t handle that well. So he had his days, but he was a good basketball player. Jerome Freeman and Ed Lenard, they came off the bench. They gave us defense and energy. They were defensive stoppers. Jerome and Ed were quick! They were team players.”

My essay discussing the 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team and their magical acknowledged two groups of players. I acknowledged those who took the court that season. I also acknowledged those who were instrumental in building the program but graduated before the championship years. That happens with many championship teams. One of the players was Frankie Harris whom I met at Coach Jones’ funeral service. In our interview, we talked about a player named Michael Brundige. He was physically gifted but butted heads with Coach Jones regularly due to his attitude and temperament. Mike was 6’5” and very athletic though. Many coaches face the dilemma of keeping highly talented players even if there will likely be personality conflicts.

Keith Hearon, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“It definitely taught me that nothing comes for free (the game of basketball). You have to work hard. Your dues must be paid for the benefit, and nothing is going to come for free. You have to work hard if you want the success. And then really life and basketball are not too far disconnected. That’s something that kind of stayed with me. They go hand in hand. Every lesson in basketball is a lesson about life.”

Keith Hearon was a teammate on the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team for the 1991-92 and the 1992-93 seasons. A member of the Class of 1993, he was a year ahead of me. “Stretch” as Coach Jones referred to him my junior season was mature and even keeled personality-wise. He was a wiry 6’5” and played center for our team and was very reliable. This quote from him once again captures the essence of my book project. Hard work is involved in most anything worthwhile activity or goal in life. Finally, basketball and life are interrelated. The game teaches you about life.

Derrick Herbert, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“I think he (Coach Jones) and I got along because I was that guy who was always on the floor diving for loose balls and taking charges. Whenever ‘Ice Cream’ (Marcus Whitfield), or Nigel (Bostic) who were some of the best players in the city at the time in the public school system, when we played those teams, I had to guard them – and I got lit up a lot too. But I think that he appreciated that I was willing to take on that challenge because I would dive for the loose ball, this, that and the third and our relationship was pretty cool. It did have its contentious times. But for the most part we had a good relationship. I pushed back a little bit, but he would always have his ways of getting his point across and in hindsight, he was always right.”

“You have to talk to D-Herb!” Jerrold ‘Pep’ Skillon told me that I needed to talk to a senior from the 1989-90 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team at Coach Jones’ funeral service. I had only seen Derrick Herbert in pictures like the other members of his class. I acknowledged them in my essay dedicated to the 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team. They helped lay the groundwork for the 1990-91 championship season. In our discussion, Derrick talked a lot about Coach Jones, and their relationship. As with many of the players, it wasn’t a 100% smooth all the time. He ultimately appreciated Coach Jones, his coaching and his teachings though.

Reggie Hokes, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“Yes, I knew I wanted to play varsity basketball right away. I knew about Ritchie Campbell and Cliff Robinson. I heard about Christian Laettner. Trevor Ruffin because we had a park called 75 and they would come down and play and they’d call it ‘Live at 75’, and they used to have games down there – Ritchie and all of them would have summer league games. Ritchie actually stayed around the corner from me. He stayed in the Willard Park Projects, about five blocks from where I stayed on Emslie.”

I first saw No. 22 Reggie Hokes play basketball at the William-Emslie YMCA. He was a pass first point guard, and I was amazed at his ability to assist the ball like Magic Johnson in the open court. I enjoyed playing with him as he always looked for you in the open court on fast breaks. He came to Hutch-Tech during a bit of a youth movement where underclassmen fought to play right away. This was in large part inspired by the University of Michigan’s Fab Five. In all my interviews, I asked the guys who their influences were. Some names came up regularly in terms of the Buffalo basketball. One of them was the great Ritchie Campbell as was in Reggie’s case.

Earl Holmes, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“He (my father) said my grades weren’t up to par so he didn’t let me play anymore that year. He told me if I couldn’t keep a GPA and play, then something had to go. That sophomore year was the same and first year I played football too. So, he was like, ‘If you’re gonna play all these sports, you’d better make sure these grades are up to par. As of right now, basketball is off the shelf. Nothing can be done about football because the season is over with, but if these grades don’t improve during the school year, then you won’t be playing football either. I was an A student all my life. It was normal teenage rebellion and I chalk it up to that. I was having some success, so I felt like I didn’t have to work as hard and I wasn’t putting all my effort into my elective courses.”

Earl Holmes was an outspoken multi-sport athlete from the Hutch-Tech’s Class of 1995 (football and basketball). We were teammates on the 1993-94 boys’ basketball team. We were almost teammates on the 1992-93 team. His father “Big Earl” took him off the team because his grades slipped below the Honor Roll level. This always stood out to me because I didn’t have a stringent requirement academically in my home. My grades were average my entire four years, and I wouldn’t have made the standard in Earl’s house. Academics tripped up a lot of players, me included that year. Some parents mandated their kids not just do enough to get by, but to excel academically. That was the case with Mr. Holmes.

Ronald Jennings, Player, Campus West and Turner/Carroll High School

“My first two years I was playing both football and basketball. I was playing freshman-junior varsity ball with coach Fred Bachelors. Fred is now the head coach at the University of Maryland-Eastern Shore. And then, in my junior year, I dedicated myself to football. Actually, my first two years, I played football, basketball and baseball. And then my junior year, I just played football and baseball.”

Reverend Ronald Jennings was my first ever point guard in an organized basketball setting. We were teammates for two years on the Campus West/College Learning Laboratory Bengals Boys’ Basketball Team in middle school. I looked up No. 21 and was in awe of him. I didn’t know how to develop so that I could play alongside of him and contribute to the team. This is a key theme throughout my journey/story. Ronald coincidentally assisted my first basket in an organized game, something I can still see in my mind today. While I went off to Hutch-Tech for high school, Ronald went off to Turner/Carroll. There he played football, basketball, and baseball before focusing completely on football. Afterwards, he focused completely on his Christian faith and ministry.

Brandon Jones, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“Neither of my parents were athletes, so they were like, ‘You’re playing basketball, we’ll come to the games.’ They weren’t necessarily coaching me up. So, he (Coach Richardson) was the first one to see something in me that I didn’t see in myself yet. And he rode me hard. I was not allowed to play in gym class as a senior. He’d say, ‘I want you jumping rope! I want you doing this or that. You’re good enough to play at the next level, and I think I can get you there, but you’ve got to want it. Stop being lazy!’ He was really hard on me and at the time I thought, ‘Why in the hell is he doing this?’ And now 20 years later and I can’t believe I was saying that. I can look back and say, ‘I know why he was doing that.’”

I didn’t overlap with Brandon Jones in terms of playing on the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team. Brandon was a versatile front court player who could put the ball on the floor and shoot it from long-range. I wanted to know what the basketball program was like at Hutch-Tech after Coach Ken Jones retired. Coach Francis Daumen (above) took over for my senior year and then stepped down, opening the way for Coach Richardson. Thus, it was educational to talk with Brandon to understand what things were like under Coach Richardson’s leadership. Like a lot of players, Brandon didn’t understand why Coach Richardson was hard on him. The same was true later with Coach Dick Bihr at Buffalo State College who yelled at him constantly. Later, like a lot of players, he realized that it wasn’t out of contempt or malice. It was done to get the best out of him.

Quincy Lee, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“Curt Brooks? It was his first time making the team, sophomore year. He had a chip on his shoulder because he didn’t make it freshman year. Curt Brooks was vicious. Curt Brooks was going to go the distance with anybody. He was dedicated and the thing is, I ended up moving with my father in my sophomore year and moving around the corner from Curt Brooks. Me and Curt Brooks, you go to the park and play every day, winter time, it didn’t matter what temperature it was or what was going on, we would play every day just trying to get better to make sure the team was better. Curt Brooks never stopped trying to get better. EVER! He was a worker and definitely motivated. Jones loved him too. He loved Curt. Curt earned it though. He was a hard worker, and he was 100% into basketball.”

No. 11 Quincy Lee was one of the seniors on the 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team. Coincidentally he also attended Campus West but was four years ahead of me. He agreed to be interviewed after reaching out to him on Facebook. He told three of the other seniors what I was doing and opened the door for me to interview them. I looked at the 1990-91 team as a utopia. Quincy revealed that playing for Coach Jones wasn’t a bed of roses which was helpful to learn for perspective. He loved the game and wanted to play though and toughed it out. The support of his teammates and faculty members helped as well. He eventually settled in and got back to playing his game. In addition to discussing Coach Jones, he spoke very highly their point guard No. 13 Curtis Brooks (discussed above).

Pat Monti, Coach, LaSalle Senior High School

“Everyone was there – Mike Kryzewski (Duke) and Digger Phelps (Notre Dame) – all the bigtime coaches. It was a game for the ages. I can still see it as if it was yesterday, and it was 1988. Nobody led by more than four – they didn’t take us for granted this time – they were very well coached. It was back and forth, back and forth – just an incredible high school basketball game. I think that with about a minute or so left, we might’ve been up four. They came down (Christian Laettner’s Nichols team), scored, called time out and cut it to two. I only had one time out left and I’ve always taught my young coaches to save your time outs for the fourth quarter. If you know, you’re going to be in a tight ballgame, don’t waste time outs. It’s amazing how simple it sounds and how important it is in coaching.”

My first-time seeing Coach Pat Monti’s LaSalle Explorers play was in a lopsided loss they handed our Hutch-Tech team. It was in the 1991 Festival of Lights Tournament in their gym. They were in the middle of a 10-year run in which they dominated the Section VI Class A playoff bracket. They were our area’s regular Class A representative in the Far West Regional game with the Rochester area champion. At stake was a trip to the Final Four in Glens Falls. Coach Monti saw many great players over the years on his bench and his opponent’s. This excerpt from our interview discussed one of LaSalle’s many matchups with Christian Laettner and his Nichols teams. LaSalle won the New York State Class B Federation Championship after defeating the Vikings.

*To read the full interview, see parts one, two and three.

Roderick ‘Spanky’ Peoples, Hutch-Tech High School

“I started playing basketball when I was about 10 and I thought I was pretty good. It wasn’t until meeting Adonis Coble for the first time and getting cremated by him and two others in a game of three on three, that I became serious about improving my game.”

Roderick ‘Spanky’ Peoples was a first-year player along with me and others on the 1991-92 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team. He played football as well and had quite the motor, bringing a fearlessness and intensity to our team. Like a lot of guys from his Class of 1993, he had a bit of a mischievous side. I admittedly didn’t know what to make of him at times. Going into the 1992-93 season, his senior year, and my junior year, he developed significantly as a basketball player. I don’t think that season turned in a way either of us expected. In hindsight, he taught me a lot about competition and toughness.

Brian Reith, Player, Hamburg High School

“But then when the season was over, we’d pick up our baseball gloves and jump into baseball season and play baseball. And then summer would come and then there would be this interesting mix between summer baseball leagues and then pickup basketball and there was always this combination. And when fall would come, some kids played football or soccer. I played volleyball, I was one of the few people and I loved that I did that. I wasn’t allowed to play football. My body wasn’t big enough to play and wasn’t going to do much good if I did, but we played three different sports and we didn’t stick with basketball all year round. So, when it came back to basketball season, some of us were lacing them up for the first time in months, which I’m sure made it more difficult for our coaches.”

Brian Reith was the only player from one of the Erie County Interscholastic Conferences (ECICs) that I interviewed. He reached out to me after reading my Carlos Bradberry interview. He and his Hamburg Bulldogs were quite familiar with the LaSalle Explorers in those days due to their many sectional matchups. It was big to talk to him because I wanted to know what it was like to play in one of the suburban conferences. I had driven past Hamburg numerous times but had never stopped there. Most of the suburbs of Buffalo felt like distant worlds to me. In this excerpt from our interview, Brian discussed what he and his teammates did in the basketball offseason. While other kids worked on their basketball games in the offseason, they played other sports. They didn’t give basketball a serious look until the next winter.

Phillip Richardson, Coach, Hutch-Tech High School

“The thing is I knew Reggie’s father. I knew Earl’s father. I knew Brian’s mother and father. His mother’s brother was married to your Aunt Melva. That was the connection. So, when I made them stay after to run wind sprints, nobody said nothing about, ‘You’re killing my kid!’ No, they already knew that I wasn’t a knucklehead and wasn’t trying to be mean. So, I knew their fathers and some of their moms, and they knew that I had their best interests at heart.”

A central theme to my project The Engineers is benefiting from the knowledge sets within your family (and not). Coach Phil Richardson is a second cousin on my mother’s side. I didn’t spend a lot of time around him in my youth prior to high school due to life circumstances. I thus didn’t learn about his vast sports history until he arrived at Hutch-Tech in the fall of 1993. In hindsight, I could’ve benefitted from his knowledge years earlier. He didn’t assume the reigns of the head basketball coach until the fall of 1994 after I graduated. He inherited a talented crop of players the 1994-95 season. Based upon similar backgrounds, he was the most well-suited coach to teach and motivate them of the coaches they’d had.

Jason Rowe, Player, Buffalo Traditional High School

Jordan, Isiah and Magic were the guys that I idolized in the NBA. In college I looked up to Kenny Anderson, Jason Kidd and Chris Jackson. Locally, I looked up to my uncle, Trevor Ruffin, and Ritchie Campbell. I looked at them and felt like I could do something. They were guys I could watch every day in a ‘hands on’ type of way. Trevor grew up across the street from me and he was like a ‘big brother’. He played at the University of Hawaii, and he went on to the NBA, but I didn’t look at him that way. This was the guy who, when he was in the NBA, would pick me up to go work out with him. We had that type of relationship where he was my big brother, and I was going to the house and watching TV with him.”

I had already conducted several interviews by the time I got to talk to Bishop Timon’s Coach Jason Rowe. I told him that his interview was ‘the big one’ as it lent credibility to what I was doing. We still laugh about it today. He, Damien Foster and the Buffalo Traditional Bulls became a force to be reckoned with in Western New York, across the state and beyond. In all my interviews I asked the guys who their influences were. Each had players they looked up to at the college and professional levels. Jason came from a basketball family, but he also looked up to two great guards from our area. They were Trevor Ruffin and Ritchie Campbell, two of the greatest guards to ever play in the Yale Cup.

*To read the full interview, see parts one and two.

Bill Russell, Coach, Riverside High School

“My priority was defense. We spent a lot of time practicing that. We played primarily a lot of man- to- man, or a man- to- man trapping defense, not very much 2-3 zone. It was my least favorite defense, and we didn’t play a lot of that. Defense was my biggest priority. I think we did a good job. When I say defense, I don’t just mean man-to- man or each player was good defensively, but we really worked on the team concept of man-to-man defense. We spent a lot of time with that in practice. Offensively I had some structure. We worked really hard on having some structure. We also worked hard on having a team concept, team practiced fast breaks, so that was a big part of our philosophy as well. Our team worked on a lot of fast break offense, but we also had some structure to what we were doing offensively. Our team spent a lot of practice time on that too. Defense was a priority, but I thought we paid attention to some other details as well.”

One of my final interviews for The Engineers was with Coach Bill Russell who guided the Riverside Boys Basketball Team when I was a player at Hutch-Tech. I didn’t know much about the Frontiersman besides their clinching the Yale Cup title by beating us my sophomore year. Coach Russell turned out to be a student of the game and a basketball junkie like Coach Jones. He also cared about his players and wanted to make sure they had the best experience under his leadership.

Jermaine ‘J-Bird’ Skillon, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“I used to go on the bus trips with them when they would play in the holiday tournaments. I used to scrimmage with them. So, when I came in, Mr. Shae knew me. The seniors then, Kev Roberson, he was from my hood, so I knew them. Flash, I went to their tournaments, and I played with him, so I knew them. When I came in, Shae said, ‘There’s a new coach.’”

Jermaine ‘J-Bird’ Skillon played on the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team for three years. He was a member of the Class of 1992 like Reverend Dion Frasier (discussed above). He’s the younger brother of Jerrold “Pep” Skillon discussed below. He played football and basketball and had lots of game on the basketball court. We didn’t overlap as teammates. You’ll have to read my story to learn about that but talking to him was valuable. It gave me a balanced perspective of the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team under Coach Jones’ watch, like Quincy Lee’s account. It wasn’t always necessarily the utopia that I thought it was when looking on from the bleachers.

Jerrold ‘Pep’ Skillon, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“Hey, I have a quick question for you. Did you watch John Calipari’s 30 for 30 on ESPN? Well, what he said made sense. Sacrifice so your brother can succeed too. How can you be mad? If everybody wins off of it – I thought that was big when I saw that from Calipari. That does make sense. How many players felt like I held it back? But again, you sacrificed to win, and you sacrificed so your brother can receive. That’s what makes LeBron good. LeBron is unselfish to a fault. There’s no question he’s the best player out there, but he wants to see his teammates succeed, and that gives them the confidence to certain things to help them win. Don’t get me wrong. I get it if people think they could’ve don’t better, I get it. I get it. Would I sacrifice that senior year to have a better individual career and to go to a better school? HELL naw, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t, and I don’t know about them. I wouldn’t.”

Arguably the most fun of all the interviews I conducted was that of Jerrold ‘Pep’ Skillon. Pep was a key piece of the 1990-91 Yale Cup and Class B sectional championship teams. Like his brother, he was a two-sport athlete (football and basketball). You could hear the enthusiasm about those times in Pep’s voice throughout our discussion. In this excerpt from our discussion, Pep shared a little-known secret in athletics and life. In many instances, you must give to get. Winning in basketball involves buying into the team concept and sacrificing for your brothers in this context. The stars on most teams all learned this at one point or another.

Christain J. Souter, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“When I went to college, I played Division III at the Coast Guard Academy. I didn’t play varsity, but instead played on the equivalent of our JV squad. We played against a bunch of junior colleges and prep schools. I’ll say that I was able to shoot the ball a lot more. I look back though, and I think if we were able to play defense like we did in high school, we would’ve been able to keep up with a bunch of those teams. So, shooting the ball wasn’t always the best policy. I would’ve liked to have scored more, but from a personal thing, I valued winning over scoring. If I could’ve scored, I might’ve finished my career 10 points a game my senior year. If I scored 15 and it takes points from someone else or leaves time on the clock – I’d rather win than get mine, and I still think some guys, they also wanted to win too, but they wanted to get theirs. And that’s a hard thing to balance when they’re 15, 16 or 17 years old.”

No. 44 Chris Souter was a member of the Class of 1992. He was one of the seniors my sophomore year on the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team. In opinion, he was part of the glue that held our 1991-92 team together. In our interview he had many insightful things to say about his time playing under Coach Ken Jones. Like most of Coach Jones’ players, he teaches the same lessons and drills to his kids. This excerpt from our interview goes back to the principle of sacrificing for the team to win. He further discussed the complexities of getting a group of teenagers to buy into a common vision, especially today.

Darris Thomas, Player, Niagara Falls Senior High School

“We had motion. We had plays. He would draw it up but think about it (Coach Vazanni). The key thing in anything is adjustments because when you run a play for four quarters, they know it and they adjust. He meant well, but he wasn’t a good adjuster. When the defense adjusted, he didn’t have the smarts to adjust like Pat Monti. You knew Carlos (Bradberry) was the guy and you came out with a box and one on Carlos. Guess what, he specialized in getting Carlos open still (laughing). He didn’t just say, ‘Carlos is locked up, so we’ll go to Tim or Jody. No, I’m going to free Carlos up. I don’t care if you have a box and one. You know what I mean? That was the difference in Pat Monti. He was more daring, ‘Okay. You think you’re going to stop me, but I’m going to draw something up!’ So, what did he do? He brought Carlos off two or three screens. I remember. A box and one, you have to get through two to three screens and by that time, the defender is tired. Just strategies.”

My research for The Engineers revealed that Niagara Falls was a breeding ground for great basketball players. It turned out that LaSalle and Niagara Falls Senior High Schools had a Duke vs North Carolina-type of rivalry. LaSalle won most of those matchups, but the games were like wars. All the kids knew each other and competed in the Biddy Leagues. Darris Thomas starred for the Power Cats while I was at Hutch-Tech. His opinion was that the teams weren’t very different talent-wise. The difference was that LaSalle had Coach Pat Monti who both loved the game and cared about his kids. It wasn’t that way at every school.

Charles ‘Chuck’ Thompson, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“He knew what he wanted. You had to work hard. It was natural for us because we already had good skills and just needed to be molded into that direction in which we needed to go. It was a way of weeding out the players from the not so good players, but more so for us, especially me, Pep, Curt and Quincy. We already had that background in terms of being good players. We just needed that right connection in terms of putting us all together and Coach Jones had that.”

The 6’5” Chuck Thompson was the center for the 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team. He also attended Campus West for grade school and was a two-sport guy (football and basketball). He led the 1990-91 Engineers in rebounding and described himself as the “black hole”. When the ball was thrown into the post to him, it wasn’t coming back out. Chris Souter recalled how Thompson was clutch from the free throw line and had a soft touch for a bigger guy. In this excerpt from our interview, he discussed how Coach Jones effectively molded their group into a winner.

Dennis Wilson, Player, Turner/Carroll High School and Riverside High School

“Nah, he wasn’t a yeller (Coach Fajri Ansari). He would yell, but he wasn’t a – Faj is a good guy, I really can’t say – he was a good coach. We always kind of – and I don’t know if this is a public school thing or an African American thing, but we always had problems with St. Joe’s because we didn’t understand the Xs and Os of basketball. They were good athletes – they were probably as good athletically – we were probably a little bit more athletic, but they just understood the game. They just understood the game period. There’s a lot of fine details you have to understand as you go along in any art. Like blogging, I’m sure there’s some dos and some don’ts in terms of techniques that you use, and once you understood those, you became a better blogger. Some people just have the gift of writing, but they still have to learn the process and the craft, and for a lot of basketball players, they understand how to play, but the mental aspect of it, you have to learn and for some reason, we’re just a little bit slow in learning those things.”

Dennis Wilson played at both Turner/Carroll and Riverside High Schools. As such, he got to experience high school basketball in both a private school and a public school. In this excerpt from our interview, Dennis discussed the importance of understanding basketball as a craft. He observed that the teams at Turner/Carroll frequently struggled with the perennial power St. Joe’s. Because St. Joe’s was always proficient in terms of Xs and Os, they were able regularly best more athletic teams.

Tim Winn, Player, LaSalle Senior High School

“We all grew up playing in the Biddy League, so you were already cool with these guys. So the transition to being their teammate on the Varsity was seamless, because we were already like brothers. I lived two houses down from Carlos when I was in high school. Before I became a varsity player, I was at his house everyday playing video games. That’s the environment we were in – most of the guys who played varsity hung out together. You grew up playing against the older kids, and a lot of those guys were the older kids. So to become their teammate was almost expected, and that we would all eventually play together.”

As described in my discussion about Darris Thomas above, most of the players at LaSalle and Niagara Falls Senior High Schools knew each other before they got to high school. They not only knew each other’s games, but they also knew each other personally. This created an increased camaraderie and chemistry later. In this excerpt from our discussion, Tim Winn discussed knowing Carlos Bradberry before getting to LaSalle. This probably had something to do with the immediate success experienced once joining the Explorers that winter of 1992.

*To read the full interview, see parts one and two.

The Pictures Used In This Offering

The pictures used in this offering come from several different sources. Some came from the late Coach Ken Jones. This project wouldn’t have been possible without the vast basketball records he kept. Some pictures came from Coach Pat Monti. At least one came from Laura Lama, a classmate from Hutch-Tech high school who still had all her yearbooks. Some came from my own records. It wasn’t clear what pictures to use and as you can see the final lineup is an assortment of pictures of players, box scores and visuals from some of Coach Jones’ materials. Some are location shots from Western New York.

Just like the players and coaches I interviewed, the pictures are a snapshot of that time and era in the Western New York high school basketball scene. I think this is appropriate because my book project, The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story is just one story in the entire fabric of that time. Likewise, during that time, I looked around and saw other players teams either excelling or going through the same struggles I experienced (or some mixture of the two) during my own unique journey.

While I attempted to give each interviewee a picture that related to them, I also sprinkled in pictures of other notable players of the time whom I didn’t interview. Some of them include Fredonia’s No. 24 Mike Heary, Kenmore East’s No. 22 Mike O’Bryan and Cleveland Hill’s No. 23 Carlton Holder. The thumbnail for this piece is Cardinal O’Hara’s No. 12 Ryan Cochran whose team went on its own magical run during my senior year. Interestingly, I hadn’t heard of Cardinal O’Hara High School until that year. This offering also features the first image of myself that I’ve used in any of these writings. Can you identify me?

Closing Thoughts

The opening excerpt/quote for this piece comes from Coach Samuel ‘Quinn’ Coffey. I highlighted it because I think captures the essence of my book project and life itself. One of the ingredients to being successful in the great game of basketball is hard work. Depending upon your circumstance and situation, your hard work could go unrecognized. You must figure out how to push forward though. And just because your work is unrecognized in that moment, it doesn’t mean it always will be. It also doesn’t mean that it won’t pay off at some point.

Thank you again to the other coaches, players and teammates who shared your stories with me. This project would not have been possible without you. This was a long process, and with each interview I gained the strength to keep going and resolved within myself that I was doing the right thing.

More Related Content

I’ve created other promotional/teaser pieces for The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story, both via print and video as I journey through the final steps of completing the book. I created a page here on Big Words Authors for the purpose of giving a background of the book and grouping all the promotional pieces such as this in one place for interested readers. On my first blogging platform, the Big Words Blog Site, there are interviews with some the most accomplished Section VI players from my era including Jason Rowe, Tim Winn, Carlos Bradberry and Damien Foster. I also interviewed legendary LaSalle Head Basketball Coach, Pat Monti. Finally, there are several other basketball-related essays related to my book project. If you liked this piece, please share it on your social media and leave a comment beneath this piece.

The Big Words LLC Newsletter

For the next phase of my writing journey, I’m starting a monthly newsletter for my writing and video content creation company, the Big Words LLC. In it, I plan to share inspirational words, pieces from this blog and my first blog, and select videos from my four YouTube channels. Finally, I will share updates for my book project The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. Your personal information and privacy will be protected. Click this link and register using the sign-up button at the bottom of the announcement. You can also email me at [email protected] to register as well. Regards.

The Legend of Burgard’s Ritchie Campbell: A Story From The Engineers Looking Back at a Buffalo Basketball Phenom

“As a freshman, I’m sitting on the bench watching Ritchie and Damon Rand go at it at Burgard, and he has the flu. He literally gives us 38 points and he’s falling and coughing and laying out. This dude literally put up 38 points on us and he’s got the flu!”

A Name That Repeatedly Came Up During My Research

This story is another promotional piece for my book project entitled, “The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story”. One of the bases for my story is the 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team and their magical run. In my freshman year at the school, they won our city league, the “Yale Cup”, 13-0. They then won the Section VI Class B sectional and came within one game of a berth in the state final four in Glens Falls. It was amazing to witness. There were many more stories surrounding the Yale Cup and Section VI basketball however. Only those who were a part of them, witnessed them, or did the research would know them.

Depending on your vantage point, what the 1990-91 Engineers did wasn’t that big a deal. In terms of public schools, the former LaSalle Explorers, and the Buffalo Traditional Bulls, were regular visitors to the state tournament in Glens Falls. St. Joseph’s Collegiate High School (St. Joe’s), in the “Mognsinor Martin” league was regularly the team to beat amongst the private schools in our area. From my vantage point at the time though, what the Engineers did was a big deal, and I dreamt of being just like them. Whether that got done is a different story. For those curious to know, what happened is revealed in my book project.

As described on the page I designed for the book, and the numerous pieces I’ve created surrounding it, I interviewed 30-40 players and coaches from Section VI. My research revealed several interesting facts. I learned quite a few back stories and about the players and runs of other teams from Section VI. I learned about players whom I’d only known and seen from a distance. As described in my Cliff Robinson piece, some names came up repeatedly. One of the most notable ones was the great Ritchie Campbell.

Ritchie Campbell’s Legend

One of the pieces I’ve published reflected on the Yale Cup, its history and some of its most notable players. One player whom I highlighted was Ritchie Campbell who played at Burgard Vocational High School. Even before setting out to write The Engineers, I’d heard of the legend of Burgard’s No. 13, Ritchie Campbell but never saw him play in person.

There might have been murmurings of Ritchie from the Class of 1992 seniors our 1991-92 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team my sophomore year. They saw him play and shared the court with him. Interestingly though, I didn’t start hearing about him in a meaningful way until graduating from Hutch-Tech, a recurring theme in my book.

It was at the SUNY College at Brockport. During my one year there, there were several other former Yale Cup players whom I befriended. I played intramural basketball with some of them. One was former Kensington “Knight”, Samuel “Quinn” Coffey, who went on to coach both boys and girls himself in the Baltimore area. He, along with everyone else who saw Ritchie Campbell play, spoke of him like a God.

He Could Do Whatever He Wanted To On The Basketball Court

“I saw Ritchie play and saw why they said he should’ve gone to the NBA,” said Adrian Baugh. No. 30 Adrian Baugh was one the unsung heroes on Jason Rowe and Damien Foster’s great early 1990s Buffalo Traditional Bulls teams. Everyone said these types of things about Ritchie Campbell. Personally, I’ve only seen clips of him playing here and there on video, in addition to hearing about his play through word of mouth. Thanks to the scrapbooks created by my first coach at Hutch-Tech, the late Dr. Kenneth Leon Jones, I was able to read up on Campbell’s playing days.

He originally played high school basketball at a Catholic school which no longer exists called “DeSales”. My research for The Engineers revealed that there was a whole lineup of private schools in our area in the 1970s and 1980s that closed over the years due to the declining economics of the region. Aside from DeSales, other schools that closed included “Cardinal Doherty” and “Father Baker”. My late cousin, Al Richardson, played for Father Baker and was a star on the basketball court.

Burgard’s Dynamic Duo

“Ritchie and Marcus (pictured above) were the two guys I’d always hear about in the seventh grade when I started playing for LaSalle. Those dudes were amazing!” During my research, I learned that Ritchie Campbell’s legend reached up to nearby Niagara Falls into the LaSalle basketball dynasty (and probably beyond). One of the players on the Explorers’ Mt. Rushmore of great guards, No. 50 Carlos Bradberry noted hearing about Campbell’s brilliance starting in middle school.

Ritchie Campbell eventually enrolled at Burgard Vocational High School where he teamed up with No. 32 Marcus “Ice Cream” Whitfield. Ice Cream is also considered a legend. The tandem wreaked havoc in the Yale Cup and Section VI under Coach Don Brusky for two to three years. During the 1987-88 season, they led the Bulldogs out to Glens Falls and into the Class C State Final Four. They finished their careers on the All-Western New York First Team. Both had the abilities to play far beyond the Yale Cup, but ran into personal difficulties off the court.

Elite Basketball Company

In my first year on the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team we made the Class B-1 section final. There we all complimentary sectional programs recognizing all the playoff participants. In the back of the book, Section VI captured the all-time Western New York scoring leaders courtesy of the Buffalo News’ Mike Harrington. That was the 1991-92 season.

I’m certain the records and rankings have changed since then with all the players who have competed over the years. In any case, at that time, the number one and two players were Ritchie Campbell and Marcus Whitfield with 2,355 and 2,285 points respectively. The rest of the list was a who’s who of Western New York high school basketball with names including: Christian Laettner (Nichols), Damone James (Turner/Carroll), Ray Hall (McKinley) and Eric Eberz (St. Joe’s), again to name a few.

Hearing About Ritchie’s Legend Late

If it sounds strange that I had lofty dreams of repeating our 1990-91 team’s successes but didn’t learn about players like Ritchie Campbell until after the fact, this underlies one of the key threads in my story. That is I’ve learned that our lives are often a matter of circumstance. I would’ve jumped at the chance to go to the high school games and learn about Section VI basketball while I was in middle school. Unfortunately though no one in my ecosystem was there to point me in that direction. Had I seen players like Campbell play early on for myself, it would’ve shaped me as a player.

Another key piece to this puzzle is that Coach Jones, my first coach at Hutch-Tech, didn’t talk about players like Ritchie Campbell much. I suspect it was because he didn’t like or teach the isolation/one on one, street-style of basketball. He taught us a disciplined style on both end of the floor. Likewise exposing us younger players to phenoms like Ritchie Campbell might’ve been counterproductive. I’m just speculating here though.

Everyone Spoke of Ritchie with Reverence

In working on these promotional essays for The Engineers, I’ve stated that I’ve interviewed 30-40 players. Going through my notes I realized that many of my interviewees mentioned Campbell in their stories. In addition to Adrian Baugh’s and Carlos Bradberry’s comments above, the following are excerpts from my interviews where Ritchie’s legend came up.

Ryan Cochrane, Player, Cardinal O’Hara High School

“I’ve got a funny story about Ritchie Campbell. I didn’t know Ritchie at all. After getting on the Dewey Park team, Coach Dean would talk about him all the time, ‘Ritchie Campbell, Ritchie Campbell, Ritchie Campbell.’ I would say, ‘Who is this guy Ritchie Campbell?’ He took me to go watch Ritchie Campbell. He said, ‘Ritchie Campbell is going to score 50 points in this game.’ I think he had 15 points at half time, and I said there’s no way this guy scores 50 points and I think Ritchie wound up scoring 45 points in the second half which got him around 60 points.

They would say, ‘Oh, Ritchie would dog you,’ and I’d say, ‘Ritchie can’t beat me.’ So, one day Coach Dean called Ritchie and we drove to this gym to play one on one. We got there and the gym was closed. So that’s a running joke to this day.”

Damien Foster, Player, Buffalo Traditional High School

“You had no choice but to study the players before you. I heard about Ritchie Campbell and I saw him play one time. That was when him and Trevor Ruffin went head-to-head in “The Randy”, the Randy Smith League. I was young. I want to say 13 years old maybe. But I remember that game. I just remember seeing Ritchie come down and just ‘letting it fly’ – two steps across half court and just letting it fly. I was like, ‘Wow, who is this guy?’ Ritchie Campbell never really came through the Boys Club. Neither did ‘Ice Cream’ (Marcus Whitfield). They played more so downtown. They were down at ’Live at Five’.”

Dion Frasier, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“I think we went 3-15. It was miserable in the sense that you never want to be part of a losing team. That was the year – I played against Ritchie Campbell, Marcus Whitfield – we played Burgard at home that year and I think we lost by 60 points (laughing). Man, these cats – Ritchie was throwing it off the backboard and ‘Ice Cream’ was catching it and dunking it. They KILLED us!”

Ed Harris, Player, Riverside High School

“I met Ritchie my freshman year. I didn’t know Ritchie like that, and I don’t know Ritchie that well to this day. But shit, as a freshman, I’m sitting on the bench watching him and Damon Rand go at it at Burgard and he has the flu (Ritchie). He literally gives us 38 points and he’s falling and coughing and laying out. I’m like, this dude literally put 38 points up on us and he’s got the flu. He could barely run around and I’m like, this guy is amazing. I’m looking at Ritchie – the way he can just shoot and command the game – as a young boy I’m looking with a star struck look at him like, this dude is unbelievable.”

Reggie Hokes, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“Yes, I knew I wanted to play varsity basketball right away. I knew about Ritchie Campbell, Cliff Robinson and those guys, and I heard about Christian Laettner. I was familiar with Trevor Ruffin because we had a park called 75 and they would come down and play and they’d call it “Live at 75”, and they used to have games down there – Ritchie and all of them would have summer league games. Ritchie actually stayed around the corner from me. He stayed in the Willard Park Projects about five blocks from where I stayed on Emslie.”

Frankie Harris, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“I think my best game a was a game we lost to Bennett at the buzzer. I think I had 19 points. Another good game was in my senior year against Burgard and we lost that one too. Ritchie Campbell was player of the year. I remember that being a good tough close game. I remember he made some free throws at the end. We played good. I remember Curt played real good against him.”

Quincy Lee, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“We got destroyed by ‘Ice Cream’ our sophomore year, I believe. They destroyed us, but junior year, we were actually in that Burgard game until the end. I got benched the whole game and he (Coach Jones) asked me to go in with 20 to 30 seconds left and he asked me to go in to shoot threes to try to win the game. I didn’t get a shot off, but that’s how that game went and it was that close – a couple of three-pointers and we would’ve won. Ritchie was good and I believe at that point, it was the last game that we lost because junior year. We couldn’t afford to lose another game, because it would’ve been our seventh loss and we had to win the last two.”

Jason Rowe, Player, Buffalo Traditional High School

“Locally, I looked up to my uncle, Trevor Ruffin, and Ritchie Campbell. I looked at them and felt like I could do something. They were guys I could watch every day in a ‘hands on’ type of way. I grew up watching those guys so I idolized Ritchie, Nigel Bostic, and Marcus Whitfield. I vaguely remember Ray Hall. My experience with him was in the summer leagues. But as far as the big-name guys who were in the Yale Cup, I knew them because my cousin, James, was eight years older than me. So, he grew up in that era and took me to those games because he played at Lafayette. I was able to get my experience watching those games as well.”

Christain J. Souter, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“So, freshman year I played anytime we were getting blown out. I think coach did set up a couple of scrimmages, but I can’t recall any of that or any detail on that. Mostly it was, you would go play these guys and you go out to Burgard and there was Ritchie Campbell, and he’s still in the game and they’re up by 30 and he’s getting his points. Here comes the skinny white kid out there and it’s me, Dion and Mike, and everybody is trying to get into the score book and trying to get their first points and play defense; then you realize that you’ve got some different athleticism to deal with. Most of the time as freshman it was garbage time. That is what it is, I guess.”

Dennis Wilson, Player, Turner/Carroll High School and Riverside High School

“No. You just read about them in the news at that time and see the ‘Super Seven’. I didn’t have transportation at that time, so I didn’t see Ritchie play really until Randy Smith, and then when I was at Turner, he actually came and practiced with us. Fajri knows everybody. Ritchie was out of school at that time, and he came one Saturday morning.

That was obviously the highlight for a lot of us at the time. Him and Trev (Trevor Ruffin), I got to play with him at the Boys Club. This is when he was in Junior College in Hawaii and then I played against him a couple of times when he was a pro, so I got to see what a pro player looked like. Coach Russell at Riverside knew basketball. He was a great historian. We went over his house on winter breaks. We got pizza and we’d be watching old clips of Cliff and Ritchie and everything. I don’t know if he was the head coach with Cliff, but I think he was on the staff.”

Tim Winn, Player, LaSalle Senior High School

“I remember Ritchie Campbell coming to Niagara Falls to play against Modie (Cox) in an All-Star game. That was the first time ever seeing him play. I was in awe because he was one of those rare talents that you never see come through your area. From that point it made me pay attention. I wondered, what else was happening in Buffalo? It made you start paying attention to things outside of your neighborhood. Modie was a pure point guard – a pure leader, and I thought Ritchie was the kind of player who could just do anything. I don’t think there wasn’t anything Ritchie couldn’t do as a basketball player. He could shoot and make it from half court, and his ability to get assists was just as effective.”

Other Yale Cup Phenoms I Learned About Through Their Legends

It’s worth noting that Ritchie is just one of many Yale Cup legends, many of which I didn’t learn about until after I was finished playing. I played against the above-mentioned Damien Foster and Jason Rowe. Trevor Ruffin, Jason Rowe’s “big brother” and mentor’s name came up in numerous discussions as well, and if I had time, I could arguably write a piece on him. He was one of the few Yale Cup players to make it to the NBA. The former Bennett Tiger did it by way of the University of Hawaii.

There was also Campbell’s backcourt mate Marcus “Ice Cream” Whitfield. I coincidentally met Marcus recently at a cigar lounge in Maryland. Buffalo is a small city so you can quickly distill out a person’s history when meeting them. He was surprised that I knew of his and Ritchie’s legend.

I had never heard of him (a recurring theme), but McKinley’s Ray Hall came up in a discussion with a former Niagara University “Purple Eagle” player named Greg. It was at a gym in northern Virginia. He wasn’t from Western New York, but Ray Hall made so much noise on the court at McKinley that the area college players heard his name regularly. There was also Bennett’s Curtis Aiken, and then later Cliff Robinson from Riverside. Mark Price was another Riverside alum who made lots of noise after I graduated from Hutch-Tech, and I think went to play at Siena. I describe others in my Yale Cup piece.

The Night I Saw and Met Ritchie Campbell

If you’ve never played a competitive sport, you might not understand why someone like Ritchie Campbell holds God-like status for me and others. In a way he’s kind of like a Benji Wilson-type of figure from Chicago’s Simeon Vocational High School in the early 1980s. That’s a very moving documentary and story if you ever get the chance to watch it by the way.

Unlike Benji Wilson, Ritchie Campbell is still amongst the living, and I saw him a couple of years ago. It was Saturday, November 24, 2018. I had just come from the Buffalo Wild Wings Restaurant on Niagara Falls Boulevard. There I watched my Michigan Wolverines lose once again to the Ohio State Buckeyes in a lopsided game 62-39, which we were favored to win.

Afterwards the Park School hosted the University College High School from Rochester. Carlos Bradberry’s son, Jalen, transferred to the Park School and started for them. That night he treated us to one of the nastiest dunks I’ve ever seen.

On this particular play he advanced the ball up the floor with only one Rochester kid to beat. The kid mischievously shook his head looking to stop Jalen from scoring as both converged on the basket. They both rose up to the basket. Jalen leapt up off one foot and authoritatively slammed the ball through the basket on the kid causing the entire gym to erupt. I looked down for a brief second, but still caught most of it.

The Legend Walks In

Bishop Timon’s Head Coach and Buffalo Traditional legend, Jason Rowe, was there in the crowd among others. Later in the game, Ritchie Campbell walked in. We had never met, but I recognized him immediately. He was a little older and graying just like all the guys in our age group. He wore a bit of a beard and athletic gear, a sweatshirt, and jeans, I think. I looked on in awe, and everyone greeted him like the royalty he was.

After pondering it, I approached him, gave him my card, and asked to interview him. He smiled and thanked me for the compliments I gave him. He probably got asked for interviews all the time. We never talked afterwards which wasn’t surprising. After all, who was this scientist from out of town wanting to interview him and claiming to write a book? I got to shake his hand though and acknowledge his legend.

Burgard’s Next Great Guard after Ritchie: A Biblical Prophet’s Namesake

My research for The Engineers, revealed that years before Ritchie Campbell and Marcus Whitfield teamed up at Burgard, there was another duo. My uncle Anthony “Tony” Harris teamed up with Eugene Roberson for the Bulldogs in the 1960s. Shortly after Ritchie Campbell finished at Burgard, there was a guard-big man duo who teamed up in the red, white and blue. They were No. 11 Jeremiah Wilkes and the 6’7” No. 55 Shareef Beecher.

The pair coincidentally ended my middle school basketball team’s season my eighth-grade year at Campus West in the “Gold Dome Tournament”. They also both joined the 1,000-point club in my final Yale Cup game at Burgard my senior year. I don’t know that Jeremiah got the notoriety that the other great Yale Cup guards got, but those of us from that era remember him and his game. I wanted to acknowledge him in this piece.

Ritchie had that ‘Mike’ in Him!

“I saw Ritchie for the first time when I was a freshman! There were a lot of talented kids in Buffalo who didn’t leave, like Ritchie!” In addition to our talks at SUNY Brockport, Ritchie’s name came up again in my interview with the above-mentioned Coach Samuel “Quinn” Coffey decades later for my book. He saw Campbell play when his Kensington Knights, coached by Bob Mitchell (see my Yale Cup piece) matched up with the Burgard Bulldogs in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

“He (Ritchie) and Damon Rand had one of the best halves of basketball I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m going back to how they traded three-pointers back-to back-to back. Ritchie would come down and hit a three. Damon would come down and hit a three and get fouled,” Riverside’s Ed Harris said reflecting on witnessing Ritchie Campbell play for the first time. “It was literally high school basketball at its finest at that time and I was like, ‘I’m really in the right spot!’

“Ritchie had that ‘Mike’ in him because he could put that ball in the hoop. He definitely could put it in the hoop! My first time seeing him play was in the Pepsi Tournament when he had – it was him and the Pat dude – I can’t remember his name (Pat Jones). He threw the Pat dude an alley-oop and I was like, ‘OH!’”

Closing Thoughts on Ritchie Campbell’s Legend

Throughout this essay I hyperlinked Ritchie’s name to a feature from WGRZ in Buffalo which is still online. It goes into Ritchie’s entire story on and off the court. It also discusses the documentary that was made about him. In the feature it said that he had started coaching at one of the local high schools. In fact, when Ritchie walked into the game at the Park School, I recall one of my teammates from Hutch-Tech addressing him as “Coach”.

When I think of Ritchie Campbell, I think about a lot of things. In addition to not witnessing his brilliance as a basketball player, I think about the importance of studying your craft. No matter what you set out to do, it’s important to know the history of what you’re doing. In this instance if you want to be a basketball player, you must know the history of basketball. This applies beyond the basketball court though. It applies to business, music, politics, etc.

Studying your craft and knowing the history of it. It’s a theme that personally applied to my science training as my graduate advisor at the University of Michigan reminded me of it repeatedly. It’s also a key them in my book The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. Thank you for reading this piece. If you have memories of Ritchie Campbell or thoughts on anything I’ve said, please leave a comment under this essay.

More Related Content

Thank you for reading this piece. The images used in this essay came from an archive of Section VI basketball, carefully assembled over the years from issues of the Buffalo News. This archive was created by my first Coach at Hutch-Tech High School, Dr. Kenneth Leon Jones. Coach Jones was a mentor, a father figure, and is a central in my story. None of this would’ve been possible without him.

I intend to create more promotional/teaser pieces for The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story both via print and video as I journey through the final steps of the book’s completion. I created a page here on Big Words Authors for the purpose of giving a background of the book and grouping all the promotional narratives such as this in one place for interested readers. On my first blogging platform, the Big Words Blog Site, there are interviews with some the most accomplished Section VI players from my era including: Jason Rowe, Tim Winn, Carlos Bradberry and Damien Foster. I also interviewed legendary LaSalle Head Basketball Coach Pat Monti. Finally, there are several other basketball-related essays related to my book project. If you liked this piece, please share it on your social media and feel free to leave a comment.

The Big Words LLC Newsletter

For the next phase of my writing journey, I’m starting a monthly newsletter for my writing and video content creation company, the Big Words LLC. In it, I plan to share inspirational words, pieces from this blog and my first blog, and select videos from my four YouTube channels. Finally, I will share updates for my book project The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. Your personal information and privacy will be protected. Click this link and register using the sign-up button at the bottom of the announcement. If there is an issue with the form, you can also email me at [email protected] . Regards.

A Look Back at Riverside High School’s Basketball Legend Cliff Robinson

“But then years later when Clifford was retired from the NBA, the kids at Riverside didn’t even know who he was. I was shocked at that. The kids so much are living in the present. Players from two or three years ago, it seems like it’s of no interest to them. More today’s players.”

A Story Revealing Other Stories

This story is another promotional piece for my two-part book project entitled, The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. It looks back one of the few basketball players from Buffalo to make it to the NBA, Riverside High School’s Cliff Robinson. As described on the web page I created for the book, and the numerous pieces I created surrounding the book, I interviewed 30-40 players and coaches from Section VI. My research revealed several interesting facts. As described below, several names continued to come up during my research.

One of the bases for my story is the 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team. During my freshman year at the school, the team went on a magical run winning our city league, the Yale Cup 13-0. They then won the Section VI Class B sectional, coming within one game of berth in the state final four in Glens Falls, one of many basketball stories from our area over at that time. The pictures used in this essay come from an archive of Section VI basketball. It was assembled over the years from issues of the Buffalo News by my first Coach at Hutch-Tech High School, Dr. Ken Jones.

The Power of Interviews and Research

One of the most powerful aspects of conducting interviews is that you get to hear multiple points of view. In doing so you get to hear commonalities to your own experiences, and differences with others. There were several recurring themes in my interviews for The Engineers such as playing at Delaware Park, the conditions we played in within the Yale Cup league of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the importance of coaches who genuinely cared about the players. Certain names came up consistently including Ritchie Campbell and Marcus “Ice Cream” Whitfield (Burgard), Trevor Ruffin (Bennett) and finally, Cliff Robinson (Riverside), to whom this piece is dedicated.

I decided to write this narrative after the final interview for The Engineers. It was with one of Cliff Robinson’s coaches at Riverside High School, Coach Bill Russell, who coached the Riverside “Frontiersman” during my time at Hutch-Tech. Under Coach Russell’s leadership, the Frontiersman led by players including Ed Harris, Billy Nelson and Walter Gravely won the Yale Cup and the Class C sectional in 1992.

Ours was a fun interview which lasted two hours. During which Coach Russell, a true student of the game like my coach, Ken Jones, mentioned Cliff Robinson regularly. Throughout my research Coach Russell was the only one to refer to Cliff as “Clifford”. This essay is going to thus revisit my memories of the late Cliff Robinson as a distant onlooker, as well as present excerpts from players who remembered him, and one of his coaches.

My Memories of Cliff Robinson

Just like Christian Laettner who went on to become a superstar at Duke University from Western New York before playing in the NBA, I didn’t learn about Cliff Robinson until he was drafted by the NBA’s “Rip City” Portland “Trailblazers” team. That 1989-90 season he was a rookie on a veteran laden team with players including Clyde ‘The Glide’ Drexler, Jerome Kersey, Buck Williams, Terry Porter and Kevin Duckworth. They were a fun team to watch.

Coach Rick Adelman’s Trailblazers made it all the way to the NBA Finals that season before falling to the Detroit Pistons in five games, a ‘back-to-back’ championship for the Pistons, “The Bad Boys”. I vividly remember Robinson wearing the No. 3, flying down the lane in the open court dunking the ball with authority that season and in the playoffs. As time went on, he developed his entire game and began regularly shooting the ball from beyond the three-point arc.

Also etched into my memory is Cliff looking on painfully in the background wearing a red headband, as Michael Jordan trotted up the court with his palms in the air acting confused about his iconic Game 2 offensive performance. It was the 1992 NBA Finals, and he was in the process of burying the Trailblazers with a barrage of three-pointers. The Chicago Bulls went on to win that series in six games.

From Riverside to UConn

As described in The Engineers, I didn’t discover the Western New York high school basketball scene until I got into high school and was attempting to make the team there. So, I missed seeing players like the above-mentioned Christian Laettner, Cliff Robinson, and a host of others. Cliff wore No. 53 for the Riverside Frontiersman and was a key factor in their successes in the 1980s. His final year, the 1984-85 season, he earned All-Western New York honors at Riverside. I likewise missed Cliff’s career at the University of Connecticut (UConn) where he was credited with helping to put the school’s basketball program on the map. There he wore No. 00.

While the Huskies eventually became a college basketball power, early in Coach Jim Calhoun’s tenure it wasn’t that way. Upon joining the Big East Conference, they were consistently looking up at the teams that dominated it at the time. These programs included the Georgetown Hoyas, the Syracuse Orangemen, and the Villanova Wildcats; the headliner teams of the great Big East Conference of the 1980s. You can throw the St. John’s Redmen in there too.

Cliff’s Journey Through the NBA

Cliff started his professional basketball career with the above-mentioned Portland Trailblazers, but he played for numerous clubs. I think one of Cliff Robinson’s final stops in the NBA was coincidentally with the above-mentioned Detroit Pistons in the early 2000s. He was a veteran in the league at that point and played for several teams over his 18-year career. I was in graduate school at the nearby University of Michigan so his getting signed by the Pistons had a special significance for me. It was a few years before the 2004 season when the Pistons assembled their next championship unit, and they were cycling veterans on and off the team, trying to find that right chemistry.

“It’s time to say goodbye to Uncle Cliffy!” I’ll always remember the famous sportswriter, Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press, declaring his opinion that it was time for the Pistons to move on from Cliff. The 2002-03 season was his last one with the Pistons. From there he made stops in Golden State, Toronto, and New Jersey (now the Brooklyn Nets). I had stopped following the NBA closely by the time he retired, and the next time I recall hearing his name was when he died late in the summer of 2020. It turns out that he passed away at age 53 from lymphoma, and not Covid-19.

Stories about Cliff Robinson from My Research

As described when I conducted interview after interview for The Engineers, Robinson’s name continuously came up. The following are excerpts from my interviews where Cliff was mentioned.

Ryan Cochrane, Player, Cardinal O’Hara High School

“There was talk about Cliff Robinson. My stepmom was friends with him, and I still remember him pulling up in his black sports car, cheesing ear to ear. We wound up going to Delaware Park and playing a couple of games there. I couldn’t believe that I was playing with a caliber of player of Cliff Robinson, a legend in Buffalo.”

Ed Harris, Player, Riverside High School

“I cried when Michael Jordan retired, but as far as local talent, Trevor Ruffin was the guy that I loved to guard. Trevor brought the best out of me. Going up to Delaware Park – they were some of the best battles that you could ever have playing in the city of Buffalo. Guys like Trevor, Cliff (Robinson) would come back and play, and just the battles and all the kids and players who were in college at that time, they were just some of the best battles.”

Frankie Harris, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“From my junior to senior year, I was playing with those guys and they dogged me out, but that’s how you got better! Cliff Robinson used to come to the park and he and his brothers could play too. Nigel Bostic, Leonard Russell – all those guys could play, and I could only get better because I’m playing against them every day. I see kids today, they don’t have that, especially in Buffalo, kids are running the streets and there’s too much other stuff going on.”

Keith Hearon, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“First, Cliff Robinson, his sister used to live on the street after me. His sister was a big baller, so I used to go over their house to hoop in the back yard and she used to come down and play and talk about him. My uncles used to talk about him.”

Reggie Hokes, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“Yes, I knew I wanted to play varsity basketball right away. I knew about Ritchie Campbell and Cliff Robinson, all those guys. Also I had heard about Christian Laettner. I was familiar with Trevor Ruffin because we had a park called 75 and they would come down and play and they’d call it ‘Live at 75’, and they used to have games down there – Ritchie and all of them would have summer league games.”

Earl Holmes, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“I actually knew about them because Cliff Robinson lived on my street. In the summertime he used to take me to Roosevelt Park in Langfield to play with him and his sister. I used to play with them all the time. They lived three houses down from me! That’s my guy right there.”

Bill Russell, Coach, Riverside High School

“We had previously had some talented players. That team Clifford Robinson was on, that was a talented team. We had the unfortunate destiny of seeming to have to play Lackawanna every year. We played them several times and Lackawanna was a legendary and successful program. There were several state championships and then a few years later there was a Niagara Falls team that seemed to overpower teams. And we seemed to have to play Lackawanna in those years, several times in the sectionals. We lost to a very strong Lackawanna team. We might’ve won a state title that year. Despite having Clifford, we lost in the first round. Lackawanna would always be seeded No. 1 and undefeated!”

Dennis Wilson, Player, Turner/Carroll High School and Riverside High School

“Oh, absolutely. He knew basketball (Coach Russell). He was a great historian. We went over to his house on winter breaks. We got pizza and we’d be watching old clips of Cliff and Ritchie (Campbell) and everything. I don’t know if he was the head coach with Cliff, but I think he was on the staff.”

My Brother’s Cliff Robinson Story

On my sports YouTube channel, Big Discussions76 Sports, I recorded a voice-over video shortly after Cliff died in 2020 (embedded below). Sometimes when you record things, you listen to the playback and you realize that you misspoke. Or someone points it out to you. My brother, Amahl, had a funny story about Cliff. It involved when Cliff Robinson and his family visited the Homestyle Family Buffett. It was in Tonawanda, NY on Niagara Falls Boulevard in the early 1990s.

Legend has it that my brother, who worked at the restaurant (his first job), approached Robinson for an autograph. The 6’10” star replied, “I’m eating!” The story makes me laugh every time. If you check out that video, I state that my brother approached Robinson for an interview. He quickly corrected me in that it was an autograph. Robinson’s reaction was not surprising. Athletes, celebrities and entertainers often get approached and may tire of it. Cliff was a big deal for Buffalo kids like us at the time who did not know him growing up. It was likewise a big deal to see him anywhere around the city.

An Addendum Discussing Cliff’s Business Activities Post Retirement

When I originally published this piece, I was unfamiliar with how Cliff spent his years between his retirement from the NBA and his death. This essay received a lot of engagement/support in some of the basketball groups in Facebook that I’m a member of. There one of the other members pointed out that like many retired professional athletes, Cliff entered the realm of entrepreneurship.

Specifically, his interests were in the cannabis industry where he started a company called “Uncle Cliffy”. He partnered with a company called “Pistil Point Cannabis” out in the Portland area where he started his professional career. He was particularly passionate about increasing awareness that players could use marijuana-related products medicinally to help them through injuries for example. Robinson controversially used marijuana during this NBA career admittedly for anxiety, and to increase his personal focus. This conflicted with league policy.

Final Thoughts on Cliff Robinson

This concludes my piece on Cliff Robinson. Going back to the images used in this piece, they’re all from the Buffalo News. You’ll notice that he was pictured a couple of times with another notable Robinson, Grover Cleveland’s Keith Robinson. To my knowledge the two weren’t related. They were both notable players in the Yale Cup and Section VI at that time though. They were both taller front court players and went on to play major Division I basketball. As described, Cliff went on to UConn and Keith went on to Notre Dame shortly afterwards.

The opening quote for this piece was from Coach Bill Russell who had nothing but fond memories of Cliff. If you have memories about Cliff, whether they be from Buffalo, UConn, or the NBA, please feel free to share them below this essay. By the way, Buffalo is admittedly a small city, but it’s interesting how many of these stories led back to Riverside High School which, by the way, is my mother’s alma mater. There are excerpts from my discussion with Coach Russell throughout this piece. I’m going to conclude this essay with on more which speaks to what Cliff accomplished at the professional level.

“Clifford grew up by the Erie County Medical Center (ECMC), near Delevan and Grider. Those are kids that grew up with us. Clifford played 18 years in the NBA, 18 years. Even for people in the city – Clifford is not really a hero in the city as much as I thought he would be,” Coach Russell said. “About a year ago, or two years ago, James Harden passed 20,000 points and they made a big deal out of it. Harden hits the 20,000-point mark.

“I made a little statement on Facebook. I said, ‘Harden just passed 20,000 points and exceeds Clifford Robinson’s total which was 19,950 or something.’ There were a bunch of follow up comments saying, ‘Oh, my God, I never knew that Clifford scored that many points in his career!’ That’s true because nobody knew how significant a player that he was. Because it’s a big deal when somebody scores 20,000 points in the NBA. Clifford never had 1,000 points in high school, but he almost got 20,000 points in the NBA. That’s crazy!”

Related Content to My Book Project and this Essay

Thank you for reading this piece looking back at Cliff Robinson. I’ve created other promotional/teaser print and video pieces for The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. I’ve created a page here on Big Words Authors for the purpose of giving a background of the book. There I’ve grouped all the promotional pieces such as this in one place for interested readers. On the Big Words Blog Site, there are interviews of some of the most accomplished Section VI players from my era. They include: Jason Rowe, Tim Winn, Carlos Bradberry and Damien Foster. I also interviewed legendary LaSalle Head Basketball Coach, Pat Monti. Finally, there are several other basketball-related essays related to my book project. If you liked this piece, please share it on your social media and leave a comment beneath this piece.

The Big Words LLC Newsletter

For the next phase of my writing journey, I’m starting a monthly newsletter. It will be for my writing and video content creation company, the Big Words LLC. In it, I plan to share inspirational words and pieces from both my blogs. I will also share select videos from my four YouTube channels. Finally, I will share updates for my book project The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. Your personal information and privacy will be protected. Click this link and register using the sign-up button at the bottom of the announcement. If there is an issue with the form, you also email me at [email protected] . Regards.

The 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Varsity Basketball Team: An Inspiration For My Story And My Life

“Don’t get me wrong. I get it if people think they could’ve done better (individually). I get it. Would I sacrifice that senior year to have a better individual career and to go to a better school? HELL NAH! I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t. I don’t know about them. I wouldn’t!”

Another Promotional Essay For The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story

This essay is another promotional piece for my two-part book project entitled, The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. To learn more about the project, visit the overview page I created for it here on Big Words Authors. As described in earlier pieces I’ve created surrounding book, I’ve conducted considerable research for this project. A part of this research involved interviewing 30-40 players and coaches from Section VI, and from my era. For those unfamiliar, Section VI is the New York State Public High School Athletic Association’s (NYPHSAA’s) western-most section, encompassing the counties of Cattaraugus, Chautauqua, Erie, Niagara, and Orleans.

Some of the pictures used in this essay come from an archive of Section VI basketball. It was assembled over the years from issues of the Buffalo News by my first Coach at Hutch-Tech High School, Dr. Kenneth Leon Jones. Other pictures were taken from yearbooks from Hutch-Tech High School from the early 1990s. Coach Jones is discussed throughout this piece and is hyperlinked to a previous essay. Finally, a video about him from my sports YouTube channel is embedded at the end of this essay.

The Story Of The 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Varsity Basketball Team

“That was a great feeling being around a group of guys who played together and really liked being around each other!”

During my freshman year at Hutch-Tech High School, the 1990-91 Engineers went on a magical run winning our city league, the “Yale Cup” with a record of 13-0. They then marched through the Section VI Class B playoff bracket to win that championship. Their season ended one game short of a berth in the State Final Four in Glens Falls, NY, which I’ll discuss later. From my vantage point at the time, it was a very big deal. Afterwards I dreamt of doing what they did.

Interestingly, my research revealed multiple points of view on that magical season. It also revealed the significance of the 1990-91 team’s accomplishments relative to those of other Section VI teams of that era. In my book project, there is an entire bonus chapter dedicated to the 1990-91 Engineers. However, I also wanted to create a promotional/teaser piece just dedicated to them.

We Didn’t Do Anything That Spectacular! A Perspective On The Story

“When I heard you wanted to interview me, I was thinking, ‘Man, we weren’t a special team. We didn’t do anything that spectacular,’” said No. 13, Curtis Brooks (pictured above guarding Mike Mitchell of Williamsville South High School). He was the starting point guard and one of the leaders of the 1990-91 team. It was a summer-fall day when I interviewed him in downtown Washington, DC at L’ Enfant Plaza. We sat outside at lunch time, and you could hear the flurry of government workers and contractors walking by as well as the commuter trains coming and going in the background.

One of the most exciting interviews for me was that with No. 13. In The Engineers, I describe him as the ‘engine’ that drove the 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys Basketball Team during its magical season. Interestingly, while I looked back at Brooks, his teammates, and their accomplishments with reverence, he surprisingly wondered what they had done that was so special.

Keep in mind that we were both in our 40s at the time. We both travelled the country and had many experiences outside of Buffalo. Furthermore, in all honesty, when you think about high school state championships, NCAA championships and NBA world championships, how big a deal is it to win your city league and sectional championships in high school? In comparison to the former three accomplishments, maybe it isn’t that big a deal. However, for a freshman just coming into the school with little understanding of the game and its multiple contexts and layers, it was a very big deal.

We Still Don’t Know How Ya’ll Did That!

“We weren’t the most talented team, but we knew each other. What that team had been through with Jones (Coach Ken Jones), we were comfortable with the system, and everyone had gotten better. We had played together,” Jerrold “Pep” Skillon said regarding the 1990-91 team’s championship run. “To this day, some of the players from the other the Yale Cup teams still say, ‘We still don’t know how ya’ll did that!’” I laughed at this revelation by Skillon as I could imagine the disbelief of players from the other schools continuing years later. How did Hutch-Tech of all the 14 Yale Cup schools do that?

“We did have some good players but even if you were better talent-wise, we had better team chemistry! That goes back to what you were saying in terms of the teams you played on – they didn’t have that chemistry. It was like everybody for themselves,” Skillon continued contrasting his experience with mine. “Well, we didn’t have that! These were my boys. We all came up in high school together, and we hung out after games. We were boys!”

Going 13-0 In The Yale Cup

By the way, how common was it to go 13-0 in the Yale Cup? In some of our last talks, our late coach, Dr. Kenneth Leon Jones, a central character in my story, asked me to investigate who had done it before his beloved 1990-91 team. Approximately four years earlier, the Trevor Ruffin-led Bennett “Tigers” did it on their way to the State Class B Final Four in Glens Falls, NY.

I believe the Buffalo Traditional Bulls, led by Damien Foster and Jason Rowe, did it in their magical senior seasons in 1995-96 (all their seasons were magical in my opinion). It also turns out that Hutch-Tech had done it back in the 1970s. Someone on Facebook who commented an earlier Engineers team had done it when I shared the overview page for The Engineers in the group, “You know you’re from Buffalo, NY if……”. Regardless, it was a head scratcher for many at the time that the 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team got it done in the fashion they did.

Losing To Buffalo Traditional By 49 And Marcus Whitfield Scoring 50 Points

“I’m not going to lie and say that I wasn’t embarrassed. I remember to this day, the Traditional game sophomore year. They beat us by 49 points. I never lost a game like that game in my life! We were embarrassed. My cousin went there, and Traditional had a bunch of pretty girls,” Pep Skillon said reflecting on a lopsided loss to Buffalo Traditional his sophomore year, Coach Jones’ first year. “We go in there and everybody’s got their hair cut, all that. We got stomped!

“Don’t get me wrong, they were one of the best teams in the area at the time. They went on a run to the states that year, whatever, but I remember that. They stomped us. I’ll never forget that game, they stomped us out. That was an embarrassing game sophomore year.”

“Marcus Whitfield, he scored 50 points on us! We were losing but we were like, ‘He’s not going to get 50 on us,’ but then he got 50 on the nose. We did have some pride, but we didn’t have the horses,” Skillon continued. “I remember that Burgard game where they blew us out because he scored 50 and the Traditional game. Those games stood out because that was the first time, I was embarrassed on the basketball court. We didn’t fight hard. Traditional beat us by 49 points and he put up 50 points again us (Whitfield).”

Experiencing Sobering Losses Early On: Iron Sharpening Iron

“I think we went 3-15. It was miserable in the sense that you never want to be part of a losing team. That was the year – I played against Ritchie Campbell, Marcus Whitfield – we played Burgard at home that year and I think we lost by 60 points (laughing),” said Reverend Dion Frasier of his freshman season. “Man, these cats – Ritchie was throwing the ball off the backboard and ‘Ice Cream’ was catching it and dunking it.

“They KILLED us! Ice Cream was Marcus Whitfield. They waxed us but that was a memorable game for me because that was the first time, I ever played in a varsity game. I got in the game because we were getting blown out and that’s when I scored my first two points. It was miserable, but it was fun!”

These two excerpts from my discussions with Pep Skillon and Dion Frasier, were fun to listen to and educational as well. The core players of the 1990-91 Engineers not only grew up in Coach Jones’ system together, but they also experienced several difficult losses early on which helped galvanize them as a team. Furthermore, they got experience playing against some of the Yale Cup’s all-time greats including Ritchie Campbell and Marcus Whitfield. I’d heard about the legend of Ritchie Campbell before, but this was my first time hearing about Marcus Whitfield’s brilliance.

The “Risk Factor”: A Key Ingredient To The 1990-91 Team’s Success

There were several keys to the 1990-91 Engineers’ magical season. One was the hands-on experience against some of the area’s greatest players just described. The term “The Risk Factor” came also back to me as I was writing this essay. Coach Jones shared the term with me when we discussed his beloved 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys Basketball Team. As I’ll describe, it involved one of his key basketball teachings, disciplined ‘man to man’ team defense.

“We were small,” said Reverend Dion Frasier reflecting on the 1990-91 season, his junior year. The 1990-91 Engineers weren’t the biggest or most physically talented team that ever took the floor in the Yale Cup. A part of their secret to success though was the disciplined and staunch man to man team defense that they played, particularly their backcourt.

In addition to the above-mentioned No. 13, Curtis Brooks, there was also No. 40, Paul Saunders. Neither guard was taller than 6’2”, but they were stellar defenders. In fact, Coach Jones attributed the team’s success in large part to No. 13’s and No. 40’s defensive tenacity. Their long arms and quick feet allowed them to take ‘risks’ or anticipate/gamble for steals. Likewise, they recovered easily whenever they anticipated incorrectly. Their play created lots of easy baskets for the team, a key ingredient to its success that season. This was one of the ways they were able to score 100 points or more multiple times that season (or close to it).

Was It The Chemistry?

“It was the chemistry that made that team successful, NOT the coaching!” Most of the content I’ve created surrounding my project has lauded Coach Ken Jones. In fact, there are many of us who still look back on him with gratitude and reverence. That said, as described in my piece entitled, Lasting Lessons Basketball Taught Me: Different Things To Different People, he did have his share of detractors and critics. Some of them sat on the bench with him wearing the maroon gold Hutch-Tech uniforms. To learn some more about Coach Jones and his legacy, once again see the embedded video at the end of this essay.

The last quote regarding the team’s chemistry came from a player whom most of us knew around school as ‘J-Bird’. J-Bird was No. 34 Jermaine Skillon, the younger brother of the above-mentioned Pep Skillon. His was another one of my favorite interviews due to the levity in our discussion. J-Bird was yet another talented player on the 1990-91 team, and he was from my brother’s and the above-mentioned Dion Frasier’s Class of 1992. Let’s just say that J-Bird didn’t always see eye to eye with Coach Jones. Looking back, he believed it was the chemistry amongst the core of the 1990-91 team that led to its success that season and not the coaching per se.

I’ve shared this not to stir controversy, but to note that for a given piece of history, there are often multiple points of view, and I think J-Bird’s is worth considering. I experienced the importance of team chemistry during my short basketball journey, and what happens when you don’t have it. It’s also something I’ve witnessed play out in sports as a spectator years after high school. This spans across all levels: high school, college, the pros and even in the Olympics. It even plays a role in work settings.

Playing Both Yale Cup And Fundamental Basketball

“On defense you ANTICIPATE, and on offense you REACT!” This was one of Coach Jones’ most fundamental teachings. Other players in fact attributed the 1990-91 team’s success to Coach Jones’ fundamentals, principles, and his system. As described in many of my writings and videos, Coach Jones’ hallmark teachings were fundamentals, team defense, and both disciplined and unselfishness on offense. He encouraged taking good shots on offense and ‘working’ the ball for uncontested layups. Having played under him for a brief period, and after conducting my many interviews, my conclusion is that the 1990-91 team’s success was a mixture of both the team’s chemistry and Coach Jones’ system.

J-Bird’s brother, Pep, acknowledged that the 1990-91 Engineers were equipped to play multiple styles of basketball. They could play a more ‘up and down’, ‘racehorse’ style of game that the Yale Cup was known for. They were also trained to play the slower more disciplined suburban-style which involved set offenses, often to counter zone defenses. Many Yale Cup teams played zone defenses to prevent penetration and to avoid individual players getting into foul trouble. Many of the suburban teams also played zone, but for the purpose of countering the more athletic style played by most Yale Cup schools.

When necessary, the 1990-91 Engineers were trained to methodically ‘work’ the ball to find good shots for the team. They routinely did this instead of hoisting up the first available shot or driving to the basket with ‘reckless abandon’ as they say. Working the ball was a term Coach Jones used for patiently finding quality shots on offense, and not taking a shot early in a possession if unnecessary. Likewise, many of the suburban teams were astonished to see a Yale Cup school play this way as it was out of character for our league.

More On Chemistry, Competitive Will And Killer Instinct

Again, the chemistry was critical too. If you look throughout sports, the players on most championship teams enjoy being around one another. They often hang out together in their spare time. They unselfishly accept their roles within the unit even if it means not being in the spotlight. If certain players within the team are struggling, the others have a way of encouraging them. Carlos Bradberry, of the LaSalle Explorers, noted this in my interview with him regarding team chemistry.

“Curt Brooks was a warrior! He was at the park every day in the summer before our senior year practicing in a weight jacket,” said another senior from the 1990-91 team, No. 11, Quincy Lee. Brooks was humble about this as well when I asked him about it. It was something he did for a competitive edge and to make up for the hours he spent at his job that summer of 1990, and away from the basketball court.

This is significant because as I learned in my own basketball journey, regardless of how thorough a coach’s system is, it can’t completely cover up a lack of talent and ability, bad team chemistry and a lack of camaraderie. It can sometimes cover up for injuries and having lesser talent. It also can’t give players a sense of drive, killer instinct, or passion. The core of the 1990-91 team had these qualities.

The “Mighty” Hutch-Tech

“On the news at nighttime they called us ‘The MIGHTY Hutch-Tech’!” I was a freshman that 1990-91 season so I didn’t witness all the fanfare surrounding the team. A low grade in one class prevented me from participating in the program early that season as their momentum gradually built. I just watched a few games from the sidelines and listened to the morning announcements, not understanding the significance of everything. The above-mentioned Quincy Lee, one of the seniors on that team shared with me during our interview that one of the news stations gave them a special nickname as they continued winning that season.

“I can’t believe they had us ranked third in the state,” Coach Jones said in my first year on the team (the 1991-92 season) and then years later. After two early season losses to the Willie Cauley-led Niagara Falls Senior High School “Power Cats”, they went on a 17-game winning streak, during which it seemed they couldn’t lose again. That winning streak included going 13-0 in the Yale Cup. They won four more games in postseason play in route to the Section VI Class B championship. They knocked off teams including: Maryvale, Clarence, Kenmore East and Williamsville South. By the way, for all of you basketball junkies out there, Willie Cauley turned out to be the father of the University of Kentucky’s and the NBA’s Willie Cauley-Stein. One of the players from the 1990-91 team revealed this to me in our talks.

Doing It A Different Way

As described earlier, other teams had gone 13-0 in the Yale Cup and went on to make deep runs in postseason play. I’m thinking about the above-mentioned Bennett High School, in addition to Burgard Vocational and Buffalo Traditional High Schools. It was probably how Coach Jones, and his 1990-91 team did it that season that was so impressive. And again, as a novice at the time I didn’t understand everything I was seeing. Researching the entire series of events years later though, it was remarkable in my opinion.

Again, most of the players on that team admitted that athletically, they were small in terms of size. Their tallest player, No. 55, Charles “Chuck” Thompson, was 6’5”. They also didn’t play a flashy style of basketball with lots of high-flying dunks and no-look passes like you would see in some of the old And1 Mixtape Tours, by players like Rafer Alston, best known as ‘Skip 2 My Lou.

A Winning Formula

Instead, they played a patient and disciplined style as described above using fundamentals, disciplined man to man team defense, methodical offensive sets and unselfishness across the board. They talked on defense, boxed out and rebounded the ball, and created an abundance of easy baskets for one another.

“Games are won and lost on the free throw line!” They were also a solid free throw shooting team, one of Coach Jones’ other basketball gospels. They didn’t win every game decisively and it was their free throw shooting which secured some of their close victories. Some victories required late timely baskets by No. 13, Curtis Brooks, from close range or out beyond the three-point arc. Others were due to team efforts where there were balanced point totals, assist and rebounds.

Unselfishly Putting The Puzzle Pieces Together

“Basically, it’s like I said. Everything was a piece of the puzzle. Like me for example. They used to call me the ‘Black Hole’, because they knew that if they threw the ball down to the me that I was going to shoot it! That’s the way that I was when I got the ball,” said Charles Thompson, the center for the team.

“Not everyone had that scoring mentality. I had it, Pep had it, Curt had it. Quincy was the outside three-point shooter. Everybody was learning how to play their role to get us to a point to play better,” Thompson continued. “Because after Frankie (Harris) left, it was just us there, the original people that came in that freshman year. The entire starting five, we could now work together, and we did good.”

It Wasn’t A “Star” System: No One Was Looking To Be A Star

“So that’s what his structure was. We didn’t really have – it really wasn’t like a pro-offense. It wasn’t about dumping the ball down to one person. It was like that, but it wasn’t designed for that,” Curtis Brooks said during our interview. “He (Coach Jones) never said, ‘Get the ball. I want you to SHOOT! SHOOT! SHOOT!’ He’d say, ‘Move the ball and if you’re in that area, that’s your shot!’ It wasn’t a star system!”

Of the many fascinating aspects of my discussions with Curtis Brooks, none was more fascinating than that of Coach Jones’ offensive philosophy. Still a novice and a ‘project’ at the time, I didn’t understand everything. In a nutshell, Coach Jones taught a team-oriented style of offense where no one player was featured. The focus was on moving the ball and creating good shots for everyone, especially “uncontested” layups. He also encouraged easy baskets off created turnovers.

This arguably conflicted with players who wanted to play “isolation-style” basketball which we learned by default on Buffalo’s playgrounds. It also conflicted with what I call in The Engineers, the ‘Fab Five Era’. It was the era where highly talented younger players came in and immediately demanded to play based upon their talent levels, but not necessarily embracing the coach’s culture and teachings.

A Special Group Of Players

“Jones was looking for a certain kind of kid, a coachable kid!” I could attribute this quote to a single player, but because multiple people stated it, I consider it a recurring, underlying theme. Coach Jones was in fact not looking for the most talented kids, but instead kids who would submit to his coaching and culture, and sacrifice for their teammates.

Keep in mind that this was all at our city’s lone technical high school which required an entrance exam for admittance. In writing my story, I’ve pondered that while Coach Jones knew his fundamentals and was a “true student of the game”, he also gathered a special collection of players at the right time. Interestingly, many of these players decided to attend the school before he got there (see my Kevin Roberson piece). They were coachable, driven, had good chemistry as described above, and they loved playing the game. The latter point is important because some of them went through hard times and pondered quitting but didn’t.

That said, Coach Jones gathered those players in such a way that they all grew up together in his program. They stayed together, and this created a bit of a family. It wasn’t a smooth ride for every player, but they loved each other and the game enough to persevere through the early losing they experienced. They also persevered through their knowledgeable, but at times onery coach, who admitted that if he could go back that, “I would be just as demanding, but more understanding!” He ran the entire program by himself with no regular assistants and no formal modified or junior varsity program feeding him trained up players. Again, remarkable.

“You have to be good to be lucky and lucky to be good,” Coach Jones said to his players often among other things. Arguably, there was a bit of luck and circumstance in what the 1990-91 Engineers accomplished. A bit of a ‘vacuum’ was created in the Yale Cup that 1990-91 season. Super stars like the great Ritchie Campbell and Marcus Whitfield from Burgard, Trevor Ruffin from Bennett, and Chris Williams from Buffalo Traditional had graduated. This left the championship “up for grabs” as my Uncle Jeff used to say. The next year in the 1991-92 season, the Riverside Frontiersman won the Yale Cup with a record of 11-2. The year after that, the McKinley Macks and the Seneca Indians shared the title with a similar record. The Buffalo Traditional Bulls dominated the league for the next three years.

The Difference One Team Can Make

“It was a nice chapter.” As described in the opening of this piece, Curtis Brooks, the engine who powered the 1990-91 Engineers initially felt that what they did wasn’t that big a deal. I interviewed him twice. The second time we spoke, he acknowledged that for our school at that time, it was in fact a big deal. While they were in Coach Jones’ program doing what they had been groomed to do the previous two to three years, others of us looked on in amazement. When you’re in a little fishbowl like a high school and one of your sports teams is winning in dominant fashion, it is a big deal. It also means something when you see the guys on that team up close around the hallways of the school in between classes. You can start to dream of doing it yourself.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’ve never forgotten the 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Engineers. I learned of them two to three years before getting to Hutch-Tech through my brother Amahl’s yearbooks. Once I got to the school, I wanted to be just like them. I first saw them play in their 93-90 thriller they pulled out against the Grover Cleveland “Presidents”. That day they wore their white tank tops, and their maroon and trunks. They mostly wore black sneakers like the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls. Yellow ribbons were pinned into their laces in tribute to our military servicemen and women fighting in the Persian Gulf (Operation Desert Storm).

Did I accomplish that goal of being just like them? Well, I would encourage you to check out my book project once its finished. I’ll just say that it was a lot harder than it looked for a number of reasons. The 1990-91 Engineers did, however, inspire me to strive for something for the first time in my young life. They helped teach me a set of lessons that arguably carried me through the rest of my life into multiple arenas.

The Class Of 1992 Seniors: The 1990-91 Team’s Unsung Heroes

“I loved Michael Mann. His head was always in the game!” I couldn’t finish this essay without acknowledging the 1990-91 team’s unsung heroes. On any championship team, there are players in the background contributing who may not get as much recognition.

The times I saw the 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team play, I observed that Coach Jones kept a ‘tight player rotation’. He typically subbed in three juniors: No. 21 Michael Mann, No. 24 Dion Frasier, and No. 44 Christain J. Souter. They had been in the program since day one when Coach Jones took it over two years earlier when they were freshman. Like the Class of 1991 seniors, they literally grew up in the program.

Michael Mann usually spelled Curtis Brooks at the point guard position albeit not for long. In our discussions Coach Jones always spoke of Michael Mann affectionately. He always noted that, “His head was always in the game even if he wasn’t on the floor.” The next year I found that he also supported his teammates even when he was sidelined by injury and unable to play. He always kept a positive attitude, something not easy to do.

Chris Souter and Dion Frasier got in to play defense and took the occasional open shots that year. The three of them were the tri-captains, the next year for the 1991-92 team, my sophomore season and first year on the team. They were arguably the last remnants of the culture Coach Jones originally established when he got to Hutch-Tech.

It Was The Culture

“It was the culture. Jones set the culture,” Pep Skillon said discussing the basketball program Coach Jones created at our school. In hindsight it was a mini-college program. One of the main pillars of that culture was perseverance. That is staying focused and hopeful during adverse stretches. The 1991-92 team likewise experienced struggles that the 1990-91 did not. Somehow though, it rebounded for a deep sectional run of its own. In my opinion, this was due in large part the above-mentioned tri-captains, and things weren’t the same once they graduated.

“That was a great feeling being around a group of guys who played together and really like being around each other. Those guys were great. They were great teammates as well as great guys off the court – a very close-knit group (the 1990-91 team). They were friends as well as teammates.” The second opening excerpt for this piece is from No. 23 Adonis Coble who played on both teams. He was also a member of the Class of 1992. His words expressed the importance the culture of that 1990-91 team. He led our 1991-92 team in his own way during some difficult stretches the next year.

Their Final Game: The 1991 Far West Regional

The 1990-91 team’s final game was a lopsided loss to the Newark “Reds” from the Rochester area. It was the 1991 Class B Far West Regional or the Super-Sectional. There the winner earned a trip to Glens Falls. The Reds were a physically bigger, stronger and more experienced team. They defeated the Kensington Knights also from the Yale Cup in the same game the previous year.

As often is the case in sports, there are multiple explanations for what happened. There were rumors of the core the 1990-91 team staying out late the night before the game. My research revealed that this wasn’t altogether true. It further revealed that the team was late getting to Rochester’s War Memorial Stadium. There was an accident on the I-90 expressway. They started changing on the bus and got to the arena with little time before tipoff to settle in before the challenge at hand. It was a loss that Coach Jones lamented until his last days.

How Would They Have Fared Against The Dominant Buffalo Traditional Teams?

One of the most fun (and nerve-wrecking) parts of sports is speculating on matchups that we’ll never see. In the movie Rocky Balboa, there’s a scene where a sports network simulates Rocky matching up with the current much younger champion, Mason “The Line” Dixon. The computer likewise predicts Rocky knocking out the younger fighter, setting up the movie’s plot. Likewise, we speculate on how Mike Tyson would’ve fared against Muhammad Ali. We speculate on how players like LeBron James and Stephen Curry and their teams would’ve fared in the 1980s NBA when the game was more physical. We speculate on how today’s NFL champions would’ve fared against the more physical 1980s and 90s teams.

I’ve likewise wondered how the 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team would’ve matched up with the above-mentioned legendary Damien Foster– and Jason Rowe-led Buffalo Traditional teams which dominated the Yale Cup from 1993 to 1996 (and other notable Yale Cup champions). The Bulls were athletic, tall, and highly skilled. Most of their players could shoot the ball from long-range and they eventually made two trips to Glens Falls, winning the federation championship the second time. It would’ve been an interesting matchup as the 1990-91 Engineers had a level of athleticism and physicality of their own. They were fundamentally sound though on both ends of the court. Many would give the advantage to Coach Joe Cardinal’s Bulls, but I predict the 1990-91 Engineers would’ve been a formidable foe for them.

The Players Who Contributed To That Season But Graduated

The Damien Foster– and Jason Rowe-led Buffalo Traditional teams seemed to instantly ascend as champions. In contrast the 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team gradually built up to that point. As described, there were numerous lumps along the way leading up to that season. For many teams that evolve to become champions, there are often players who contribute along the way who don’t ultimately get to hoist the championship trophies.

For the 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball team there was Adrian Brice of the Class of 1989. The lone senior on the 1988-89 team, he played point guard the year Coach Jones took over the program. He came up in numerous interviews, and his nickname was “Flash”. From the Class of 1990, there was Ed Lenard, Jerome Freeman, Frankie Harris, Derrick Herbert and Michael Brundige. One of Coach Jones’ favorite stories to tell us was that of Frankie Harris passing up uncontested layups. He embellished the story for humor, and used it as a teaching tool.

Closing Thoughts On The 1990-91 Engineers

“Curt Brooks’ work ethic was unbelievable. He would wear a weighted flap jacket during basketball practice. Although he was ‘the star’, he didn’t slack off during practice, or during the games,” said Jermaine Fuller, one of two sophomores on the 1990-91 team. His words reflect the lasting impression No. 13, Curtis Brooks made, and it reminds me of a quote that Brooks shared with me that Coach Jones told them all the time. That quote said, “Every person can make a difference, and everyone should try!”

I also want to acknowledge the other players on the team that I didn’t mention. In the book, the names are changed for those who didn’t agree to be a part of this work. For historical completeness however, I want to mention the other guys here. They are Jason Parrish and Juno Patterson both from the Class of 1992. There was also Andre Huggins from the Class of 1993. The 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team was very close to Coach Jones’ ideal make up of a team. This consisted of five seniors, five juniors and two sophomores.

I’ll divulge that it’s a rule that he bent his final two years at Hutch-Tech. To learn about that and how those of us who tried to continue what the 1990-91 team’s success fared, you’ll have to read The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. I’ll just say that it turned out to be a lot harder than it looked for everyone. And again, there were a number of reasons for that.

I spoke of Coach Jones numerous times throughout this piece. If you want to learn some more about him and his importance my story and my life, take a look at the at the video below from my sports YouTube channel. If you watch it, please give it a like and leave a comment.

Acknowledgements And Final Words

The opening quote for this piece is from the above-mentioned Pep Skillon, which I think underscores a major theme of this account, unselfishness. I want to acknowledge a lot of people without whom this essay (and others) would not have been possible. Thank you to the players and coaches I interviewed. There is also Coach Jones and the Jones family. Finally, I’d like to acknowledge all the team managers who were critical parts of the basketball program during those years.

I also want to acknowledge Laura Lama from my Class of 1994. The second picture of the 1990-91 Engineers as a team is from our 1991-92 yearbook the next year, which Laura kindly shared with me. There was a back forth to get the image just right, and she had more important matters to deal with at the time. It’s missing one player, but it was always one of my favorite pictures of the team. You can see the old and antiquated gym we played in which no longer exists. Finally, I want to thank the previously mentioned Michael Mann for the visual of his gold jacket he shared from the 1990-91 team’s championship season.

Thank you for reading this piece. I intend to create more promotional/teaser pieces for The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. These will be both via print and video as I journey through the final steps of the book’s completion. As described, I created a page here on Big Words Authors for the purpose of giving a background of the book and grouping all the promotional pieces such as this in one place for interested readers.

On my first blogging platform, the Big Words Blog Site, there are interviews of some of the most accomplished Section VI players from my era including: Jason Rowe, Tim Winn, Carlos Bradberry and Damien Foster. I also interviewed legendary LaSalle Head Basketball Coach, Pat Monti. Finally, there are several other basketball-related essays related to my book project. If you liked this piece, please share it on your social media and leave a comment beneath this piece.

The Big Words LLC Newsletter

For the next phase of my writing journey, I’m starting a monthly newsletter. I will be for my writing and video content creation company, the Big Words LLC. I plan to share numerous things. They include inspirational words, pieces from this blog and my first blog, and select videos from my four YouTube channels. Finally, I will share updates for my book project The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. I promise to protect your personal information and privacy. Click this link and register using the sign-up button at the bottom of the announcement. You can also email me [email protected] to subscribe. Regards.

A Look Back At The Yale Cup: Section VI’s Basketball Diamond In the Rough

“The Yale Cup teams developed the reputation for not playing defense or with structure of any kind. It was considered a renegade league!”

“It’s an altogether different picture from when you played at Tech to when I played, and it’s even more of a different look for the kids who are playing in the Yale Cup now. Back then the Yale Cup was not represented in Section VI. There was no state title representation or anything. This was in the late 1960s. I think they went to Section VI in 1971. Our group of athletes and the kids the year after me, we were really upset that in 1971 or 1972, they allowed the Buffalo Public Schools to play in Section VI and compete for the state championship. It was around 1971 and 72 or something like that.”

“That was one of the downfalls or pitfalls which kept our schools from being recognized because there were quite a few kids who could’ve played Division I football or basketball that were not seen at the time. You either had to be a Bob Lanier or a Gil Harmon, who were the biggest and the most athletic – Bob Lanier was 6’9” in high school; or like Marty Cott who went to Tech the same year that I did. He ended up playing baseball for the Houston Astros.”

The Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team: My Introduction To The Yale Cup

This story is another promotional piece for my two-part book project entitled, The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. The previous piece paid tribute to the late Kevin Roberson. I’ve created a page here on my writer’s blog for the book, if you’re curious to learn some more about it. In the numerous pieces I’ve already created surrounding the book, I’ve shared that I’ve conducted 30-40 interviews for the project. These discussions with former players and coaches from Section VI have revealed several interesting facts.

One of the focal points for my story is the 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team. Our school nickname was the Engineers, for which the books are named. During my freshman year at the school, they went on a magical run. They first won the city league championship, the Yale Cup, with a 13-0 record. They then won the Section VI Class B championship, coming within one game of a berth in the Class B State Final Four in Glens Falls. From my vantage point at the time, it was a big deal, and I dreamt of doing what they did.

The Yale Cup And Section VI

While my story focuses on the Hutch-Tech Engineers, it also involves other teams from Western New York. Many of the teams are from our league the Yale Cup. It also tells the stories to a lesser extent of some of the other teams in Section VI. Even today, Section VI is the western most section of the New York State Public High School Athletic Association (NYSPHSAA). There are 12 total sections spanning from the Great Lakes to the Adirondack Mountains and finally down to Long Island.

Section VI of the late 1980s and early 1990s was comprised of many city and suburban public high schools and leagues. They were located in the numerous Western New York State counties including Chautauqua, Cattaraugus, Erie, Niagara, and Orleans. Our league was called the Yale Cup. It was a 14-team league comprised of schools within the Buffalo Public School System. At one point the Yale Cup was considered the best high school basketball league in Section VI. However, like the City of Buffalo and our region in general, it went through hard times which were arguably rooted in the loss of steel industry. This essay is a tribute to the Yale Cup as I and others knew it, and to a lesser degree Section VI.

Oh, by the way, the private school teams played in the Monsignor Martin League. I must mention them because they had some of the best players and teams in Western New York every year. Some of the schools included Cardinal O’Hara, Canisius, Turner/Carroll and St. Joseph’s.

A League Named After An Ivy League School But Wasn’t Ivy League

One of the more interesting things about the Yale Cup, was its name. I don’t know who named the league, but it seemed to have been named after the prestigious Ivy League institution of higher learning in Connecticut, Yale University. Coincidentally, our city football league was named the Harvard Cup, I guess after Harvard University. The girls’ basketball league was called the Canisius Cup, most likely after Canisius College. I don’t know who named the leagues and why, but ‘The Yale’, now affectionately referred to by some of its former players, was anything but Ivy League in quality as I’ll describe.

14 Schools Of Varying Sizes

There were 14 schools in the Yale Cup of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The lineup of schools in general changed over the decades. Like the private schools, some of the Yale Cup schools were closed or consolidated for economic and logistical reasons. I think the core line up of schools remained the same though. During my youth, I heard numerous stories of an East High School. During my teen years, it was converted into the Buffalo Vocational and Technical Center (BVTC). City Honors (described below) played its home games there. The schools comprising the Yale Cup of the late 1980s and early 1990s, their nicknames and school colors were as follows:

Bennett: The Tigers, orange and blue
Burgard Vocational: The Bulldogs, blue and white
Academy for the Visual and Performing Arts (aka Buffalo Arts or Performing Arts): The Cavaliers, black and gold
Buffalo Traditional: The Bulls, navy blue and gold
City Honors: The Centaurs, burgundy and gray
Emerson: The Eagles, red and white
Grover Cleveland: The Presidents, green and white
Hutch-Tech: The Engineers, maroon and gold
Lafayette: The Violets, violet and white
Kensington: The Knights, lime green and gold
McKinley Vocational: The Macks, orange and black
Riverside: The Frontiersman, purple and gold
Seneca: The Indians, dark green and white
South Park: The Sparks, red, black and white

If you watch the documentary Hoop Dreams or its sequel Hoop Reality, both take place in Chicago. Watching them, you’ll see that most metropolitan areas have city leagues where most of the student athletes are black. The bigger cities actually had multiple conferences within their boundaries. With Buffalo being a smaller city, there was only one conference.

Three Phases Of The Season

“What’s about to start after the New Year is the meat and potatoes of the season! Our non-league schedule was just the gravy!” In my first year on the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team, our coach, Dr. Kenneth Leon Jones told our team this after a lackluster start in the ‘non-league’ portion of our schedule. He further told us that our Yale Cup league play was the most important phase of the season. It brought with it the potential for a league championship. Our league record would also dictate our qualification for post season sectional play. There the final destination were potential state and federation championships for the truly elite teams.

During the next three years, as I learned about high school basketball on the fly, I realized something interesting. We only played our opponents once in league play. That is the location of the games would alternate yearly. In my first year on the team for example, Hutch-Tech hosted Riverside in our gym and that was it. This was the game that clinched the Yale Cup title for the Frontiersman that 1991-92 season, coincidentally. The next season we played in their gym.

Playing Each Other Once A Year In Conference Play

In the private and suburban school leagues, the teams played home and home series meaning that each team played in the other’s gym during league play. Likewise teams would play each other twice in one season. In some leagues, there was also a potential championship game where the top two teams in the league would battle it out for the league title. With the Yale Cup, you only got that one shot at your opponent in league play and that was it. In those days the final records determined the champions as well. This was probably because of the size of our 14-team league.

If you were in the same preseason tournament, scheduled a nonleague game or were in the same sectional class, there was the possibility of seeing certain teams again. If you were a Class A or B team in Section VI though (described below), you only got one shot at teams like Buffalo Traditional. The Bulls were the perennial power in our league who played in Class C sectional. It wasn’t ideal, but it’s what we had at the time.

The Gyms We Played In

Another aspect that made our league unique were the gyms in which we played. Most of the gyms were less than stellar compared to our counterparts in private and suburban schools. City school gyms were old and antiquated. While many of us look back on it with nostalgia; the gym at Hutch-Tech was essentially a box with a shortened court. It amazingly transformed into an electric venue during games and when fans filled it. It was a less than ideal facility though. The backboards were solid white with non-breakaway rims and the seating was minimal.

At Hutch-Tech, we also had a ‘small gym’. It was a smaller box with one basket which you could barely cram 15-25 student athletes into. Our boys’ basketball team practiced there for the first hour or so of practice after school. The girls’ basketball team used our ‘big gym’ (described above) for the first hour of practice and then we swapped.

It was nothing like the modern facilities at my alma mater right now. Today there is a regulation-size court, window backboards and breakaway rims. Nor was it anything like the three gyms at my best friend’s high school, Cleveland Hill in Cheektowaga. Cleveland Hill High School was in one of the suburban conferences, the Erie County Interscholastic Conference VI (there were four of these conferences). Still, there was something special about our little old gym, and the Hutch-Tech gym was not alone, or the worst.

Playing In Older And Antiquated Gyms

“You play in some of the gyms in some of these schools and it was like you were playing in a bowling alley (laughing)!” In my interview with Buffalo Traditional legend Damien Foster, we discussed the gyms we played in for Yale Cup play. I think the gym he was referring to was at Performing Arts. It was the most unusual of all the gyms in the league. It didn’t have a regulation width, so it didn’t have a complete three-point arc. The floor was concrete-like, and it was in a room very similar to a theater. Other high school gyms, like those at Lafayette and South Park, had those cumbersome tracks overhead. They were similar to the East Ferry YMCA, so you couldn’t shoot the corner three-point shots.

The largest gyms at that time were at Grover Cleveland, McKinley, and Seneca High Schools, and maybe Emerson. This is probably why Coach Jones always had to host our Hutch-Tech Tip Off Tournaments at other schools. Safety and security were reasons why we couldn’t host sectional games. This would have involved teams and families from the suburbs coming into Buffalo at nighttime. All these factors are why it was amazing to go into the college, private school, and suburban gyms as a player and see how well equipped they were. They had bleachers on both sides of the gym, window glass back boards, breakaway rims and complete three-point arcs.

Playing In Uniforms With No Name

Now admittedly you must typically go to the Division I level to get players’ names put on the back of their jerseys like in the pros. Typically, in the lower levels, you would at least get the school’s name and/or nickname on the front of the uniforms. Except for City Honors, Grover Cleveland and South Park, most of our uniforms in the Yale Cup, it wasn’t that way.

“It takes a little bit more to be a Champion!” The uniforms in the late 1980s and early 1990s were made by the sports apparel company Champion. The only thing that differentiated them between the schools were the school colors. Because the pictures in the Buffalo News were black and white, you couldn’t tell the teams apart without reading the caption when the teams were featured. If you were familiar with the teams and players, you knew who was who. The uniforms all had the same block numbers and were all made with the same thick polyester or nylon, non-mesh fabric. I have fond memories of our old maroon and gold Hutch-Tech uniforms though.

A Lack Of Feeder Systems For The Varsity Teams

In my research for The Engineers, the above-mentioned Coach Ken Jones and I talked about was the lack of a feeder system for the Yale Cup varsity basketball teams. The Buffalo News coincidentally wrote about this a season or two after I graduated from Hutch-Tech. Simply put, there were no official modified or junior varsity (JV) programs to feed the varsity programs. Thus, most of the players had to make the varsity team and learn on the fly if they weren’t receiving any training outside of school. See my interviews with Jason Rowe, Damien Foster and Tim Winn. That said, the best team in any given year could have been the most athletic team, the most talented or the healthiest team (or some combination of the three).

Some of the coaches at the time, including Coach Jones, attempted to create ad hoc JV teams and the games. They did this for the most part with no extra pay, and there was thus no official JV league. Most of the games were likewise played on Saturday mornings. All our classmates were still at home sleeping or doing something else, and thus few people saw them. For suburban schools the JV games were often scheduled and played at night before the varsity games. This was significant becasue classmates, relatives and the entire community could come out and support them which was a big deal as a player.

One Of Many Legendary Yale Cup Coaches

“You don’t know who Romeo McKinney is?” One of my interviewees for this project was Carlos James Gant from City Honors. City Honors was the other ‘academic’ school in the Yale Cup. They experienced their own basketball resurgence during my four years with players like Gant himself, Shaun Nelms, and their highly talented big man Larry Gilbert. During our discussion, Gant shared with me that the legendary Romeo McKinney helped coach their team during the 1992-93 season. He taught them a trapping style of defense which contributed to their increased level of competitiveness that season. By their senior year, they had an exceptional team, but they ascended at the same time as the above-mentioned Jason Rowe– and Damien Foster-led Buffalo Traditional Bulls.

I believe Coach McKinney was the coach of the South Park team that was involved in the infamous fight with Christian Laettner’s Nichols team at the Buffalo’s Memorial Auditorium. I think he finished out his coaching career at Kensington. Carlos Gant was surprised that I didn’t know who he was. A recurring theme of my story is that I only started learning about Section VI basketball in the early 1990s, and even then, my coach never talked about him. There were several legendary Yale Cup coaches over the years just like Coach McKinney.

Varying Qualities Of Coaching

My coach at Hutch-Tech, Dr. Kenneth Leon Jones, called himself a ‘true student of the game’ and was in fact a basketball junkie. His program was an extension of himself and was very organized and textbook. The suburban and private school coaches were likewise amazed by the disciplined style of basketball Coach Jones’ majority black rosters played. The Yale Cup teams had developed the reputation for not playing defense or with structure of any kind. It was considered a ‘renegade’ league as stated by Adrian Baugh, another key contributor on the above-mentioned Buffalo Traditional teams.

From the interviews I conducted I learned that the quality of coaching in the league also varied from school to school. While researching The Engineers, I found that not every coach in the Yale Cup was in fact a trained coach, who approached the game as a craft. Some of them were simply faculty at their schools or gym teachers. Likewise, not every coach taught the game and treated it like a craft. Not every coach genuinely cared about his players, or what happened to them once they left the doors of their schools. The coach you got was arguably a matter of fortune and luck.

Playing Different Numbers Of Games

“We were one of the only city schools to play a full 20 games. Remember, at that time there were 14 high school teams in the city, and you only played those 13 teams if your coach didn’t give you another 6-7 games to fill out your full 20 games. Russ did that,” said Ed Harris, a star guard from Riverside’s above-mentioned Yale Cup and Class C Section Team in our interview. Ed attributed his Coach Bill Russell’s dedication to his playing development. “He had us playing the Frontiers, the Oleans, the Fredonias – going out there and playing John F. Kennedy (JFK), Williamsville East, South and North.”

Harris’ words described the fact that not every Yale Cup coach scheduled games outside of their 13 Yale Cup league games. This meant that their players didn’t get exposure to other styles of basketball and may not have started playing games until the new year. After interviewing Coach Russell, he turned out to be a lot like my coach at Hutch-Tech in that he put together a complete non-league schedule. He also cared about his players and did extra things for them like getting them into summer leagues and taking them with him to scout opponents.

Our League Games Were Immediately After School

Another interesting thing about the Yale Cup is that our games were immediately after school. If students were allowed into the games, this was advantageous for the home teams. Students weren’t allowed into games at every school though, due to safety considerations.

But what about the players on the teams; the visiting teams in particular? If you were the visiting team, you had to leave your last class early, which I’m sure none of the students took issue with. Unfortunately, none of the city schools had their own buses so players had to catch public transportation to the opposing school. This meant that team members could trickle in at varying times, sometimes after the games had started unless the coaches had a way of transporting the entire group.

Another consequence of this was the difficulty for many of the parents and relatives to come to our games. Many were still working at 3:30 pm in the afternoon. If they worked a 9-5 job, many parents could not get out of work early. As a player, having relatives in the stands can be very, very important psychologically.

Visits From The Trainer Once A Week And Wasted Talent

As described, none of our schools had their own individualized transportation. Nor did we have our own athletic trainer. We had a student trainer who came in from Canisius College to check on injuries once a week. It was better than nothing, but if a student athlete didn’t have the proper specialized medical care at home, injuries could linger and destroy whole seasons altogether. I experienced something like this during my journey.

Some of the players I interviewed suggested that there was a lot of wasted talent in the Yale Cup of the late 1980s and 1990s. The lack of a feeder system was mentioned earlier in this piece, but there was also academics. Some of the more talented players also didn’t receive the proper academic guidance to prepare to play at the next level. Specifically, some players weren’t prepared to take and achieve competitive scores on the standardized tests (SATs and ACTs). As a result, they never went on to play college basketball, and if they did, they had to play in junior college first. Some of them didn’t get to play at the Division I level at all, which they may have had the talent to do.

The Players That Emerged

The opening excerpt for this piece was from my interview with my cousin, Coach Phillip Richardson. When we spoke, it was amazing to hear that he and his peers didn’t compete in Section VI postseason play. Thus, they didn’t have the opportunity to compete for the state or federation championships. They simply put their basketball uniforms away and prepared for baseball or track after a league champion was determined. A few years after Coach Richardson graduated from Bennett High School the rules changed. Competing in Section VI’s postseason play was commonplace for the Buffalo Public Schools 20 years later when it was time for me to go to high school.

In this snippet, Coach Richardson stated that there were several talented players who didn’t get the opportunity to play Division I basketball because of the lack of exposure. Some players did make it though over the years. Among them were Bob Lanier (Bennett), Ray Hall (McKinley), Curtis Aiken (Bennett), Lester Rowe (Lafayette), Cliff Robinson (Riverside), and Keith Robinson (Grover Cleveland). There was also Trevor Ruffin (Bennett), and Jason Rowe and Damien Foster (both from Buffalo Traditional). After I graduated, there was Damone Brown (Seneca) and Mark Price (Riverside). There were also numerous Yale Cup players who played at the Division II and III levels.

I also must acknowledge a couple of guards. There was the great tandem of Ritchie Campbell and Marcus ‘Ice Cream’ Whitfield (Burgard). There was also Antoine Sims (Grover Cleveland and Turner/Carroll) and Jeremiah Wilkes (Burgard and Cheektowaga Central). I don’t know where their paths led after high school. They all played at a high level though. There were so many players and I may have missed some names. If so, please mention them in the comment section below.

Competing In Section VI

In my era, Yale Cup schools competed in Section VI Classes A, B, C in postseason play. Again, the letters designated the size of the school. Classes A and B designated the larger schools and C the smaller schools. The Buffalo News made a similar distinction in its weekly ‘Cage Polls’. None of the schools competed in Class D.

Postseason sectional play was arguably the most magical part of the season because we were now competing with the suburban teams and potentially teams from places like Grand Island and Niagara Falls in a one-game elimination format. This post season play could ultimately lead to a game with the Rochester area champions in the Far West Regionals. There a trip to Glens Falls was at stake. Only a few teams ever made it that far.

A Look Back At The Yale Cup Of Years Past From A Former Burgard Bulldog

“But going back to the junior year, when Gene exploded onto the scene and made All-High and Honorable Mention All-Western New York, the scouts came out and whatever. As a matter of fact, when Gene was a junior, we were playing Tech. The scouts came to scout a guy named Roger Brown because he was Mr. Everything that year. Gene played a good game, but we lost to Tech.” One of the most powerful interviews for The Engineers was with my Uncle Anthony (Tony) Harris. Uncle Tony played at Burgard in the 1960s with the legendary Eugene Roberson and corroborated much of the same information shared by the above-mentioned Coach Richardson.

“Tech had the Cott brothers, Orv and Marty Cott, back then and they had a couple of other stars. Gene had a spectacular game, but we lost.” My Uncle got excited talking about those days and I became equally excited listening to him reflect. As a part of my story, I learned that our family patriarch had a basketball history himself – he was All-High Honorable Mention! This is an important part of my story. I found out about it after my playing days.

“I mean there were some bad people (in a good way) back then. There were a couple who were really good like Bob Lanier. Bennett just ran over everybody, and East had some really good players too. Bennet’s team was so strong that all five guys should have made All-High, but they couldn’t.” Uncle Tony continually emphasized the number of strong players in the Yale Cup season he played in, and you could just feel it when he spoke. We spent a lot of time discussing Bob Lanier and the Bennett High School teams, and so many others.

“My main claim to fame was that Lanier was averaging 26 points per game, and I held him to 24 (laughing),” my uncle joked. “Of course, they took him out, so he sat on the bench in the last quarter. He almost sat out a whole quarter.”

Section VI’s Basketball Diamond In The Rough

“I always wanted to play against each of the city schools. When I was a ‘youngin’ just learning how to play the game – if you go back to when I was a freshman, I can tell you every school had a guy or two guys that could ball. At South Park, you had Damone Solomon along with those Hutchinson boys,” Riverside’s Ed Harris enthusiastically said about the Yale Cup during our era. It was like what my Uncle Tony said about his era 20 years earlier.

“You go to Emerson, and you’ve got Shawn Cunningham. You go to Burgard and you’ve got Ritchie (Campbell) and you got the Pat Jones kid. Each of those teams had guys on them that could play,” Ed Harris continued. “That’s when city ball was city ball. You had a chance to do something, and I looked forward to playing those guys, you know?”

Celebrating The Yale Cup

I’m hoping that this piece came off more as a tribute to our beloved league and not a pity party. I personally still get butterflies thinking about those games in the old gyms, our uniforms, and the school colors. We played in lesser conditions than our counterparts at the private and suburban schools. Still, there was nothing like that feeling of competition no matter where it was and who it was against. Those were fun times.

Again, the Buffalo News covered much of this in writings by Jerry Sullivan, Mike Harrington, the late Allen Wilson and others. While working on this ambitious project it was necessary to revisit the Yale Cup and all its aspects. As a writer, promotion is a major consideration. You also must set the story world for your readers, and the story world for my project is the Yale Cup and Section VI.

Playing Yale Cup Basketball

I’m closing this piece out with one more Yale Cup coach some of you may be familiar with. Bob Mitchell (pictured) was the Head Coach of the Kensington Boys’ Basketball Teams in the early 1990s. Just as in the picture, the times we played Kensington, I remember him wearing suits and being a fiery coach. Names I think of when I think of those Knights teams are Taka Molson, Radaun Hill and Kilroy Jackson who were all stars on their squads. The Knights were generally athletic, long, physical and tall. They played zone defenses and liked to get out in the open court and run like racehorses. Furthermore they liked to score the ball in transition via dunks and layups. They played Yale Cup basketball.

One of my many interviewees likewise played on the Kensington Boys’ Basketball Team, Coach Samuel “Quinn” Coffey. I thus got a feel for what it was like to wear the green and gold. In another promotional piece for The Engineers, I plan to discuss the difference between coaches who set out to build basketball programs versus simply assembling teams. As described earlier in this piece, it was different for all of us, depending upon which schools we attended, and which coaches we played for.

Closing Thoughts

Thank you for reading this piece. As you’ve seen, I’ve used numerous pictures from the Yale Cup and players from the 1980s and 90s. These images came from an archive of Section VI basketball, carefully assembled over the years from issues of the Buffalo News. Dr. Kenneth Leon Jones, my first Coach at Hutch-Tech created this archive. Coach Jones was a mentor, a father figure, and is a central in my story. None of this would’ve been possible without him.

While this piece focused on the Yale Cup and Western New York high school basketball in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the themes are universal. They thus may apply to the basketball league you played in as a youth wherever you grew up. Thus, feel free to share your high school basketball experiences and memories in the comments section below. And especially if you played in the Yale Cup, please share any of your experiences below.

More Promotional Pieces On The Way

I’m creating more promotional/teaser pieces for The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. These will be via print and video as I journey through the final steps of the book’s completion. I created a page here on Big Words Authors for the purpose of giving a background of the book and grouping all the promotional narratives such as this in one place for interested readers. On my first blogging platform, the Big Words Blog Site, there are interviews with some the most accomplished Section VI players from my era including: Jason Rowe, Tim Winn, Carlos Bradberry and Damien Foster. I also interviewed legendary LaSalle Head Basketball Coach, Pat Monti. Finally, there are more essays related to my book project. If you liked this piece, please share it on your social media and feel free to leave a comment.

The Big Words LLC Newsletter

For the next phase of my writing journey, I’m starting a monthly newsletter. It will promote written and video content from the Big Words LLC. In it, I plan to share inspirational words, pieces from this blog and my first blog, and select videos from my four YouTube channels. Finally, I will share updates for my book project The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. If you sign up, I promise that I will protect your personal information and privacy. Click this link and register using the sign-up button at the bottom of the announcement. If there is an issue with the sign up form, you can also email me at [email protected] . Regards.