Contributors to The Engineers Part Two: Excerpts from My Interviews With Western New York Basketball Coaches and Players

“Basketball is a game of fun. The better you become, the more fun it is!”

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 School

“I don’t think anybody saw us coming. That year we beat that Riverside team with Ben Rice, Ed Harris, and Shawn Hargrove. I think that was a head turner for everybody because that was a senior-laden team. That team was full of seniors, and you’ve got us coming in with two freshmen, a sophomore and two seniors. I think the freshmen and the sophomores doing the brunt of the work was more of the thing that was turning everybody’s heads. Like WHO are these dudes?”

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 nobody saw the young Bulls coming in that 1992-93 season. They took several teams by surprise including my Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team and the Riverside Boys’ Basketball Team were the defending Yale Cup and Class C sectional champions that year.

Carlos Bradberry, Player, LaSalle Senior High School

“I always thought I was a scorer and that was always my mentality, ever since I was younger. In my freshman year, I started on the junior varsity (JV) team and was moved up midway through the season to play on the varsity team. I knew that I wasn’t going to be a bigtime scorer on the varsity level as a freshman or as a sophomore, because we just had so many senior guys. I was a starter, but Coach Monti let you know your role. It’s something that’s lost today. Kids don’t have roles today and everyone thinks they’re a scorer and a star. I had to earn my minutes and if I got an open shot. I was happy because I knew that it was Modie’s, Milo’s, and Duke’s team, and I was there to play my role.”

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. I saw that he was leader of the LaSalle Explorers that 1991-92 season. Carlos had to work his way up gradually into that position like many other players. We often see the result of another person’s hard work through their successes. People seldom see the hard work itself though, and in some instances patience.

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

Curtis Brooks, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“The Randy Smith League was about athleticism and who was the most skilled. It was more one on one, and you never learned the concepts of what you were doing. Basketball is about a team! It’s about knowing your position, knowing your man, knowing how to box out, and knowing who needs help. There’s so much more than just your man on defense! The same thing on the offensive end. It’s something we didn’t really specialize in in Buffalo. It was ball movement on offense under Coach Jones – kind of like how Golden State does it. They’ve got so much movement going on that if you move the ball, eventually it gets somebody out of position defensively and someone ends up with an easier shot. That’s what his structure was. Jones’ offense 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. He never said, ‘Get the ball. I want you to shoot! Shoot! Shoot!’ He’d say, ‘Move the ball if you’re in that area, that’s your shot!’ It wasn’t a star system!”

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 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. Basketball was taught in a very specific way at Hutch-Tech under the leadership of the late Coach Ken Jones. Brooks discussed how many players learned basketball in Buffalo and how Coach Jones’ offenses worked in this excerpt.

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

“If there was anything I would change about that time, I would have taken the sport a little more seriously. I was a little more gifted than I thought and maybe could have tried to have a future in basketball.”

No. 23 Adonis Coble was the first player I interviewed for this project. He 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 Yale Cup and sectional championship team. The 1991-92 season was a difficult but successful year for the Class of 1992 seniors and juniors who started. Adonis did not start for the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team until his senior year and gradually worked his way up on the roster. He reflected on his mentality at the that time and how his trajectory may have been different had he taken basketball more seriously throughout high school.

Ryan Cochrane, Player, Cardinal O’Hara High School

“If you’re one of the fortunate ones to go to the mountain top, you learn something and even if you go through your struggles and you don’t make it to the mountain top, it still teaches you something (the great game of basketball).”

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. I hadn’t heard of Cardinal O’Hara, Ryan Cochrane or Calvin Price prior to the 1993-94 season. 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. Ryan was one of the fortunate few to make it to the mountain top at that level. He reflected on what the game of basketball teaches you whether you do or don’t make. The game teaches everyone something about the larger game of life.

Samuel ‘Quin’ Coffey, Player, Kensington Senior High School


“It’s interesting that you didn’t see a lot of kids leave Buffalo. There were a lot of talented kids who didn’t leave, like Ritchie (Campbell). The same thing with ‘Stretch’ (Kilroy Jackson). They flew him out to Hawaii. He came back and it was all about going to Hawaii, but he ended up going to Erie County Community College. That was around the time of Proposition 48 (Prop 48). Their grades were rotten, a lot of the top players. Unless you had the will, they didn’t go past junior college.”

I met Coach Quinn Coffey in my first and only year at Brockport State College. He had played at Kensington High School 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 area. We talked about the many Yale Cup basketball players who did not leave Buffalo, the highly talented ones in particular. We talked about the highly talented Kilroy Jackson in this instance, but there were many others. Poor academics and academic ineligibility for college were themes that emerged in many of my interviews and in my story in general.

Modie Cox, Player, LaSalle Senior High School

“There was Mike Hamilton, Greg Lewis, Garth Ellis who had a brother Mike Ellis, Tino Scarborough – these were guys who were doing things in the streets, but they would keep us away from certain things – particularly guys who had the opportunity to go on to different places. These were more than just basketball coaches. We were taught just to go, just to get the ball and go. It was foreign in terms of getting into a half court offense. Our mentality was to get it and just run. I was blessed with tremendous quickness and speed, so whenever I got the ball I was able to beat the defense down the court. Basketball teaches you a lesson. You’re playing a game early on, but as you get older you realized, man I was taught a real lesson. There are some things that I learned along the way that I probably never would have gotten without this game. So those were some of the guys who were crucial to my development.”

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 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.

Demoan Daniels, Player, Seneca-Vocational High School

“We played our first game in the sectionals and won by 30. Then Fredonia comes up. They talked about this Mike Heary, Mike Heary, Mike Heary. Whatever! I never heard of him before that night. We played them and we got some bad calls down the stretch. That game was tight. We knew if we beat them, then we would play Lackawanna. They had O’ Tes Alston, Warren Miles, Howard Smith – I used to play in Lackawanna a lot too. We used to go out there and play basketball at night. The score was tied late in the fourth quarter. Ricardo stripped that dude and they called a foul. He ripped him at halfcourt and I swear it was the cleanest rip of the year. It seemed like the referee assumed that it was a foul. He said, ‘You can’t do that without committing a foul.’ We were like, ‘Sure you can!’”

Demoan discussed his final varsity game in this excerpt. Postseason play is where seasons ended for the lucky players, though only a few ultimately hoisted the championship trophies. Demoan Daniels’ final high school game was a matchup with No. 24 Mike Heary and the Fredonia Hillbillies. The winner got a matchup with the Lackawanna Steelers in the Class B-2 sectional final. Demoan’s final game came down the subjective opinion of a referee which was in the favor of their opposition, an everlasting burn many basketball players also know all too well.

Francis Daumen, Coach, Hutch-Tech High School

“So he (Mr. Joseph Gentile) basically strong-armed me into taking the job. At the end of one year I said, ‘Joe, I can’t do it!’ By March I was in the hospital. I thought I was having a heart attack! Well, every adult wonders about their lives when there’s a high level of stress, acid reflux, too much Advil. The doctor says, ‘Listen, whatever it is you’re doing you’ve got to change so I’ll put you on acid reflux medication and whatever.’ Within a few months I was back to normal so I told Joe, I said, ‘I can’t handle it. If Phil (Richardson) wants the job, let him have it!’ So that’s what happened.”

Coach Francis Daumen took over for Coach Jones my senior season at Hutch-Tech High School. I didn’t know how to handle the coaching change and struggled through that year. I don’t think we understood one another during that tumultuous 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. He shared that he did not want the head coaching job though he was highly encouraged to take it. His behavior and demeanor that season reflected a level of angst. This revelation demonstrated how and why decisions are made by administrators for their own reasons, that affect everyone underneath them for better or for worse.

Dewitt Doss, Player, LaSalle Senior High School

Coach Monti had an article my senior year. He said that I was a mixture of Carlos Bradberry and Tim Winn all rolled into one. I could play good defense and I had a soft touch and could score like Carlos. I could shoot it deep but I just was not as tall as Carlos. As a freshman at Canisius, I just wanted to go, go, go. I had to start understanding pace. Some guys got away with going fast all of the time. You had to understand when to speed up, when to slow down, when to run the offense when you got to college. You had to understand the most important parts – when to get your guys into the right position. In high school you could say, ‘If I want to get a bucket, I’m going to get a bucket.’ In college you couldn’t do that because guys were 6’ 10” and you would get beat up trying to go in there as a 5’ 10” guard all the time. It was learning to pick and choose your spots so you can pull up and shoot a jump shot too.”

Dewitt Doss had to learn to play point guard at the college level like many of the other elite guards from the Western New York high school basketball scene. Jason Rowe discussed his transition in my interview with him. Dewitt Doss discussed his own transition in this excerpt from our interview.

Carlton Ford, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“Ahhhh man yeah Tate! Tate was like an assistant coach. He was the first person to pull me aside and teach me how to be a point guard. Tate never really focused on running plays, but he taught me how to move and conduct myself on the court as a floor general. He taught me all the tricks you can do, and how you can play the game in a way that refs don’t see. You can pull on the opponent’s jersey and push off for example, but to do it in a way that it looks like incidental contact. He just really showed me how to play the game. It was easier for other players to push me around because of my size, so I had to find ways to use my quickness and be clever on the court. He was really good at showing me that stuff!”

No. 35 Carlton Ford was a two-year teammate on the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team. He was a year ahead of me as he was a member of the Class of 1993. We were similar in terms of temperament and personality. Coach Ken Jones never had regular assistant coaches at Hutch-Tech due to budgeting constraints. He did get young assistants from the community to help at times though. One example was Coach Tate, a younger black man whom I missed out on working with on the junior varsity team my freshman year due to academic ineligibility. I don’t think Coach Jones and Coach Tate parted on positive terms but Carlton credited him with teaching him how to play the point guard position.

Damien Foster, Player, Buffalo Traditional School

“Moses Tolbert and those guys – they were nice! In my freshman year, McKinley was in our building, and we lit them up. I couldn’t believe it. I had 37 points that game and I was like, ‘Wow, I gave Fats and Moses 37!’ I’m a freshman and it just starts to go from there. You start building confidence and you start to build a swagger. I don’t want to say it’s arrogance. It’s kind of like arrogance, but it’s confidence as well and you start to build that thing up. And with each game, you’re running into players who are seniors. Do you know what I mean? You’re making a name for yourself because they’re hearing about you!”

Damien Foster and Jason Rowe seemingly burst onto the scene together the 1992-93 season as freshmen. They had prepared for a while, and only those who were unaware of them were astonished by their brilliance. They were unknown to many coaches and players in Western New York, but they and their team knew what they had and what they could do. As more teams became aware of the young Bulls, they gradually became more and more confident. It was like a snowball rolling down a hill getting bigger and bigger.

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

Dion Frasier, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“He only kept one senior and that was Adrian Bryce who we called ‘Flash’. It was a huge team and Flash was the only senior. He was starting from the ground up and what he saw in me, Mike and Chris is that we were working hard. I had the ugliest shot and I didn’t know what I was doing. He must’ve said that I’ll get these guys when they’re freshman and lean into them and speak into them and by the time they’re seniors – all I can say is that he had us out there hustling.”

Reverend Dion Frasier was a junior on the 1990-91 Yale Cup and Section VI Class B championship teams. No. 24 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. We talked about a lot of things in our fun interview. One of the most powerful things though was the roster Coach Ken Jones assembled his first year at Hutch-Tech. Dion described how he was not one of the most talented players at Hutch-Tech as a freshman. Coach Jones had a vision for the future and for the basketball program. Part of that vision involved keeping lesser-talented players whom he could mold for the future.

Jermaine Fuller, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“Man, it is so funny, the difference in those guys (the 1990-91 seniors), compared to just two years later when we were seniors. I mean, those dudes were men, especially Curt, Chuck, and Pep (Skillon). Their physiques were college ready. They played on the football team as well, making them equally ready for the basketball season. Yes, they were leaders. They were very mature. I think about how silly I used to be. Even when I was a senior. I was very immature, but maybe that’s also because I was only 16 years old as a senior?

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. Jermaine humbly observed and shared that the leadership component within our basketball program changed from when he first earned a roster spot to when he ascended into a position of leadership himself as a senior. He was gifted academically and was technically a younger upperclassman. A key theme of The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story is leadership and the critical role it plays in teams and organizations becoming successful and continuing to be successful.

Carlos James Gant, Player, the City Honors School

“I think it was a combination of a bunch of things. Romeo McKinney and Coach Fran played a major role in us developing. I can put enough on what Romeo McKinney did because what he did netted results and it helps you believe and buy in. When you implement a press and this press is putting it on people, and you’re getting seven to eight steals – when the system is working for you, you start to believe in it. I mentioned the growth spurt with Larry, he grew eight inches. We all filled out, got stronger and were jumping higher. One kid I have to tip my hat to was Eric Gadley. His game really developed to where Eric could really start shooting outside where he was a slasher at first. Our chemistry was better. We got physically stronger and committed to getting better. And we didn’t want to lose anymore. I think Coach McKinney and Coach Fran gave us the blueprint to where we believed we were the better team walking into the gym.”

The City Honors Boys’ Basketball Team improved every year I was in high school. The Centaurs matured into a competitive team by the time the core of their team were seniors. One of them was No. 32 Carlos James Gant. Carlos attributed the City Honors Boys’ Basketball Teams’ turnaround and ascension to several things, but one of the main contributors was legendary Coach Romeo McKinney teaching them how to run full court presses on defense. McKinney was a legendary coach at South Park who temporarily fell out of favor in the high school basketball scene due to the Christian Laettner-Nichols fight at the Aud. He was still highly respected and revered years later though.

George Gayles, Player, Bennett High School

Veronica was probably more like Cardinal (Buffalo Traditional), probably closer to that. I’m saying he was closer to it. He did teach, but I don’t remember getting any fundamentals from him. It was just playing. Let me use the correct word, I played at basketball. I never was at the point where I was successful enough to know that I was good enough to play against other people. It didn’t come to me until I got to college. My theory of the game came to me in college, and it grew exponentially. Even in gym class, he would just roll the ball out and let guys play. He may have talked about that with other students, but he didn’t do it with me.”

I met George Gayles at SUNY Brockport my freshman year. 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 compared Coach Veronica to Coach Joe Cardinal at Buffalo Traditional who was said to have been successful for the talent he inherited and not for his acumen as a coach. George Gayles likewise discussed how he didn’t really learn the fundamentals of basketball until after he graduated from high school. Basketball as a craft was taught differently at each of the 14 Yale Cup schools. The coach you had largely determined your experience and development as a player.

Anthony Harris, Player, Burgard Vocational High School

“I mean there were some bad people back then. There were a couple who were really good back then like Bob Lanier. Bennett just ran over everybody, and East had some really good people too. Bennet’s team was so strong, all five guys should’ve made All-High, but they couldn’t. They couldn’t but Bennett’s starting five was All-High, so some players had to play second team. As a matter of fact, Bennett went undefeated that year, until Emerson beat them. It was the second last game of the season. They had Bob Lanier, Kenny Macklin, and a brotha named ‘Space Ghost’. I can’t even think of his real name. And then they had Andrew Payton. They had some brothas. I don’t know how far they got in college, but Buffalo sent a lot of players on scholarships back then.”

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. Uncle Tony discussed seeing and playing against the legendary Bob Lanier and his at Bennett High School. Most of us only heard of Bob Lanier’s legend in the 1990s and never saw him play. It was a very different landscape than what we experienced. The same is true for the players today.

Ed Harris, Player, Riverside High School

“Yeah I looked forward to those games, Turner/Carroll with those guys. Delwyn Rhines, Gerald Brown and Shondell Dupree – they had a squad and we played them and won. We won that first game of the year against them because we were 5-0 going into that Buffalo Traditional game. I didn’t know about Jason and them at that time. I can’t say that I looked forward to playing them that year, but I looked forward to playing against Jeff Muszynski and the St. Joe’s boys that year. That was definitely a game that I wanted to play.”

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. Part of the fun of playing basketball in our era at that time was knowing the other players and teams. Once you knew who the other top players and teams were, you looked forward to playing them. Ed Harris described looking forward to playing the Turner/Carroll and St. Joe’s teams in this excerpt.

Frankie Harris, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“It wasn’t too structured (the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team). It wasn’t. You could get – there was personal stuff that you had to learn. As I got into college it helped me out a lot. It taught you how to play in a structure. It taught you how to play with other teammates. There’s stuff I try to teach, because I coach Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) off and on and all of that and I still use the same stuff. The good teams, use Golden State as an example, yes they might have the best players but they’re good because they play good together. They play in a system, and they play together. That’s what I remember him teaching us (Coach Jones), because it was tough because there were games where I might have a shot and he told me to shoot the ball, but I would wait so that we could get a better shot.”

My essay discussing the 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team and their magical season 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. We discussed a lot of aspects of Coach Ken Jones’ tenure as the Head Coach of the boys’ basketball team. One of the hallmarks of Coach Jones’ program was its structure. Some players embraced it and played within it while others resisted it and felt restricted by it. It literally depended on your point of view.

Keith Hearon, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“You know more when you look back and you say it was more about teaching them a lesson. It was trying to mold them to know that you can’t just do what you want to do. If you’re going to lead then you have to be model leaders. You’ve got to lead by example. Just because you’re the loudest and the most expressive, that doesn’t mean that you’re a leader. So, for my role, I was going to do my job regardless, from the top I know where directions come from. I know my role and I know how to interweave with everybody and so I was fine after a while. I think it’s something they had to learn.”

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. There were numerous adversities encountered between Coach Jones and his players over the years. Some came to a head during the 1992-93 season, his final year. Successfully running a basketball program or any kind of structure involves leadership. The more senior people are often expected to step up and provide an example for junior members of the team. Issues often ensue when that doesn’t happen.

Derrick Herbert, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“I think at that time I was too naive. I didn’t even know to be disappointed or to not want to do this anymore. We’re losing. This is terrible. Let’s not do this anymore. I don’t know what Pep and them said, but I didn’t get the idea that those core guys had thought that this is trash. I think we all noticed that, because we were basketball players that said, ‘Yo he knows what he’s talking about. If we do what he says, we might have something.’ And I don’t know if that’s how those guys felt but that’s just the impression that I got. Like I didn’t feel like the Bad News Bears after a loss. I don’t want to sound cheesy but there was still some hope. That next year, things definitely started clicking, once we bought in. It was hard buying in, with that getting in shape stuff, having to run and do morning workouts and do this, that and the third. We weren’t really feeling all of that. Initially it was like, ‘Yo what is this?’ But my impression is that once we bought into it the following year, the sky was the limit then.”

“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 about the culture change Coach Ken Jones brought to the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team. He and his teammates witnessed it first-hand and had to buy into what was being sold to them. They wanted to improve and start winning games, but they had never done it the way Coach Jones was leading them.

Reggie Hokes, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“The 1993 Seneca game was going to be my last game. I went to Coach Jones that morning and told him if I didn’t play that I was going to turn in my uniform! I told him, ‘I work hard every day just like everybody else. After this game, I’m done!’ I practiced hard and I played hard, and I didn’t really think it was fair that I wasn’t getting any time. My whole sophomore year, I basically sat on the bench. I mean you have people cheering to get me in the game and I sat on the bench. That game, he started me. I felt like I was better than all of his guards anyway. Do I have to start? No, but I felt like I should’ve been getting some ‘burn’!”

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. This new youth movement clashed with the culture Coach Jones established for Hutch-Tech basketball which rewarded senior players who had been in the program for a number of years. It was a dilemma many coaches faced at that time. Play my veterans who have been in the program? Or play the young highly talented kids?

Earl Holmes, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“It taught me that nothing in life comes easy (the great game of basketball). You have to work for everything you want. Even the things you need, you have to work for them. It also taught me – because I was an only child for most of my life to never be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I always thought it was a sign of weakness to ask for help. In everything, whenever you need it, never be afraid to ask for help. You’ll be surprised because nine times out of ten, you’ll get it.”

Earl Holmes was an outspoken multi-sport athlete from the Hutch-Tech’s highly talented Class of 1995 (football and basketball). We were teammates on the 1993-94 basketball boys’ basketball team. Earl came off as very cocky, opinionated and pompous in those days and you didn’t know when verbal bullets were going to come flying your way. Later in life after our days on the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team and playing both college and semi-pro football, Earl shared very wise and profound perspectives on life and the world. The ability to ask for help would have surely helped all of us out on our early athletic journeys and life in general.

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

“Towards the end of my junior year, that’s when I made the decision to walk away from sports to focus on ministry and preaching. That’s something in retrospect I’ve thought about. I was still a young person growing up and I didn’t see how I could do both of them effectively at the time. It was going to take time and commitment going into my senior year. I maintained a 4.0 and was valedictorian in high school. I didn’t see how I could do all of them. By default, sports lost that draw. In retrospect, I wish I had someone who encouraged me to keep playing.”

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. Ronald went off to the now closed Turner/Carroll High School while the rest went off to city or suburban high schools. Turner/Carroll was the one mostly black private school in Western New York. I kept tabs on No. 21 a little bit once I got to Hutch-Tech. Early on he played both football and basketball for the Chargers. I didn’t hear anything about his athletic exploits after awhile. Rumors about him going into the church and becoming devout in his faith emerged. It was something that was foreign to me though I was raised in the church as well. I saw some guys at Hutch-Tech get disillusioned and leave sports because they weren’t getting playing time or to get jobs, but who walked away because of religion and spirituality?

Brandon Jones, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“I think there were moments when I was a freshman (at Buff State) where I said, ‘I can’t play here because all he’s doing is yelling at me. All he’s doing is yelling. He had a good way of ripping you apart – ripping you – I remember I missed a dunk at a home game and he benched me for the entire game. It was a Friday-Saturday and right after the game, he got done ripping me apart in the locker room. He held me back and he said, ‘I’m going right back to you tomorrow. You’re going to be in the starting lineup tomorrow.’ And I played my ass off the next day, played my ass off, like one of my best games ever, the next day and so he had a good way of bringing you back. He had good assistants who were the player-coach types who said, ‘Don’t listen to him, he’s going to ride you. Good job. But I remember as a freshman saying, ‘I can’t do this. I want to play basketball. This is not basketball. All he’s doing is yelling at me.’”

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. He became one of the featured players under Coach Philip Richardson who took over for Coach Ken Jones and Coach Francis Daumen. Brandon further went on to play for the legendary Coach Dick Bihr at Buffalo State College. Brandon interestingly described having to get used to getting yelled at by the fiery Coach Bihr. A lot of coaches are in fact yellers and they have to learn to embrace and endure that type of coaching/leadership style. Not every player can deal with it and many buckle under this style.

Quincy Lee, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“I think it was a bunch of us. It was me, Pep, Mike Brundige, Curt Brooks, and Derrick Herbert. I think we all just sat there and decided that we weren’t going to be embarrassed anymore. Buffalo Traditional embarrassed us our sophomore year and we got beat pretty bad by them early in our junior year and we decided that we weren’t going to get embarrassed like that. All of us had lives outside of school and you got to different parties and people remember. We decided we weren’t going to be embarrassed like that. We were going to run the plays, but when it came time, we were going to go for ours. No one really went for theirs because they knew they were going to get pulled out. But we were going to go for ours. If we’re going to lose then we’re going to go out shooting. We didn’t shoot that much as a team because no one wanted to miss and get pulled out of the game. We were already losing but we decided that we were going to go down shooting and that’s when things kind of changed.”

The late 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. Quincy opened up the door for me to interview several other Engineers in addition to telling me his own story. Quincy was a part of the rebuild of the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team. He was on the roster with the late Kevin Roberson as a freshman under the leadership of Coach Francis Shea. There was a learning curve and a transition when Coach Ken Jones took over the program in the 1988-89 school year. He and his teammates had to learn how to play within Coach Jones’ structure system and also to play their own games in a way that would make the team successful.

Pat Monti, Coach, LaSalle Senior High School

“When I’d go to these clinics, coaches would ask, ‘Coach, how do you do this year in and year out?’ I’d say, ‘Fellas, you have what they want.’ They’d look at me and ask, ‘What are you talking about?’ I’d say, ‘You’ve got the ball. If they’re not doing it the way you script it, then you take the ball away from them! You sit them down!’ See a lot of coaches are afraid to sit their players down or discipline them because they don’t think that they can win. But if your team has bought into the team concept, you can win. I’ve had players go down to injury in games we weren’t supposed to win, and we won because somebody else stepped up.”

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. Many other coaches and spectators wondered how the LaSalle Explorers kept winning year after year. Coach Monti described the pillars of his program being, ‘Structure, discipline and no nonsense,’ in our interview. He was a brilliant basketball mind, but he demanded cooperation and obedience from his players and accepted nothing less.

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

Roderick ‘Spanky’ Peoples, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

“One of the sayings I remember most from Coach Jones was, ‘Sometimes you have to go where you don’t want to go to get where you want to be.’”

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. Anecdotes, life quotes and words of wisdom were hallmarks of the basketball program Coach Ken Jones ran at Hutch-Tech High School. Most players remember some of the quotes Coach Jones shared every day. One of the most powerful was, “You have to go where you don’t want to go, to get to where you want to go!” In the context of basketball, it describes moving without the ball in such a way to free yourself up from your defender to receive the ball. It was similar in the life context describing making a move or taking a direction you initially don’t want to take. That move will subsequently set you up for the outcome you want.

Brian Reith, Player, Hamburg High School

“You asked how Hamburg was as a program. We were competitive for a while, and we were right up there competing for our division championship with Williamsville North or Jamestown. The teams in our conference were close to us, like Frontier, Orchard Park, West Seneca but it was really Williamsville North who I remember being our biggest adversary. We were always slugging it out with them for the division championship. One of my favorite competitors played for Williamsville North, Jonathan Parks. I loved the way they played basketball. Thinking about how they played basketball, it was a lot of fun for us. Thinking back for us, when we started our season, what kind of expectations did we have? Were we planning to go to the states? States wasn’t something we talked about a whole lot, but instead it was about how we would compete in our division. And when it came to our teams that I had the chance to play for, junior year when I was a starter for the team, we were led by a guy named Rob Lang and led us. He was the guy, no question about it, we had the ultimate conclusion that year of losing before the finals to LaSalle.”

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. Brian talked about the expectations for the Hamburg Boys’ Basketball Team in this excerpt. I learned throughout my interviews that the expectation for every basketball program/team was different. The LaSalle Explorers in Niagara Falls expected to make the state tournament in Glens Falls every year. Qualifying for sectional play was a major accomplishment for some teams. Winning the division was a major win for other teams. The preseason expectations and goals had huge impacts on the outcome of the season. This is also true for the game of life.

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

“‘No. I’m not the coach, but this is what I would do if I was coaching. We would do a bunch of different things. We would concentrate on defense more than anything. If you take what I say and you apply it to games and your coach doesn’t want you to do it, then you have to stop doing it. Do what you are told to do and no more is my advice to you,’ I said. I wasn’t looking over his shoulder (Coach Francis Daumen). Seeing him in the hall, I would ask him, ‘Hey coach, how is the team going?’ I put all that stuff behind me because I knew that I had a hard enough job being a Physical Education teacher at Tech. I was at the top school in the city and I couldn’t let anything interfere with me staying there for however long I was going to stay there.”

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. My short basketball journey at Hutch-Tech was a tumultuous one involving a coaching change. I wanted Coach Richardson to be our coach for the boys’ basketball team when he arrived at Hutch-Tech in the fall of 1994. The administration had plans for him and for us. He still advised some of us from the sidelines while not interfering with our Head Coach Francis Daumen who had taken the reins from Coach Ken Jones.

Jason Rowe, Player, Buffalo Traditional School

“I was in the school so I was familiar with Andre and Jeff already. They were instrumental in our success my freshman year. Jeff was our shooter, and Andre was like our ‘Draymond Green’ – he was undersized, but he could do a little bit of everything. They were very good leaders. What also helped us was that a lot of us played together outside of Buffalo Traditional. We were always at the Boys Club – myself, Damien, Damone White, who unfortunately has passed away – we were always together playing. It’s kind of like we weren’t surprised because we knew how each other played and our mentality. No one else really knew. We knew how to compete, we just didn’t know we were going to knock off so many teams and make a name for ourselves. We just wanted to win.”

I already conducted several interviews by the time I got to talk to Bishop Timon’s Head Basketball 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. The success of those Jason Rowe- and Damien Foster-led Buffalo Traditional Bulls teams was also dependent upon the play of their teammates. They were the faces of those teams and the stars from their freshman to senior years. All championship teams need role players as well to compliment their stars and fill in the other statistical and non-statistical areas. The Buffalo Traditional Bulls were no different.

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

Bill Russell, Coach, Riverside High School

“I watched the good local high school teams play – teams where I guess I had the most respect for their style of play. It really wouldn’t do much good to go see some teams playing the playground style or the run and gun style. I can go to the westside for entertainment right? There were a few teams that I liked to watch play because I thought I could learn something. I went to some coaching clinics but the other thing I did which I thought was really helpful more than anything was go watch college practices. I liked to watch them early in the season, like the first two weeks of practice because that’s where the coaches would be doing most of their teaching. They spent most of their time teaching that time of the year, and then once the season started, a lot of practice time was taken up by game planning, preparation and strategies and things they were working on to play their next opponent.”

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. The level and degree of coaching varied depending upon the Yale Cup School you played at. Coach Russell was one of the coaches who treated the game as a craft for himself and his players as opposed to something that was done for four months into winter or at playgrounds. He took the game seriously and worked to give his players the best possible experience under his leadership.

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

“Jones would never let us run in practice. Quincy hated Jones. Like I said, Jones would only go 6-7 players deep. If Quincy was in foul trouble, he’d put Dion in. The previous year, we’d be down 14-15. Jones would say, ‘Lee. Go in there and shoot the threes!’ It was no respect. It was the ‘Bench Mob’. It was me, Q-Lee and Mike Brundige at the end of the bench. Like I said the game was always out of reach. When Pep got hurt, Q-Lee got some more run. Jones wanted to have five seniors starting. The first year he only had ‘Flash’ starting (Adrian Brice). The next year he had Ed Leonard, Jerome, Frankie, D-Herb and Mike B (Brundige) but they didn’t all start. Jones and Q-Lee clashed. He used to put Q-Lee in when the game was so far out of reach. So now he lets Q-Lee shoot when he wouldn’t let him shoot any other time. So now he blames Jones for what happened with him and basketball. No Jones player ever got – no he didn’t pound the table for anyone. How did we go 13-0, 22-3 and nobody made All-Western New York? Jones didn’t pound the table for nobody. Jones had his own agenda in my mind.”

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. Many of his players look back on him with affection and fondness but J-Bird and some teammates were no fan of the late Coach Ken Jones. Hearing J-Bird’s stories was valuable for me as a writer for both balance and perspective. The Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team looked like a utopia from the outside. It wasn’t for all the players though it wasn’t an ideal environment for everyone involved for any number of reasons. This was an interesting and surprising finding for me. As sports are a microcosm of life, it was reflective of the game of life in general and our world at large.

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

“To this day, it’s probably still the most fun I’ve had playing basketball. No question. No question, because when it got to the point where we were ranked, there was a swagger to us like, ‘Yeah. We are pretty good.’ It wasn’t overconfidence but it was, ‘We can hang with ya’ll now. We’re not the laughingstock we were two years ago. Ya’ll can’t clown us now. So trust me, I’m proud of that year. I’m disappointed by how it ended but nah I wouldn’t change too much. It’s funny. The inter-dynamics of everything is funny you know in hindsight looking back at the backstory in hindsight, but nah I wouldn’t trade that experience for nothing. Like I said, that’s still the most fun I had playing basketball. That year was the most fun by far.”

Arguably the most fun of all the interviews I conducted was that of No. 32 Jerrold ‘Pep’ Skillon. Pep was a key piece of the 1990-91 Yale Cup and Class B sectional championship teams. He was a two-sport athlete (football and basketball) like the above-mentioned J-Bird Skillon. Many people look back at high school and say that it was just high school. I witnessed the 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team from a distance and wanted to be like them. Pep shared the magic of that team in our discussion. It was the most fun he had playing the game and also turning the team around. He experienced the transition from being one of the least talented teams in the Yale Cup to becoming the league champion his senior season.

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

“If you show up every day and you work hard, you are going to get some opportunities. They may not come that week, that month, that year even – but if you show up to Coach Jones’ practices every morning and in the afternoon, and you don’t miss a single day –. I know that I wasn’t the most physically gifted player on that team – probably far from it. But I know that he saw value in showing up to work. During practices it was, ‘You guard Chuck Thompson! You guard Pep! You guard Derrick Herbert – you guard these guys!’ I’m 120 pounds, and soaking wet as a freshman, and I’ve got these almost men pushing me around, but I came back every day, didn’t complain, and worked and worked and worked! I think that translates into school and college – you show up every day and work on the classes you need to work on – when you go to your job, you show up every day and you be accountable – that was a big lesson.”

No. 44 Chris Souter was a member of the Class of 1992 at Hutch-Tech High School. 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. Coach Jones did not keep all of the most talented players when he arrived at Hutch-Tech in the 1988-89 school year. He had his eyes set on building a program with a culture and with players who he would pour his philosophies into. This was one of the controversial parts of his tenure. Chris Souter reflected on this in our discussion. He wasn’t the most talented player that fall of 1988, but Coach Jones saw something in him as a person, a player and as a part of the program going forward.

Darris Thomas, Player, Niagara Falls Senior High School

“Yes, absolutely that was our best year (the 1993-94 season). We went 20-5 and we won the sectionals and were two games away from Glens Falls. We were looking at the LaSalle and thinking, “Man we could be –,” and the paper had LaSalle going to Glens Falls. But we lost to – who did we lose to? But yes, we went 20-5. We had a great year, and I was All-Western New York and All-League. My junior year it was my team. My sophomore year it was actually my team too, but my junior year it was undoubtedly my team. We did really well. Vazanni let me be really vocal with the guys, and the guys were really close – we were all from the same area. He let me talk more in huddles – he would give me instructions and say, ‘Hey Darris go tell him –,’ and it began to connect us that year. Rasheen Moore. We called him ‘More-Lib’ – he was the two-guard, but he was just more so the dirty man, the defense and the charge taker. People were more so understanding their roles that year. That’s what made us really prevail.”

My research for The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story 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 dominated the rivalry but the Niagara Falls Power Cats were still uber-talented every year nonetheless. The one Power Cat I got to talk to was guard Darris Thomas. The Power Cats went on their own magical run during his junior season. That year it was his team and everyone bought into their roles. Players knowing their roles was another theme that came up during my 43 interviews. It is a critical part of winning in the great game of basketball and in life in general.

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

“It was a good feeling. We had already put the time in. We knew that we could do it, and we just needed to apply it. That year we just applied it, and it just happened you know what I’m saying? Everybody was trying to do better. Everybody was trying to get as many rebounds and score as many points. Like I said, the most important thing was winning, winning the games and we won. We used everything we learned from our sophomore year, our junior year and took a couple of losses – winning is just what we did. We didn’t know how to lose.”

The 6’5” No. 55 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” as shot the ball most times when he received it near the basket. Chuck played on the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team each of his four years at the school. He was there before Coach Ken Jones took the team over and he was a part of the rebuild of the program and the ascent. Chuck described his and his teammate’s path towards learning how to win and then their razor sharp focus on winning in his senior year.

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

“Russ was a good coach. I think a lot of times we didn’t respect Russ as much as we should’ve because he was just so nice to us. Russ was such a caring guy. He cared for you tremendously. He took us to practice and to leagues. He’d give us as his players the shirt off his back if need be. I think a lot of times when people give you, give you, give you, you don’t respect it and some of the stuff he was teaching, we just didn’t respect it enough. You respected it once you got to college. I know players who went to college and said, ‘Damn you know this is what Russ was saying!’ So, I mean he was a great coach. Oh absolutely. He knew basketball. He was a great historian. We went over to his house on winter breaks. We got pizza and we’d watch 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.”

Dennis Wilson played at both Turner/Carroll and Riverside High Schools. As such, he experienced high school basketball in both a private school and a public school. In this excerpt from our interview, Dennis gave roses to his coach at Riverside High School, Bill Russell. You would not think that Coach Russell had an astute basketball mind when looking at him. I learned firsthand however when I interviewed him that he was in fact a student of the game similar to Coach Ken Jones. Coach Russell also ate, breathed and completely immersed himself in the great game of basketball. He attended numerous clinics and wanted to hold the most detailed practices possible for the Frontiersman. Dennis Wilson got to something else significant in this excerpt which is appreciating your coaches and teachers when you have them which a lot of kids don’t do. They don’t realize what they had until afterwards.

Tim Winn, Player, LaSalle Senior High School

“For me it was one thing playing in that program – it taught you how to be a young man, but the success of the program made me feel like I could do anything. I don’t know losing, so I approach everything the same way I approach those games back then. I expected to go to Glens Falls back then, so when I’m in a job interview now, I expect to win. I’m currently at Wells-Fargo on the technology side and I expect to win. Playing for LaSalle, I’ve carried myself a certain way all my life because of that experience. It’s confidence, it’s borderline cockiness sometimes – I always believe that if I approach it with the right work ethic – then it’s game over. It doesn’t matter what sport it is. It doesn’t matter what realm of life it is, if I approach it with the same approach I used on the court at LaSalle, I’m going to win. Period. And you can ask any of the teammates that I’ve had. It’s just something that’s in you. It just did something to us as kids – we just always believe that we’re going to be alright.”

There were many great guards and players in the Niagara Falls LaSalle Basketball Dynasty of the 1980s and the 1990s. No. 11 Tim Winn is arguably the greatest guard of them all. Winn experienced great successes each of his four years going to the state tournament in Glens Falls each of his years in high school. The competitive fire of the LaSalle program is arguably what set it apart from all the other programs in Section VI. Tim discussed taking that competitive fire from his days as an Explorer and applying it throughout the rest of his life. He was a consummate winner and felt like he could win at anything. This also came out during my follow up interview with him on my sports YouTube channel, Big Discussions76 Sports.

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

Ronald Wolfs, Coach, The Netherlands

“My brothers were very important to me. They taught me the game of basketball and a love of the game – everything that’s a part of the game and that’s life. You have to win and lose. You have to deal with your emotions, be physically prepared, getting hurt – it’s all a part of life really if you’re a basketball player. And I think that’s also a part of my philosophy, “Basketball is life like Ken Jones said. The most important part of my basketball philosophy is to make better human beings out of basketball players. I think that’s the main reason why I still coach the game today. I’m still busy with the kids I coach today to make them into better human beings. We use this basketball game as a thing they love and forget about their problems and concentrate on the game. I love the game and concentrate and just compete.”

Coach Ronald Wolfs met Coach Ken Jones as a youngster at an early age and his life was forever changed like many of us at Hutch-Tech High School. Coach Wolfs was from the Netherlands and was initially introduced to the game by his older brothers like a lot of players. He met Coach Jones at his camp in upstate New York. The two became lifelong friends. Basketball is more than a game for some people and is also both a way of life and a craft. Coach Wolfs discussed this in our interview. He wanted to teach the game that he loved, but he also wanted to teach his players how to win in the game of life.

*To watch 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 extensive records he kept. Some pictures came from Coach Pat Monti. Some came from Laura Lama, a classmate from Hutch-Tech high school who kept her yearbooks. Damien Foster and Jason Rowe shared some. 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 other visuals. Some are location shots from Western New York.

Just like the players and coaches I interviewed, the pictures are a snapshot of that 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 and teams either excelling or going through the same struggles I experienced (or some mixture of the two) during my own unique journey.

The pictures in this post are of some of the teams from Western New York in that era. The thumbnail image for this piece is of the 1987-88 Hutch-Tech Engineers who were led by No. 23 Kevin Roberson, an important figure in this project. Kevin was pivotal in terms of motivating several of the core players from the 1990-91 Engineers to attend Hutch-Tech High School, even before Coach Ken Jones took the reigns of the boys’ basketball team in the fall of 1988.

Closing Thoughts

The opening excerpt/quote for this piece comes from the late Coach Ken Jones himself. Of the many quotes Coach Jones told us as his players, I did not recall this one personally. One of his sons shared it with me early in 2019 at his memorial service. That was just before the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. I think he used it to market the Ken Jones Basketball Camp. It’s a simple saying but it’s quite true.

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. If there is an issue with the previously described link, you can also email me at [email protected] . 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 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 Tribute to Kevin Roberson: The Hutch-Tech Engineer who Started it All on the Basketball Court

“K was a good dude. Yes, trust me. It was one of the hardest days of my life when he passed. That was tough for me. That was tough.”

The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story

Up to this point I have left subtle hints that I am working on a book project chronicling my high school basketball journey, what it taught me about life, and what sports teaches its participants in general, both in and outside the lines. Well, let me tell you some more. The title of the book is The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. It is a two-part project.

Writing-wise, it is a creative non-fiction piece based upon real life events and many of the names will be changed. If you were there and are not averse to being a character in the story, feel free to reach out as it is not finalized yet. As recommended by author John U. Bacon, I have changed the names of most of the people who were not interviewed. People mentioned in the newspaper were fair game and all the 30-40 players and coaches I interviewed, all agreed to be characters, major or minor.

A Project of Discovery

The project has admittedly taken a while for a myriad of reasons. I am convinced though that the finished product will be quality and will have been worth it. A major component of this project has been the research, particularly the above-mentioned interviews of players and coaches who were there in Western New York in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

From my vantage point, my story initially started with seeing Michael Jordan hit ‘the shot’ against Cleveland in the 1989 NBA playoffs. I then saw Coach Ken Jones turn the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team into city and sectional champions during the 1990-91 season, which was my freshman year at Hutch-Tech High School. Both were important events for me. The truth though, which I did not know when starting this project, is that the story started before Coach Ken Jones and the players on the 1990-91 team all arrived at Hutch-Tech High School.

It started with one young basketball player from one of the neighborhoods in the Central Park area of Buffalo. He influenced his peers from multiple schools, some of whom I knew before I got into high school myself. He mentored them in the great game of basketball and in life. That player was the late Kevin Roberson.

The Kevin Roberson Award

As I describe in my story, I did not learn about Western New York high school basketball and its rich history until I was in high school and looking to earn a spot on our varsity team. That was admittedly on the late side for a prospective basketball player. Thus, I did not hear of the likes of Ritchie Campbell, Marcus Whitfield, and Trevor Ruffin until I was part way through high school and beyond. You can also throw Christian Laettner in there whom I did not become familiar with until his legendary four years on the basketball court at Duke University.

Likewise, I did not hear of the name Kevin Roberson until my senior year at Hutch-Tech when my basketball dreams crashed and burned and were in tatters. I, personally, was unable to get anything significant done on the hardwood and I had no city or sectional titles to show for my time in the maroon and gold, which is what I aspired to in my freshman year. I did, however, win an award late in my senior year, interestingly the Kevin Roberson Award.

It was great that I won another award. I won the Best Practice Player Award as a sophomore and Most Improved Player Award at the Ken Jones Basketball Camp just before my junior year, so I had won a couple of basketball-related awards. But who was Kevin Roberson? And why was I winning this award in his name?

Pictures Of Kevin Around Our School

There was a picture of Kevin on a plaque on the first floor of Hutch Tech High School with other trophies, awards and pictures. I recall it being posted during the 1993-94 school year, my senior year. The picture of him was on the basketball court at the University of Vermont standing under the basket looking up for a rebound (see the initial image for this essay). The range of years beneath the picture indicated that he had died recently. Unfortunately, there was no announcement at school that I recall and none of my coaches had talked about him. Being a senior myself in 1994, any basketball alumni from the late 1980s were long gone and had not really come back to the school to mentor the younger players.

I also found a picture of Kevin on the fourth floor of the school with the other senior portraits near the cafeteria (pictured above). In my final days at Hutch- Tech, I actively sought out his picture with his graduating Class of 1988, and often stopped and looked at it. Sure enough, there he was, smiling in his black jacket and bow tie like the rest of the boys in his class. The girls wore pearls and black dresses.

A Great Guy Who Left His Mark at Hutch-Tech High School

“He was a great guy and played basketball just like you,” said Ms. Bonnie Unger, my sophomore year math teacher. A great guy just like me? I do not think Ms. Unger, or her family, will mind me mentioning her in this story. Ms. Unger, by the way, taught me a critical lesson or two about how to approach my academics, but that is a different story. In any case, Kevin made a lasting impression on her, and other faculty at the school it seemed.

So, he was a great guy like me, or the other way around. But what did that mean? What was great about me during my senior year? What seemed to make this Kevin Roberson great was that he had the skills to go on and play Division I Basketball at the University of Vermont. I did not have that. It turns out though, that there was more to him than his basketball skills.

A Leader and An Inspiration

Years later when working on my book project, my interviews and research interestingly revealed a common figure. He inspired quite a few basketball players at Hutch-Tech, and other schools, such as Turner/Carroll High School. This figure was none other than Kevin Roberson. That is right. The guy whose name sake award I won in my senior year, was the inspiration and mentor for many of the guys I played with and or looked up to at that time. The following are words about Kevin Roberson that came up in my interviews. They give you feel for his character, leadership, and selflessness.

Curtis Brooks, Player, Hutch-Tech High School, Class of 1991

“Kevin Roberson, I’ve got so much love for that man. He had that horrendous car accident and was taken from us short. He was the best athlete and could’ve possibly been in the league!”

Ronald Jennings, Player, Turner/Carroll High School, Class of 1994

“And then across the street from me on Manhattan Avenue, there was a guy named Kevin Roberson. I’m sure you’re familiar with Kevin Roberson. He lived across the street from me. As I got older and Kevin came home for the summertime getting ready for college, I was his workout buddy. He would get me up and make me go ride the bike with him to shoot free throws. He saw something in me that I didn’t quite see in myself and just brought that out of me in terms of basketball. It just increased my love of sports in general, but in terms of both basketball and football. He was the one that really got me playing ball.”

Quincy Lee, Player, Hutch-Tech High School, Class of 1991

“The guys getting most of the minutes in my first year were Kevin Roberson, who died in a car accident, Kevin Lee, ‘Rabbit’ Jackson whose name I think was Anthony – I think he was the point guard. Those three, but I can’t think of who the other starters were.”

Jerrold ‘Pep’ Skillon, Player, Hutch-Tech High School, Class of 1991

“I knew I was going out for the team. Actually, I had a friend on the team, a guy I grew up with from my neighborhood. It’s not like I had an ‘in’ or anything like that. He just told me what to expect. It was Kevin Roberson. Me and Chuck grew up in the same neighborhood with ‘K-Robe’ and we used to go to the park together. K was a good dude. Yes, trust me. It was one of the hardest days of my life when he passed. That was tough for me. That was tough.”

Charles ‘Chuck’ Thompson, Player, Hutch-Tech High School, Class of 1991

“The only thing I did was play for Campus West and I played for them my sixth, seventh and eighth grade years. But really where I learned all my skills was in Central Park at the basketball court. I used to play ball with – you ever heard of Kevin Roberson? If you want to say he was my mentor, he was my mentor, because we were in Boy Scouts together. We grew up together and I played a lot with him. He and his sister passed away in a car accident right here on Kensington. You know what, we played a little bit as freshman, but it was mostly watching because we already had a good team with Kevin Roberson.”

Leaving His Mark at the University of Vermont

During his senior season at the University of Vermont in the 1991-92 season, the Buffalo News wrote a feature on him entitled, Roberson Matures from a Scrawny Kid into a Top Shot Blocker (see the image above). Robert J. Summers wrote it and discussed his senior season at the university and his potential NBA career. He averaged 17 points, 10 rebounds and five blocks per game that season. In 2020, the Burlington Free Press published an article on what would have been Roberson’s 50th birthday. The paper shared that he and his sister died in a head on car crash with a drunk driver on the east side of Buffalo on May 18, 1993. It was two weeks before he was going to receive his diploma from the University of Vermont. That coincided with the ending of my tumultuous junior year at Hutch-Tech High School.

Concluding Words

This will conclude my piece about Kevin Roberson. Just as I was surprised to win the award in 1994, I had no idea that this project would lead back to him. I want to thank the 40 players and coaches I interviewed. I especially want to thank the five gentleman who shared their stories about Kevin Roberson. No. 21, Ronald Jennings was my first ever point guard and our leader at the Campus West/College Learning Laboratory on the middle school team, the Bengals. He assisted my first ever basket in an organized game which I still remember to this day. He went on to play basketball and football at Turner/Carroll High School.

The other four gentleman were No. 13 Curtis Brooks, No. 11 Quincy Lee, No. 32 Pep Skillon and No. 55 Chuck Thompson. They were key cogs on the 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team. They won the Yale Cup Championship with a record of 13-0, and the Class B sectional title in my freshman year, also a major inspiration for my story. Again, the stage for all of this was set by the late Kevin Roberson. Salute to you sir and rest in power.

Learning Yet More About Kevin’s Life

I want to finally acknowledge Michael Rivera from the Tech Family Facebook group. I think Michael was from the Class of 1991. He sent me pictures of Kevin from his senior year after I initially shared the essay in the group. I further understood afterwards why Kevin was so beloved at our school. He participated in multiple activities besides basketball.

Kevin played the trombone in the band. He was a part of the Electrical Engineering Society, and he ran track and field. Michael also shared images of Kevin’s senior portrait and the 1987-88 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team. He wore the No. 23 most likely in tribute to Michael Jordan. I heard stories about the 1987-88 team, but never saw pictures of it. Many say social media causes a lot of problems to which I agree. It also does some good as is in this case. Thank you again Michael.

Future And Related Works

I intend to create 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. On my first blogging platform, the Big Words Blog Site, there are interviews of some 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. 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 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 at [email protected] if there is an issue with the sign up form. Regards.