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.

Coach Jones’ Basketball Player Selection Criteria: An Excerpt From Chapter 17 of The Engineers

“His drills. His Xs and Os. The details with which he ran his plays and that you had to run his plays. I never had a coach who had designed plays off a made free throw, or off a turnover off a side out of bounds and we were in the penalty. He was that detailed. I never had a coach with that much knowledge and that much detail until I played for Coach Jones. That’s exactly what it was (Hoosiers).”

Criteria for Prospective Players and Invite Lists

“I’m going to post an invite list soon, Dunbar.” I thought about Coach Jones’ invite list when I thought about the next promotional excerpt for my book project entitled, The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. Coach Jones had a different approach to the great game of basketball relative to the other coaches in our league, the Yale Cup. I’ve shared this in all the promotional content I’ve created involving him. His invite list was another unique aspect of the boys’ basketball program at Hutch-Tech High School during his five-year tenure.

“Jonesy was looking for a certain kind of kid. He was an old school Bobby Knight-type of coach,” another coach said who asked to remain anonymous. Any kid could try out for the boys’ basketball team at most other schools but not at Hutch-Tech High School. This meant that being the best basketball player in the student body didn’t mean you could try out. This is an oxymoron for some people. He had specific criteria for the kids he kept on the initial roster and then throughout the season. It was an early taste of the real world for many of us in terms of meeting the requirements for schools and jobs, and then keeping and excelling in those positions.

The following excerpt comes from Chapter 17 of The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story Part One. It captures Coach Jones’ approach for assembling his roster my sophomore year. It was completely different than how basketball tryouts were portrayed on television and many of us had never seen anything like it before. I was mostly a player-manager in middle school and had not seen anything like it before.

Chapter 17- Sophomore Year Tryouts: Assembling The 1991-92 Engineers

There were more pages in the packet. One sheet read, “TO BE THE BEST YOU HAVE TO PLAY THE BEST!” It had the graphics of the same player dunking the basketball copied several times on the page. Another page had a copy of a varsity Letter “T”. On the upper part of the T, it said “Yale Cup” horizontally and then “CHAMPS” spelled out vertically. Below that on the lower part of the T was a basketball with 90 to the right and 91 to the left (for the 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team). On another page with the same four digital players, there were statements that read, “THE WILL TO WIN IS NOT ENOUGH,” and below that, “IF YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO PREPARE TO WIN!”

An article was photocopied on the next page entitled, The joy of victory is why sports exist, written by Jeff Riggenbach from USA Today. It discussed how the desire to win is what makes sports fun, and what kids learn from competition. On the next page, Coach Jones typed, “ONE PERSON CAN MAKE THE DIFFERENCE AND EVERY PERSON SHOULD TRY!”

The final two pages were titled in all capital letters, “PICKING THE TEAM”, which consisted of descriptions of how Coach Jones would pick the team, the team’s ‘ideal make up’, the kinds of boys he was looking for, and finally the kinds of boys he did not want. It was like a job description. His ideal makeup for a varsity team was five seniors, five juniors and two sophomores, a number he was close to with his 1990-91 Yale Cup and sectional championship team.

The characteristics of the boys that Coach Jones looked for included:

● Academic soundness
● Those who are coachable
● Those who could concentrate
● Those who hustle
● Those with aggressiveness
● Those with loyalty

The list of characteristics of boys that Coach avoided was longer and included:

● Troublemakers
● Those who know it all
● Those who always have excuses when they make mistakes
● Those who blame others for their mistakes
● Those who never get a chance because the coach will not let them
● Those who are only interested in themselves and not the welfare of the team
● Those who quit on themselves
● Those who are habitual hypochondriacs
● Those who are losers
● Those who are unable to get along with the other players or the coach on and off the court

A couple of things stood out to me about Coach Jones’ criteria for the boys he looked for. He clearly stated that being on the team the previous year was not a guarantee for making the current roster. Also, tryouts were a game of war where the hungry ones made the team. Furthermore, making the team was simply the threshold and each player had to continue to work. Finally, he rated loyalty highly. That is, he would keep a lesser talented kid who was loyal over a more talented kid he deemed not loyal. It wasn’t all about talent it seemed.

There was a section called “Cutting the Squad”, where Coach Jones outlined his thought process for not bringing players back. Lastly there was a final section titled, “EVALUATION/ASSESSMENT SHEETS”. In that section, Coach Jones wrote, “Prospective player evaluation/assessment forms must be completed by their teachers and turned into Coach Jones prior to the first practice session!” Prospects finally needed physicals from their doctors.

The last quote on the bottom of that page stated, “IF YOU’RE GOING TO BE A CHAMPION, YOU MUST BE WILLING TO PAY A BIGGER PRICE THAN YOUR OPPONENT WILL EVER PAY!” And then finally it explicitly stated that, “AN INVITE LIST WILL BE POSTED,” followed by “YOURS IN GOOD SPORTS,” signed by Coach Jones.

Closing Thoughts

“At least you got to work with Kenny. I think he had everyone’s best interest at heart and did the best he could,” Coach Francis Daumen said. I referred to Coach as Mr. Daumen though he insisted that I call him coach years later. He served as our junior varsity coach my tumultuous junior year. He was our head coach my enigmatic senior year after Coach Jones retired. Coach Daumen spoke fondly of Coach Jones. I reflected on how Coach Jones was different things to different people in an early promotional essay I wrote about him. One point of contention for his detractors was how he ran his program during tryouts and then basketball season. It worked out well for a little while but what were the long-term results of his methods? I talk about that in depth in my book project.

The featured quote for this piece is from Derrick Herbert of the Class of 1989. Derrick was a part of the 1988-89 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team, Coach Jones’ initial team. He played a major role in turning the program around and played two years for Coach Jones. He witnessed the changes instituted by Coach Jones and saw an opportunity to make the team. One major change was not necessarily keeping the best players in our school, or those highly respected within the student body. Did any of this resonate with you? Did you experience something similar? Leave a comment below if so. Best regards and Yours in good sports.

Videos About Coach Jones

I am sharing two videos I created about Coach Jones on my sports YouTube channel entitled, Big Discussions76 Sports. Consider liking them if you watch them, sharing them in addition to subscribing to the channel.

The Big Words LLC Newsletter

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

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

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

A Name That Repeatedly Came Up During My Research

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

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

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

Ritchie Campbell’s Legend

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

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

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

He Could Do Whatever He Wanted To On The Basketball Court

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

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

Burgard’s Dynamic Duo

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

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

Elite Basketball Company

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

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

Hearing About Ritchie’s Legend Late

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

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

Everyone Spoke of Ritchie with Reverence

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

Ryan Cochrane, Player, Cardinal O’Hara High School

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

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

Damien Foster, Player, Buffalo Traditional High School

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

Dion Frasier, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

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

Ed Harris, Player, Riverside High School

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

Reggie Hokes, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

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

Frankie Harris, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

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

Quincy Lee, Player, Hutch-Tech High School

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

Jason Rowe, Player, Buffalo Traditional High School

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Winn, Player, LaSalle Senior High School

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

Other Yale Cup Phenoms I Learned About Through Their Legends

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

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

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

The Night I Saw and Met Ritchie Campbell

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

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

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

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

The Legend Walks In

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

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

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

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

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

Ritchie had that ‘Mike’ in Him!

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

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

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

Closing Thoughts on Ritchie Campbell’s Legend

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

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

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

More Related Content

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

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

The Big Words LLC Newsletter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Going 13-0 In The Yale Cup

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

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

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

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

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

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

Experiencing Sobering Losses Early On: Iron Sharpening Iron

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Was It The Chemistry?

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

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

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

Playing Both Yale Cup And Fundamental Basketball

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

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

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

More On Chemistry, Competitive Will And Killer Instinct

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

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

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

The “Mighty” Hutch-Tech

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

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

Doing It A Different Way

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

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

A Winning Formula

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

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

Unselfishly Putting The Puzzle Pieces Together

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Special Group Of Players

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

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

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

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

The Difference One Team Can Make

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It Was The Culture

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

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

Their Final Game: The 1991 Far West Regional

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

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

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

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

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

The Players Who Contributed To That Season But Graduated

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

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

Closing Thoughts On The 1990-91 Engineers

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

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

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

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

Acknowledgements And Final Words

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

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

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

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

The Big Words LLC Newsletter

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

A Look Back at the Yale Cup: Section VI’s Basketball Diamond in the Rough

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Yale Cup And Section VI

, FC : (0,0,0)

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

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

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

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

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

14 Schools Of Varying Sizes

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

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

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

Three Phases Of The Season

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

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

Playing Each Other Once A Year In Conference Play

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

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

The Gyms We Played In

, FC : (0,0,0)

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

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

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

Playing In Older And Antiquated Gyms

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

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

Playing In Uniforms With No Name

, FC : (0,0,0)

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

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

A Lack Of Feeder Systems For The Varsity Teams

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

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

One Of Many Legendary Yale Cup Coaches

, FC : (0,0,0)

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

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

Varying Qualities Of Coaching

, FC : (0,0,0)

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

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

Playing Different Numbers Of Games

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

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

Our League Games Were Immediately After School

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

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

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

Visits From The Trainer Once A Week And Wasted Talent

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

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

The Players That Emerged

, FC : (0,0,0)

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

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

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

Competing In Section VI

, FC : (0,0,0)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Section VI’s Basketball Diamond In The Rough

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

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

Celebrating The Yale Cup

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

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

Playing Yale Cup Basketball

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

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

Closing Thoughts

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

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

More Promotional Pieces On The Way

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

The Big Words LLC Newsletter

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