One of the highlights of the summer is coming on Saturday, July 15, thanks to state coaching legend Tex Williams. Tex will honor a new class of state sports legends when he hosts the West Virginia Sports Legend Dinner at the Moose Club in Beckley.
Each honoree is then inducted and displayed in Williams sports museum in Artie. Previous inductees include state legends such as Willie Akers, Fred Wyant, Don Nuckols, Lewis D' Antoni and Paul Greer.
Here are some of the inductees for this year:
n Dave Barksdale: Considered one of our state's all-time great basketball coaches at Woodrow Wilson in Beckley, he was also a great player for the Flying Eagles.
n Herbie Brooks: One of many great scorers to play for Mullens basketball, Brooks starred for Gale Catlett at WVU in the 1980s.
n Joe Cook: The longtime head basketball coach at Beckley Junior College, Cook's teams held their own competing as a two-year school against four-year schools in the West Virginia Conference.
n Johnny Frye: An incredible multi-sport athlete at Huntington East, Frye was the Kennedy Award winner in football in 1956, and then went on to be a basketball captain at Duke.
n Jim Hamrick: A Meadow Bridge and Glenville State athlete, he can be considered the father of Herbert Hoover football. It was not easy at that time to blend Elkview and Clendenin together, but Hamrick established the foundation that still exists at Hoover today.
n Fred Lewis: A multi-sport athlete at Woodrow Wilson, he is now a state Supreme Court Justice in Florida.
n Gene Miller: A Mullens star who went on to play at Morris Harvey.
n Frank Rodriguez: One of several Woodrow Wilson stars who went on to play at WVU.
n Chris Smith: A Charleston High basketball star, Smith is considered one of the best, if not the best, rebounder and post player in Virginia Tech history.
n Ted Spadaro: A former Mount Hope star who went on to play at West Virginia Tech.
n "Wheel" Thomas: A star at Stoco High School and West Virginia Tech.
n Larry Tyree: He played on the 1954 Pax state championship team with former Stonewall Jackson coach Don Stover. He has been a successful attorney in Raleigh, North Carolina.
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Because we are a small state, relationships and friendships come into play often on our state's sports scene. For example, one of my favorite sports stories of the year was Mitch Vingle's recent column on the longtime friendship between St. Albans and Hurricane baseball coaches Rick Whitman and Brian Sutphin.
Here is another story.
In 1972, the co-captains of the all-state baseball team were Billy Joe Hicks of DuPont and Steve Naternicola of Fairmont Senior. For many years, Hicks and Naternicola knew each other only as names in newspaper clippings. Little did they realize how their lives would take similar paths. Both went on to be coal miners, both got into coaching baseball and have sustained success.
Hicks coached at Hurricane from 1996-2008 and won a state championship in 2002. Naternicola coached at his alma mater and consistently had the Polar Bears in AAA and AA state title games.
"I never knew who he was, but I always felt a connection to Steve, because we were listed on the all-state team together," recalls Hicks. "Several years ago he came up to me with a couple of his players and introduced himself. He told his players, 'This is the man that was a co-captain with me of the all-state team back in 1972.'
"It's the kind of bond and meeting that happens with coaches in a small state. I don't think that happens much in states like Florida or Pennsylvania."
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Speaking of high school baseball coaches in our state, it's hard to imagine that anyone in West Virginia loves coaching the game more than Bill Mehle of Charleston Catholic. His former athletic director Bill Gillispie says, "He [Mehle] could retire, his wife has retired, his kids are finished school, but there is nothing he enjoys doing more than coaching baseball."
Here's hoping he coaches forever.
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This past week, June 6, was the 73rd anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion of Europe in World War II. More than 9,000 Allied soldiers were either killed or wounded that day, but their sacrifice allowed more than 100,000 soldiers to begin the slow, agonizing trek across Europe to defeat Adolph Hitler.
One of the unsung heroes of D-Day was a state native and former WVU athlete, Ben Schwartzwalder.
Schwartzwalder was born in Point Pleasant and was a 1928 graduate of Huntington High School. He would go on to WVU, where he was a standout football player and wrestler from 1930-32. Before the war, he coached football at Sistersville and Parkersburg high schools. During the war, he organized football leagues and training regimens to help prepare the troops physically for D-Day. His preparation may have saved hundreds of Allied lives. He earned a Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart.
Many remember he went on to coach football at Syracuse from 1949-73, won a national championship in 1959 and had such star running backs as Jim Brown, Ernie Davis, Larry Csonka and Floyd Little. I think of Schwartzwalder every year on June 6.
Contact Frank Giardina at flg16@hotmail.com.