- Coach DeVault
- How a Baptist preacher's son from tiny Watauga Academy in tiny Butler, Tennessee became head basketball coach at Dobyns-Bennett
Chris Poore began his third year as Dobyns-Bennett
boys basketball coach this season. And if history is a guide, he should be in
the head coach’s seat for a long time.
Basketball has always been the model of stability at
Dobyns-Bennett.
Take away the brief period after LeRoy Sprankle
resigned in mid-season in 1942-43, when D-B had four different coaches in five
seasons, and you have a number of coaches with long, successful runs:
LeRoy Sprankle – 1921-1943
Guy B. Crawford – 1947-1960
Buck Van Huss – 1967-1990
Charlie Morgan – 2000-2017
And then there’s the early sixties, when D-B had
three different coaches in four seasons.
That little anomaly began on Jan. 2, 1960 when word
leaked out that long-time coach Guy B. Crawford was resigning effective at the
end of the season. Crawford had won eight conference championships and finished
third in the state three times and second in the state twice.
It was mysterious that Crawford would resign
mid-season but there were a lot of mysterious things about Crawford’s career.
He would die a mysterious death two years later after playing late into the
night in a high stakes poker game.
Guy B. was only ten months removed from finishing
third in the state when he abruptly bolted for….
No one knew.
Things started to become clear on Feb. 2, 1960.
The Kingsport Times reported that Joe Lister was
resigning as Morristown basketball coach to enter private business.
“Kingsport Dobyns-Bennett coach Guy B. Crawford last
night had no comment concerning the vacancy left by Lister's resignation. Crawford
has previously stated that he would probably stay in the Big 7 Conference, and
that he has reached verbal agreement with an unnamed school. Speculation has
centered on Morristown as Crawford’s next position.”
And so the search was on for a new D-B basketball coach.
On March 27, 1960 in his Point of View column in the
Kingsport Times, sportswriter Don Algood wrote:
“Rumor has it that the choice lies between present
assistant coach Bob DeVault and Elvin Little of Lenoir City [who had won the
state in 1958]. Probably the hottest candidate of all, Hampton's Walter ‘Buck’
Van Huss, decided against applying even before taking his Bulldogs to Nashville
to pick up the Tennessee title [only days earlier]. Vernon Osborne of Alcoa [which
had won the state in 1959] applied, then withdrew his name. Another hat thought
to be in the ring belongs to Sam Dixon of Appalachia. Incidentally, a lot of
folks seem to think DeVault was removed from contention when Swick stated that
a combination basketball-baseball coach was sought. Not so, says soft-spoken
Bob. ‘I coached baseball when I was at Elizabethton, and I told Mr. Swick that
I could and would take baseball here. However, I think it would fit better into
the coaching program here to have a baseball coach who could assist with
basketball - that is, if I were the basketball coach.’ DeVault assists with spring
football and scouts for head football coach Bill Jasper in the fall – and is in
line for a lot of credit for D-B football victories.”
Science Hill hired Elvin Little before D-B could get
around to making an offer.
Out of nowhere emerged a new candidate, Dwane
Morrison, who had turned around the basketball program at Anderson (S.C.) High
in only three seasons. In his second year his team had finished third in the
state and in March 1960 they had won South Carolina’s 3-A high school
basketball championship.
Plus he was willing to coach baseball.
He was hired.
On Nov. 18, 1960 the Kingsport Times wrote, “D-B's
1960-61 basketball team will take the court - against highly-regarded Sullivan -
with the familiar red bandana-waving figure of Guy B. Crawford missing from the
sidelines.”
(Incidentally Sullivan was coached by D-B grad
Dickie Warren, class of ’53, who was never mentioned in this coaching search or
any future D-B coaching searches, although he certainly had the credentials.
Dickie would retire from Sullivan Central in 1999 with 922 career wins.)
Times sportswriter Don Allgood talked to Morrison before
his first game as D-B head coach.
“Although no one is going out of his way to put him
there, Dwane Morrison is a man decidedly ‘on the spot.’ If anyone put the
30-year-old Kentuckian there, it was his predecessor, Guy B. Crawford - by
winning 341 of 414 games in his 13 campaigns at D-B. How does Morrison intend
to meet this challenge? ‘By just being myself,’ he says. ‘I think you just have
to be yourself and do the best you can . . . It's really difficult to follow
someone like coach Crawford. There is a little more pressure.’ Morrison feels
Dobyns-Bennett’s winning tradition will help him. ‘The community spirit and the
school spirit make it easier. They back you 100 percent. When you have to start
from scratch, it takes a long lime to build up ... I know. I've been through
it.’ Most D-B fans already know how well he succeeded in that situation, at
Anderson, S. C., where basketball was at low ebb when he took over. ‘Anderson
was just nowhere,’ he says. ‘We even played one team Anderson had never beaten.’
Two years later, in 1959, Anderson was third in South Carolina's Triple-A
division. Last spring Morrison's boys took it all.”
One aspect of being “himself” meant introducing a
new pattern of substitutions. Morrison used a platoon system, substituting five
players at a time. Joe Eversole, who was the manager on that team, told me
Morrison told him he knew he had to do something to differentiate himself from
Guy B. and he settled on the platoon system.
Morrison had success with the method: his first D-B team
went 36-3, finishing second in the state tournament. But not everyone was happy
with platooning. Charlie Leonard used to tell me that Morrison had the best
player in the state – that would be Charlie’s younger brother Bob – and he only
played him 18 minutes a game.
After his second season, ending with a loss in the
Region One tournament, Morrison got an offer he couldn’t refuse.
From the May 21, 1962 Kingsport Times:
“Dwane Morrison today marked his 32nd birthday by
accepting the position as number one assistant basketball coach at the University
of South Carolina. Morrison has been head basketball and baseball coach at
Kingsport Dobyns-Bennett for the past two years. Including a one-point loss in the
state championship game, Morrison's D-B teams won 62 of 70 games.
“Speculation on his successor has already started.
Two of the top candidates are expected to be Bob DeVault, assistant at D-B
since 1950, and Walter (Buck) Van Huss of Hampton. Both men this morning indicated
considerable interest in the vacancy.”
Four days later, on May 25, 1962, the Times
reported:
“Hampton Mentor Van Huss Nixes D-B Hardwood Post
“He gave three reasons for not submitting an
application. ’First,’ Van Huss said, ‘I've got too many ties in Hampton. Then
I’m 42 years old and that’s not a good time to be moving around.’ Van Huss
concluded by saying, ‘It would cost me $1,000 to $3,000 to sell my house here
(in Elizabethton). and buy another one in Kingsport.’”
I was on the D-B team at the time and we heard that
Van Huss told D-B officials that he couldn’t leave Hampton at the time because
the community had just built him a new gym.
Five years later, after DeVault left for a coaching
job in Winston-Salem (where he won the state championship), Van Huss apparently
was ready; he took the D-B job, beginning a 22-year run.
When Bob DeVault took D-B’s head basketball job in
1962, he already had 27 years of experience in coaching.
He began coaching at age 21, coaching girls’
basketball in 1935 at Watauga Academy in Butler, near Elizabethton (now
referred to as Old Butler because TVA flooded the town in 1948 to create
Watauga Dam and Lake).
Coach DeVault had graduated from Watauga Academy
before attending Furman College. He taught and coached at Watauga Academy until
the war. (He also coached football.)
Bob DeVault caching Watauga Academy football in 1936
After returning from the service, he took a job at
Elizabethton High and was hired away in 1950 by Guy B. Crawford.
DeVault and Crawford were the exact opposites in
personality. Guy B. was flamboyant; DeVault was soft-spoken. In my three years
with the team I never heard Coach DeVault utter a profanity. The maddest I ever
saw him was in a game against Chuckey-Doak. He disagreed with a call and threw
down his ever-present clipboard. His anger was magnified by the sound of the
clipboard, which landed exactly flat, creating a loud bang.
When Guy B.’s body was taken to the funeral home
after his sudden death, Mrs. Crawford was too upset to identify the body and
asked Coach DeVault to drive to Morristown to perform the i.d.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home