• 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. 

Bob Devault coaching 1935 Watauga Academy girls basketball team

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.