The First and Only Time They Held the State Basketball Tournament in Kingsport
1926 photo of new Dobyns-Bennett High School. Gym is on far end.
When
Coach Wilkes told us, nobody believed him.
It
was the winter of 1963 and the B-team was in the middle of one of our endless
practices in the “old gym” at Dobyns-Bennett High School in Kingsport,
Tennesssee. At the time we called it the “Old Gym” because it was the original
gym, replaced in 1950 by the new Sprankle Gym. It was also called the “Girls’
Gym” because that’s where girls’ gym classes were held.
Coach
Wilkes asked if we knew that they had held the state tournament in this gym
years earlier. No one believed him. They would never hold the Tennessee State
Basketball Tournament in this bandbox of a gym.
I
don’t think he ever brought it up again and I hadn’t thought of it until I ran
across this headline in an old issue of the Kingsport Times:
Tennessee
Cage Tournament Is Awarded Kingsport
It
was a banner headline all the way across the top of the Sunday Sports Section of
the Feb. 6, 1938 Kingsport Times.
1938!
Twenty-five
years before that long ago conversation with Coach Wilkes, the state tournament
was held in Kingsport.
At
that time it was Dobyns-Bennett’s only gymnasium; it would be another twelve
years before Sprankle Gym was added.
Dobyns-Bennett
has had three gymnasiums since the school was first built in 1926 and that old
“girls’ gym” would seem the least likely to host a state tournament.
The
current facility, the Buck Van Huss Dome, seats 5,500 for basketball. Its
predecessor, Sprankle Gym, held, 2,000 spectators. The D-B Gym, it’s official
name in 1938, accommodated only 650. The court was only 75 feet long compared
to Sprankle’s 84 feet. A state tournament in that?
It
was a different time.
Before
there was the D-B Dome, there was Sprankle Gym. And before there was Sprankle
Gym, there was the D-B Gym.
For my
generation, Sprankle was the heartbeat of the school, not just a basketball
arena, but a place to gather before school and at lunchtime, a place for
baccalaureate and commencement exercises, a sanctuary for our weekly Monday
morning devotionals featuring a rotating cast of local ministers.
But
Sprankle only served D-B’s needs for 17 years, replaced in 1967 by a new arena
– the D-B Dome – and a new school building. The Buck Van Huss Dome, as it is
now known, has been home to D-B basketball for 59 years!
In
fact Sprankle was D-B’s basketball gym for less time than its namesake served
as D-B’s basketball coach (LeRoy Sprankle was coach for 21 years, 1922-1943).
It was the school gym for a shorter period of time than the original D-B gym which
was in use from the time Dobyns-Bennett opened its doors in 1926, replacing
Kingsport Central High School (which my generation knows as Washington
Elementary) until Sprankle Gym opened in 1950, a total of 24 years.
The
D-B Dome seats 5,500 for basketball. Sprankle Gym held 2,000. And yet neither
was ever home to the Tennessee State Basketball Tournament.
The
old “Girls’ Gym” was!
What?
Yes!
A
little band box like that was home to the State Tournament. (When I was in high
school, the State Tournament was staged annually in Vanderbilt’s Memorial Gym,
which seated 6.583. My senior year it moved to the new Mid-South Coliseum in
Memphis, seating capacity 11,200.)
But
it was.
How
did Kingsport get the state tournament?
The
state tournament was first held in 1921, co-sponsored by Vanderbilt and the
Nashville Tennessean newspaper and held in Vanderbilt’s gym. (There were
14 entrants, two from East Tennessee – Chattanooga Central and Knoxville - and
the winner was Nashville’s Hume-Fogg High.) The tournament was an annual event
until it wasn’t, falling victim to squabbling between the public schools and
private academies.
The
two groups finally patched things up and as Kingsport Times sports
editor Frank Rule noted in a March 1938 column:
“Last
year, in the first state tournament in more than a score of years, Tennessee High
(of Bristol) captured the meet, bringing the title to upper East Tennessee.”
That
first state tournament in a dozen years was held in Milan, population 3,035.
Milan was in west Tennessee, 100 miles northeast of Memphis and 140 miles west
of Nashville. And 400 miles from Kingsport.
After
the Milan event the TSSAA, the governing board of high school sports, decided to
hold the tournament in the three sections of the state in rotation with East
Tennessee selected for the ’38 event.
But
where in East Tennessee?
The
Nashville Tennessean reported, “The state basketball tournament will be
staged the week ending March 19 in some city in East Tennessee to be designated
by the East Tennessee board of control, which will act as a tournament
committee.”
The
University of Tennessee submitted a bid to hold the tournament in its Jefferson
Hall and most - particularly the Knoxville sportswriters - just assumed UT
would get the event.
In
fact to them it wasn’t just an assumption, it was a fact. On March 21, 1937,
the Knoxville News-Sentinel ran this headline:
’38
Hoop Meet At U-T
State
Basketball Tournament Will Be Played In University Gymnasium, TSSAA Head
Reveals.
“The
Tennessee state basketball tournament will be held at the University of
Tennessee next year, The News-Sentinel learned Saturday in a
long-distance telephone conversation with S. E. Nelson of Chattanooga, who is
chairman of the TSSAA board of control. Mr. Nelson said that this had not been
decided recently but was worked out two months or so ago when it was decided to
revive the state meet.”
But
then ten months later, the committee met.
As
reported in the Feb. 6, 1938 Knoxville Journal, "The attitude of
the TSSAA is that since the high schools supply the teams, and the meets are
for their benefit, they should be held in high school gyms," declared
President V.F. Goddard of Aloca. "Therefore, the board selected Kingsport
High school, which has all the facilities for a successful state meet.”
That
band box had all the facilities? It must have been a low bar.
So
it was that the headline in the Feb. 6 Kingsport Times read: Tennessee
Cage Tournament Is Awarded Kingsport.
“The
state high school boys' basketball tournament will be played in Kingsport on
March 17, 18 and 19, according to an announcement by C. K. Koffman, principal
of Dobyns-Bennett high school and member of the East Tennessee Board of
Directors of the Tennessee Secondary Schools Athletic Association. Decision to
hold the state tournament in Kingsport was reached late yesterday during a
meeting of the board held in Knoxville. Nine members are included on the board
representing East, Middle and West Tennessee.”
The
tournament set-up was an unusual, perhaps even clumsy arrangement:
“Eight
teams will be invited to participate in the tournament. Three regional
tournaments will be held with the winner and runner-up invited to place teams
in the state tournament. In addition, two other teams will be invited to take
part in the tournament in order to complete the bracket.”
And
there was no guarantee that Dobyns-Bennett would be one of the eight.
“Whether
Kingsport will be one of the teams representing East Tennessee depends upon its
showing during the remainder of the season.
“Two
upper East Tennessee teams may be invited to participate in the tournament in
order to round out the eight-team bracket provided they continue the pace
already set in conference circles. They are Kingsport and Morristown in the Big
Six Conference with Blountville standing better than an even chance to be selected
by virtue of the team's excellent showing in the upper region of the state.”
As
it turned out Kingsport wasn’t selected to play in the state tournament held in
its own gym – it lost its final three games of the regular season,
sealing its sideline seat. (Milan had been selected to play in the tournament
held in is gym the previous year so there was a precedent for inviting the host
team.)
Blountville
made the tournament, but the rest of upper East Tennessee was shut out.
The
final eight teams, in addition to Blountville, were Chattanooga City, Memphis
Whitehaven, Nashville Central, Friendsville, Nashville Isaac Litton, Knoxville
and Adamsville.
The
March 17, 1938 Kingsport Times announced, “Tennessee high school
basketball will start its fadeout here today as eight leading teams from every
section of the state swarm on Dobyns-Bennett gym in the annual state tournament,
the grandest cage exhibition of the year.
“Tournament
officials announced today that the largest crowd in history was expected to
attend the games which come to upper East Tennessee this year for the first
time.”
How
many fans were expected in that bandbox?
Coach
Leroy Sprankle, who was in charge of the ticket distribution, told the Times
there would be tickets for 250 students and 400 adults.
That’s
a total capacity of 650, which by any definition is a “bandbox.”
If
you need further proof, when the D-B Gym opened in 1926, the newspaper
reported, “The gymnasium is a 72 by 116 foot affair, basketball court being 75
by 50 feet.”
When
Sprankle Gym opened it was listed as “100 feet by 60 feet with a full 50 by
84-foot court.”
As
for ticket sales, the tickets were originally to be held for D-B students and
Kingsport residents. But then D-B didn’t make the tournament, and an early
story called turnout “disappointing.”
It
was still termed “the most successful tournament every held under TSSAA” by the
Times with Memphis Whitehaven, which traveled 540 miles by train to get
to Kingsport, defeating the Knoxville Trojans 48-41 for the state championship.
The
only state high school basketball championship ever held in Kingsport was won
by a team that had endured a 20 hour train ride, changing from the Southern line
to the Clinchfield line in Chattanooga.
Since
1973 the State Tournaments (Boys and Girls and the various divisions broken up
by school size – it can be as many as 12 separate tournaments) has been held at
Middle Tennessee State’s Murphy Center, seating capacity 11,658, court length 94
feet.
That
1938 state tournament in Kingsport really was held in a bandbox.
But the
folks from out in the state were still impressed. Fletcher Sweet of the Knoxville
Journal wrote, “The state tournament was a pronounced success in every respect,
in spite of the fact that no Kingsport team was in the championship contention.
Attendance throughout was excellent and Director Koffman said that the
management would at least break even on expenses. ‘If we can do that,’ he said,
‘we will feel that the meet
has been more than successful, because we were glad to have the event here and
we were delighted to bring it to this part of the state.’”
Sweet
wrote that officials of the tournament, “Director C. K. Koffman, especially
have been expediting the tournament with excellent efficiency. The teams are
fed at the high school and quartered in a downtown hotel. (Hopefully the
Kingsport Inn and not the Bumstead, er, Homestead Hotel.) Their transportation
to the gym is provided.”
Here’s
the yearbook photo of the 1938 Dobyns-Bennett team that didn’t make the state
tournament played in its own gym:
Front
row: Junior Minnich, George Peters, Sam Young, Jack Pectol.
Back
row: B. B. Sullivan, Roy Hale, Hugh Blessing, Herman Ellis, Lonzo Barrett.
Coach:
LeRoy Sprankle
Manager:
John Parker
The 1937-1938 D-B team record: 18-12. Kingsport lost its last three games and also lost to the
only two eventual tournament teams it played, Knoxville and Chattanooga.
B-team
members included future D-B stars John Robert Bell, Lawrence Thayer and Tommy
Peters (George Peters’ twin brother.)
posted by Vince Staten @ 11:27 AM
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