The Best Basketball Coaches in the Whole World

The Best Basketball Coaches in the Whole World

I started playing basketball in Leslie, Arkansas (Pop. 504, the signs read) when I was four years old. I played all the time, dribbling a small basketball about the size of a cantaloupe up and down sidewalks and into and all through the house where I grew up.  I spent hours and hours from ages four to, let’s say ten, using the board across the top of a door in my parents’ bedroom as a goal. I can’t remember how old I was when I graduated to a regular-sized basketball, but it must have been about the same time that I stopped using my parents’ bedroom as a gym.

By the time I got to seventh grade, I got to be on a team, and that meant I had a coach. In fact, over six years, I was lucky enough to have five different coaches, all of whom affected me in a variety of ways that I consider positive and all of whom improved my game considerably.

My first coach of the Leslie Lady Bulldogs’ Junior Girls was Hulen Quattlebaum. He and his successor, Marvin Bishop, my coach in the eighth grade, came to Leslie, Arkansas as young, single men and left with local women — Coeita Sutterfield and Ramona Henderson, in that order — as wives. Coach Quattlebaum blew his whistle a lot and taught us intricate drills. Coach Bishop, who was one of the most handsome men I’ve ever seen and drove a snazzy car and had a great jump shot, worked with the forwards on our shooting, and it really paid off later.

In ninth grade, Coach Wiles, whose given name may have been Kenneth, arrived with a wife named Sue. Coach Wiles is lodged in my memory as a hard taskmaster, but that may be simply because he urged us to get and stay in shape, which we certainly needed to be. I know we ran up and down the bleachers a lot, sometimes as punishment, which may be illegal now, but it was a great way to build strength and stamina as well as a certain feeling about the coach.

In my sophomore and junior years, it was Gene Harness who returned home with his wife Annabelle to coach us into winning our district and into playing in our first state tournament.  Coach Harness then led us to our first state tournament WIN — I mean we won the whole thing!!!! — when I was a junior. Coach Harness always told us that if our shoes weren’t squeaking as we stopped and started and pivoted through our practices and games, we weren’t working hard enough, and he was right.

When I was a senior, Jerry Passmore and his wife Gail returned home to Leslie from nearby Snowball for him to coach and her to teach Home Ec. Jerry orchestrated another state tournament championship for the Leslie Lady Bulldogs, a totally outrageous achievement for our team and our town. It was a glorious thing.

These coaches were awesome. Each one of them helped me excel at something and to begin to create a life I’ve loved, which I know wouldn’t have been possible without basketball and these coaches. By my reckoning and recollection, they were the best basketball coaches in the world. And I know I’m right about this.