Athletic Excellence
In the 113 years since intercollegiate athletics began at West Virginia with the playing of the first football game, success and competitiveness have become synonymous with each of the 17 Mountaineer athletic teams.
Highlights
were plentiful during 2003-04, beginning in the fall, when Mountaineer
football reversed a 1-4 start to win a share of the Big East
championship and a spot in the Toyota Gator Bowl on New Year's
Day. Linebacker Grant Wiley earned consensus All-America honors,
and Rich Rodriguez was the unanimous Big East coach of the year.
Women's soccer, ranked as high as fifth nationally during the season, advanced to the NCAA Sweet 16 behind the play of All-Americans Chrissie Abbott and Lisa Stoia.
The WVU women's basketball team played in the semifinals of the Big East tournament, their best conference finish ever. Led by WNBA draft pick Kate Bulger, the women were invited to the NCAA tournament with a 21-11 record. Mike Carey was voted Big East coach of the year.
Men's basketball returned to the postseason, advancing three rounds in the NIT. The gymnastics team was ranked as high as twelfth nationally, and freshman Janae Cox qualified as an all-arounder for the NCAA nationals.
Wrestler Greg Jones won his second NCAA individual crown. Competing at 184 lbs., he was 24-0 over the season, winning his third EWL title. Seven Mountaineers qualified for the NCAA championships, and Craig Turnbull was selected as EWL coach of the year for the fourth time.
Megan
Metcalfe and Tara Struyk qualified for the NCAA championships
in cross country; Metcalfe (3000 m) and the distance medley relay
team were NCAA qualifiers in indoor track, each earning All-America
status with fifth-place finishes.
Rowing won the Big East varsity eight petite final, while Zac Cline was an all-conference pitcher in baseball. Volleyball coach Veronica Hammersmith recorded her 500th career win, and women's tennis had another winning season. Interim coach Mike Seabolt (men's soccer) and Coach Sergio Lopez (swimming and diving) improved those programs as well, and rifle will return as a varsity sport for the 2004-05 school year.
Breaking Barriers
By John Antonik
Jim Lewis, an Alexandria, Virginia, native,
was one of eight players on West Virginia's 1965 freshman team
that went 20-1 and was deemed one of the best freshman teams
in the country by The Basketball News that season.
Joining Lewis on that team were Weirton's Ron "Fritz"
Williams and Ed Harvard, St. Albans shooter Dave Reaser, Kermit
guard Lewis Hale, ex-Marine Norman Holmes from Washington,
D.C., center Dick Penrod from Elkhart, Indiana, and forward Letcher
Humphries from Clifton Forge, Virginia.
"It was a wonderful experience because of the quality of
those eight people coming from diverse backgrounds," said
Lewis.
More so than their fine record, diversity was probably the most
memorable characteristic of that group. Four of them were African
Americans: the first four African American scholarship basketball
players at West Virginia University and the Southern Conference.
"We considered ourselves the pioneers in basketball because
we were the first," said Harvard, now an assistant principal
at Vineland High School in Vineland, New Jersey.
The man responsible for recruiting this group was George King.
When he sat down with assistant Bob Lochmueller to begin mapping
out his recruiting plans in the spring of 1964, King didn't know
he was about to turn WVU into the pioneering basketball institution
of the Southern Conference. He was simply interested in finding
some good players following a disappointing 18-10 season in 1964.
To King's knowledge, there was no specific integration plan established
at WVU. "It was a situation where we were simply looking
for the best players we could recruit," he said.
Of that freshman group only one failed to finish his career at
WVU. Lewis says all of them have since lived very productive
lives.
"We were successful then and we've been successful since,"
he said.
Lewis is currently head women's basketball coach at Fordham University
and has spent the last 35 years coaching all levels of basketball.
That unit went 20-1 against arguably the toughest freshman schedule
in school history. Williams averaged more than 30 points per
game.
That 1965 team, despite a losing record, upset its way through
the Southern Conference tournament to make the NCAAs with just
a .500 record. WVU lost to fourth-ranked Providence in the first
round of the tournament to finish the year with a losing mark.
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Less than a month later King was offered the Purdue job and he accepted. Twenty-three days after that, WVU athletic director Red Brown became the new coach.
Williams averaged nearly 20 points per game his sophomore season in leading West Virginia to the NIT. His junior and senior years he averaged better than 20 points per game. WVU won the Southern Conference in 1967 to advance to the NCAA tournament, and the Mountaineers also qualified for the NIT in his senior season in 1968. West Virginia won 19 games all three seasons Williams played but never won either an NCAA or NIT game. That in itself may be one of the reasons Williams is sometimes forgotten when people begin mentioning West Virginia's great tradition of players after Jerry West.
And Williams' easygoing nature may have given him an additional asset while living in Morgantown in the mid-1960s.
Morgantown wasn't Birmingham, Alabama, by any stretch, but at the same time it wasn't a very stimulating environment for young African American men either.
There were no barbershops, churches, movie theaters, or radio stations for blacks to enjoy.
Lewis paints this picture: "The black population in Morgantown in 1964 was very, very small," he said. "I think most of us came in with our eyes wide open. But we found ways to get stuff done. We went over to Osage and found places where we could do things and have the kinds of experiences that we were accustomed to."
Lewis said he only encountered blatant racism when West Virginia played road games.
"We were playing the University of Richmond, my home state, and the Richmond team would come out onto the floor as we did at home to a spotlight running out through a hoop. We ran out through a state emblem. At Richmond, they would run through a confederate soldier with the band playing Dixie. We were beating them pretty badly and we began hearing the racial epithets.
"Richmond was the worst experience," added Harvard. "Those people were outright calling us every name in the book. We had to have a police escort and have the cops take us in because those people were vicious back then."
Jim Lewis says he will continue to preach the lessons learned from their experiences integrating basketball at WVU.
"It's about service and really trying to positively impact the lives of young people who are so eager for discipline, leadership, and the kinds of things born out of experiences and stories we have to tell," he said. "I'm going to keep talking and sharing my experiences and letting people know about my friend Ron "Fritz" Williams."
It's a story worth listening to.
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