Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 14, 1991 TAG: 9104150248
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RAY COX SPORTSWRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Allen Wiley, a retired teacher and coach whose duties in parts of four decades took him to five high schools in two states, had an impact.
"I was scared to death of him," said Tony Price, one of Wiley's basketball players.
Or this:
"You don't expect me to say anything good about him, do you?" said former Radford basketball coach Buddy Martin, also a former player. "Good thing he doesn't live where he does now [on a magnificent bluff overlooking the New River] when I played for him. Somebody would have thrown him off that cliff."
That testimony was from a couple of people who actually liked the coach.
\ Say what they will, but those who played on one of Wiley's teams never forgot the experience.
He hollered at them; he glared; he ran them to death; he polluted the air they gasped with cigar smoke.
And they won basketball games, football games, baseball games, and track and cross country meets.
And won and won and won.
A JV football team Wiley coached at Blacksburg High did not give up a point. Not one. Didn't yield the first first down until the fourth quarter of the fourth game.
His basketball teams went 410-185 and won two state championships before he retired in 1986. He coached teams to the state title game at three high schools - Blacksburg, Graham and Pulaski County.
"Who else has ever done that?" said Jimmy Smith, the basketball coach at Alleghany High and another former Wiley player.
Despite all the victories, you would think Wiley's system would have left many of his players with a sour view of the coaching trade.
So how come at least 24 of them have found themselves tooting a whistle at their own teams?
"I enjoyed playing for him," said Danny Surface, who played baseball for Wiley. "He was tough, but that's good for you."
Good for you like a Marine Corps boot camp is good for you.
"He had a temper," said Duane Shealor, a former Blacksburg player under Wiley. "He was kind of domineering. You knew who was in charge, that's for sure."
At least 24 present or former coaches who played for Wiley; at least 24 zillion stories about the man in charge.
\ Was there ever any doubt who was in charge?
"I may be the oldest living survivor of that concentration camp that he used to run," said Martin, 45 and a 1963 graduate of Blacksburg, where he was a three-sport star. "My father, Boots Martin, and Coach Wiley hit it off almost from the start of the time that Coach moved to Blacksburg. They were like best friends and still are. I don't know why that was, but it sure didn't help me any. Nobody got cussed at more than me."
Martin should have been flattered. You didn't get browbeat by Wiley unless you were good.
To those who sat on down toward the end of the bench, Wiley was almost nice.
To a point.
\ Gerald Thompson illustrated that in an account of a basketball game during his junior season, when he was a lightly used reserve for Blacksburg.
"We were playing Wytheville [George Wythe] and both of us were undefeated. With about four minutes to go, one of our starters fouls out. Back then, about all I could do was play defense, but he put me in the game. I was scared.
"With three or four seconds left, we were down by one and he calls a timeout to set up a play. He talks to the other four players but doesn't say a word to me. We broke and they headed out on the floor. Then I asked him, `What do you want me to do?'
"He said, `Go over and stand in the [naughty adjective] corner and shut your [another naughty adjective] mouth.'
"We won by a point."
\ "Nice" was not a word that came up often in connection with Wiley's methods.
"I was talking to Mr. Wiley one time about some of the things he used to do us," said Vaughn Phipps, who once played football for him. "He said, `It wasn't that bad.' And I said, `Yes it was.' "
Depends on you definition of "bad."
"He used to run the [biological slang] out of us," said Kevan Harris, another former Wiley football player. "If he was upset with us, then he'd light up a cigar and I can remember many a time running until that cigar went out. I lost my like of running ever since I played for Mr. Wiley."
Not just the football players suffered.
Thompson used to run track for Wiley at Blacksburg.
"One day, he didn't think we were running fast enough, so he got into his car and said, `Follow the car.' He took off and we took off running."
By and by, their journeys took them all over Virginia Tech's sprawling campus and through surrounding neighborhoods. Before long, most of the runners had fallen back - they already had had about half a workout before the long run began - and only the two fastest runners, David Thompson and Ron Shear, still were within sight of the car.
After running a substantial number of miles, the bulk of the team became lost. As the two speedsters doggedly kept pace with Wiley's car, the rest opted to run back to school, some distance away.
"We got back to school and nobody was there," Gerald Thompson said. "After awhile, here he came and David and Ron were still behind him. He got out of the car, went and got his stuff, and left. Never said a word to us. That was bad. If you're not being cussed at, then that meant you weren't in good graces."
Good graces?
"He used to say, `Hell boys, you pass out before you die,' " said Bob Sterrett, one of Wiley's basketball players.
Even in a state of unconsciousness, you weren't necessarily safe.
Steve Wright, another of the football players, told of a practice in which they were required to run an almost endless series of sprints up a hill.
"Then somebody says, `Hey Coach, [a player] has passed out down here.' Mr. Wiley said, `When he wakes up, tell him to get back in line and keep running.' "
The image of Wiley puffing a stogie atop that hill while impassively supervising a workout has stayed with many a football player.
"He used to stand up on that hill and look down on us like some Greek god," Rex Kipps said. "We hated that."
As might be gathered, Wiley wasn't exactly a tower of compassion.
"I remember his cure-all for any kind of injury you'd have . . . is a piece of tape," former football player Roger Martin said.
\ All this wasn't just some mindless torture session. One of the reasons Wiley's teams won was because they were so highly conditioned and mentally tough.
Blacksburg used to destroy basketball foes with a full-court press. Every now and then, some poor bunch would get beat by 70 or 80 points. You could look it up.
Wiley was said to be the first coach in the New River District to employ a press. He had brought it over from West Virginia, where he grew up and began his coaching career at places such as Smoot and Bramwell.
Wiley's teams worked like fiends at that press.
"He'd take the bleachers in the gym and push them all the way back to the wall when we were working on the press and that would be out of bounds," Shealor said.
\ Wiley didn't put up with defeat, not that he had to that much.
"The second time we won the state in basketball [1968] at Blacksburg, we got off to a real bad start," Bob Sterrett said. "We were 3-2 before Christmas. Christmas was awful that year."
Not only did that team practice Sundays and holidays, it had to undergo other miseries.
By that time, Martin had graduated and was at Virginia Tech playing for the varsity. Wiley asked him to assemble a bunch of his teammates and come over for a scrimmage.
Martin showed up with a group that included Glen Combs, John Wetzel and Ron Perry. Combs and Perry were starters on Tech's 1966-67 NCAA Tournament team. Wetzel and Combs later played professionally.
The collegians won the scrimmage, but not by a disgraceful margin.
"So Coach Wiley says to the Tech guys, `Thanks for coming by. Now get the hell out of here,'" said Gary McCoy, one of Blacksburg's players. "Then he made us run."
"Looks like the least you could have done was win a quarter," Wiley said, according to McCoy.
\ Mark Hanks played basketball for Wiley at Pulaski County, then scouted and coached with him before moving on to work as an assistant for Thompson at Christiansburg.
"Practice started and the first Sunday came along and we didn't have a practice scheduled," Hanks said. "I asked Gerald how come. He said, `You can't practice on Sunday.'
"That was the first I heard of that."
Practice was sacred to Wiley.
"The one thing that I learned from Coach Wiley was that you were better than other people because you practiced harder," said John Byers, a basketball player. "Nobody practiced harder than we did. Nobody."
\ Despite lobbying heavily for the appointment, Wiley never was head football coach at Blacksburg, which hastened his move to the basketball job at Graham.
That irked some of his former players.
To this day, David Wright remembers Blacksburg's football fortunes during the 1960s.
"In 1966, the JV went 5-1; two years later, when those players were seniors, the varsity went 2-7-1," Wright said. "In 1968, the JV went 6-0-1; two years later, the varsity was 3-5-2. In 1970, the JV was 6-0; two years later, the varsity goes 3-5-2 again.
"Now what does that tell you?"
\ Wiley had an impact.
"I'm sure everybody he taught, he had an influence on," Smith, the current Alleghany basketball coach, said. "And he had a good influence on them."
Kipps played college football at three places and has made a career of college coaching. Yet, he never had so much as thought about playing football until Wiley talked him into coming out for the team at Blacksburg one day.
"I didn't even know how to get dressed," Kipps said. "The desire to win and the hate of losing was what he stressed. That's the way he is. That's the way I still am."
That's the way a lot of them are.
"I know he's out of coaching now, but he's the best," Buddy Martin said. "Turn the lights on, throw the ball up, and he is the best."
\ ALLEN WILEY'S BOYS
Those athletes who are known to have followed Allen Wiley into coaching:
Danny Surface - A 1962 graduate of Blacksburg High, Surface, 43, played a year of varsity baseball for Wiley. His current stint as the defensive coordinator for the football team at Chowan (N.C.) Junior College was broken only by a run from 1975-78 when he was head football coach at Floyd County High. He is also the chairman of the physical education department at Chowan.
Coty Dickerson - A member of the Blacksburg class of 1962, Dickerson has been in education for 23 years, the past 18 at Appomattox High. He started at Prices Fork Elementary in Montgomery County and went on to Shawsville High, where he was for four years. He was an assistant and head basketball coach there and, for one year, was the baseball coach. Since going to Appomattox, he has been the head basketball coach, head cross country coach, head baseball coach, and an assistant in football and track. Coaching basketball from 1980-86, he was Seminole District coach of the year once and directed the team to Group AA Region III runner-up finishes twice. Was the captain of the Blacksburg JV team when Wiley was the coach.
Buddy Martin - Retired from coaching after this past basketball season at Radford High. Martin, 45 and a 1963 graduate of Blacksburg, played basketball for Wiley and collegiately at Virginia Tech. Has been an assistant football and basketball coach at Blacksburg and, for more than 20 years, has been at Radford High. Martin, now an assistant principal at Radford, had two tours as the basketball coach covering 14 years. His teams went 208-119 and went to four Group AA tournaments.
Bob Sterrett - Played basketball and JV football for Wiley. A member of the Blacksburg class of 1969, the 40-year-old Sterrett coached 1973-80 at Radford High. At various times, he was the head varsity boys' and girls' basketball and golf coach, and also the JV basketball coach. Was a junior on the 1968 state basketball championship team from Blacksburg. He is the national sales manager for security systems at Poly-Scientific Division of Litton Industries in Blacksburg.
Jimmy Smith - A 1971 graduate of Blacksburg, Smith played basketball for Wiley. For the past 15 years, Smith, 37, has been at Alleghany County (later just Alleghany) High 10 of those as the head varsity basketball coach. His teams have won two Region III titles and gone 120-80.
Wayne Smith - A 1970 graduate of Blacksburg, Smith, 39, who is Jimmy Smith's brother, has been an assistant basketball coach at Auburn High, Pulaski County High and Clinch Valley College.
Vaughn Phipps - A 1970 graduate of Blacksburg, Phipps, 38, played JV football for Wiley. Phipps has been in football coaching 18 years at the eighth-grade, JV and varsity level. He has been a varsity assistant at Blacksburg since 1983 and, over that span, the Indians have been state champions once and runners-up twice.
Jim Wright - Another 1970 graduate, he played JV football for Wiley. Since then, he has coached track and cross country at Bridgewater College. Now the director of the Wellness and Fitness Center at Radford Community Hospital, Wright has run a 100-mile race, a 50-mile race, more than a dozen marathons and numerous triathlons.
David Wright - A 1968 graduate, Wright played two years of basketball and one each of football and track for Wiley. Has been in coaching 20 years at old Dublin High and at Pulaski County High. His teams won New River District track and cross country titles at Dublin. Since Pulaski County opened, Wright has had four Roanoke Valley District cross country championship teams.
Roger Martin - Now the athletic director at Glenvar, Martin graduated from Blacksburg in 1965. He played JV football for Wiley. He spent 11 years as a football assistant at Glenvar when it was both a high school and a junior high. When Glenvar resumed its status as a high school, Martin was the head coach for seven years.
Tony Price - As a junior, Price played for Wiley's last basketball team at Blacksburg. Price, 34, graduated in 1974 and played college basketball at Belmont College, an NAIA school in Nashville, Tenn. Started at Shawsville High in 1979 and has been there since. Coached boys' and girls' basketball, tennis and baseball. Has been the boys' varsity basketball coach and continues to coach the girls' team.
Gary McCoy - The principal at Harding Avenue Elementary in Blacksburg, McCoy, 44, graduated from Blacksburg in 1965. A football, basketball and baseball player at Blacksburg, he was on Wiley's second state championship basketball team and also played JV football for him. Was the head junior varsity and assistant varsity football coach at Christiansburg in the early 1970s.
Duane Shealor - A football-basketball-baseball man at Blacksburg, he was one of Wiley's basketball players. Shealor went on to a brief stint as the golf coach at Christiansburg. A 1966 graduate of Blacksburg, he is 44.
Mike Cole - The 34-year-old graduated from Blacksburg in 1975 and has coached football at some level since 1976. He has done tours at Blacksburg, Giles and Christiansburg, where he has been the head coach the past five years. His regime at Christiansburg has been one of the most successful there. Cole guided the Blue Demons to the playoffs twice, winning Region IV in 1988. That is as far as Christiansburg has been in football. He played JV football for Wiley on a team that gave up six points all year and did not yield a first down until the fourth game of the season.
Kevan Harris - Has at different times been the head baseball and football coach at Auburn High for six years each. He continues to be the football coach for the Eagles. In 1987, Harris had the Eagles in the Group A Division 1 Region C title game, where they lost to eventual state champion Parry McCluer. That has been the most successful football team at Auburn. A 1974 graduate of Blacksburg, Harris played JV football for Wiley.
John Byers - A sporting goods salesman who now lives in Boston, Byers graduated from Blacksburg in 1974. He played basketball for Wiley and was later a walk-on at Virginia Tech. Byers worked on Burrall Paye's staff at William Fleming, was the head coach at J.J. Kelly for two years, and was both a volunteer assistant and a part-time assistant for his old college coach Don DeVoe when DeVoe was at Tennessee. Byers was at Tennessee four seasons.
Ronnie Edwards - Was the star of Wiley's only basketball team at Graham High. Edwards helped lead the G-Men to a Group AA Tournament runner-up finish in 1973-74, their best basketball finish ever. Edwards did some basketball coaching at Lincoln Memorial in Tennessee as an assistant.
Rex Kipps - Never played football before Wiley talked him into going out for the JV team at Blacksburg. A 1971 graduate, Kipps, 38, went on to play college football at Bluefield (W.Va.) State, Ferrum and Richmond. Since 1977, Kipps has been an assistant coach at Richmond, Clemson, East Carolina and Southwestern Louisiana, where he has been the past six years. His specialty is the defensive line.
Doug Dunavant - A 1980 graduate of Pulaski County, he played basketball for Wiley. Since graduating from Concord (W.Va.) College in 1986, he has had stints at Alleghany and Pulaski County. At Alleghany, he was an assistant basketball and baseball coach and the head golf coach. Since coming to Pulaski County in 1989, he has been the ninth-grade football coach and head track coach.
Gerald Thompson - Now the basketball coach and athletic director at Christiansburg High, he graduated from Blacksburg in 1967 after playing basketball and running track and cross country for Wiley. After attending Ferrum and East Tennessee State, Thompson, 41, began work on a public-education career that has taken him to Christiansburg Middle School, Shawsville High and Christiansburg High. He has coached or assisted with tennis, track, eighth-grade and JV football, and girls' basketball. Over his career, his boys' basketball teams at Shawsville and Christiansburg have a 233-177 record. He had a Region C runner-up at Shawsville when only the regional champion went to the state, and he coached the first two teams in Christiansburg history go to the regional. He also has had the only Christiansburg team to go to the state.
Mark Hanks - A 29-year-old who played two years of basketball for Wiley at Pulaski County, Hanks is a 1979 graduate. After playing three years at Emory & Henry, he graduated in 1983. While working on a graduate degree at Virginia Tech, he scouted for Wiley. The next year, he worked at Christiansburg for a year as Gerald Thompson's varsity assistant. The next year, he worked with Wiley at Pulaski County, where he coached the JV and was a varsity assistant for four years. Hanks has been at Liberty two years, where his record is 8-32.
John Dowdy - A 1966 Blacksburg graduate, Dowdy, 42, played JV football and ran track for Wiley. Since then, he served as an assistant football coach and head track coach at Christiansburg before going into private business. He now coaches the boys' track team at Hidden Valley Junior High in Roanoke and has a 12-and-under boys' AAU basketball team. Through the years, he has coached numerous youth football, basketball and baseball teams.
Steve Wright - A 1975 graduate, he played JV football for Wiley. Wright, 34, played football for Emory & Henry, graduating in 1979. From 1979, he coached the eighth-grade team at Christiansburg Middle School, working as head coach three years. In 1987, he was the JV football coach at Christiansburg High. Since 1988, he has been the varsity assistant at Christiansburg. He also has helped with eighth-grade track, eighth-grade basketball and varsity wrestling.
John Hale - A 1975 graduate of Blacksburg, he served three years as an assistant football coach at Christiansburg, two as the offensive coordinator. He played JV football for Wiley.
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB