Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 18, 1993 TAG: 9306180021
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By DOUG DOUGHTY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Ayers is happy just to be coaching again; in fact, he's happy to be doing anything after a cancerous tumor was removed from his liver.
"I was feeling like a million bucks, and then, doggone it, I had the checkup [in May]," said Ayers, a former assistant at VMI. "It was like being attacked in a dark alley by a thousand muggers."
That is an apt analogy, given the surgical scars that now line Ayers' stomach. He also faces six months of chemotherapy, "but I've already had radiation," he said. "That's the tough one."
Ayers, 47, underwent treatment two years ago for cancer of the colon, but he doesn't think there is a connection. In the interim, he served as an assistant coach at Alderson-Broaddus College in Philippi, W.Va.
For 10 years before that, Ayers had been out of basketball. After three years on the staff at VMI and two at Austin Peay in Clarksville, Tenn., he went into private business.
"I was a little disillusioned," said Ayers, who sold everything from boots to beer. "I was one of those very impatient 35-year-olds who said, `I'll show this game,' and got out of the business.
"Everybody wants his own program. Maybe I was a little immature, but fortunately I've gotten a second chance. I'm back in the gym, which is where I was meant to be."
Ayers experienced his basketball rebirth while following one of his sons, Brian, who played at David Lipscomb College, a highly successful National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics program in Nashville, Tenn. Brian Ayers played in the NAIA Tournament in each of his four years and was team captain in 1992-93.
"I would watch my sons play and go into a different zone," Ayers said. "I'd tell myself, `You're doing something wrong here.' Don Meyer [the Lipscomb coach] was very good to me. He involved me in a lot of things and one night we were riding in a van and I said, `That's it; I'm getting back in the game.'
"Once you're out, it can be pretty tough, though."
Ayers credits head coaches Sonny Smith of Virginia Commonwealth and Pete Gillen of Xavier for supporting his return to coaching. Ayers and Gillen were fellow first-year assistants at VMI when the Keydets won their last Southern Conference basketball championship in 1977.
"It's such a tough profession that I don't know if I would ever recommend it to somebody," said Gillen, who has become famous as much for the success he has enjoyed at Xavier as for the high-profile jobs he has chosen not to pursue at Virginia, Notre Dame and Villanova.
"So much of this business is timing, luck and contacts. I worked at the Five-Star camps and got to meet [former and current NBA coaches] Hubie Brown, Mike Fratello and Chuck Daly - people who later recommended me for jobs.
"Not everybody hits the lottery like [Kentucky coach] Rick Pitino. There's a lot of very good people, tremendous people like Walt Ayers, who haven't had that opportunity."
Coincidentally, Bluefield College will furnish the opposition Nov. 29 when VMI opens its season at Cameron Hall in Lexington. It will be the fourth game for the Rambling Rams, members of the NAIA Virginia-Tennessee Athletic Conference.
The wire-service account of Ayers' appointment was not the first time the school has been confused with Bluefield State, which is across the state line in West Virginia.
"Even my mother thought I was at Bluefield State," Ayers said. "When I called Joe [Cantafio] at VMI, he asked, `Now, are you at Bluefield College or Bluefield State?' I asked him, `Where do you want me to be?'
"It's funny, my wife and I were just through Lexington last summer. We stopped by the museum and the barracks. The doors were locked at The Pit [VMI's old arena], but we nudged them open just enough to get the smell of the place. It was my first time back there since I left."
Bluefield College, fourth among Virginia colleges in all-time victories, made the national tournament for six consecutive years as a member of the National Little College Athletic Association. However, competition has been tougher with the new classification and the Rambling Rams' record fell to 17-19 in 1992-93.
Coach Mark Blevins resigned after the season to join his wife, who had taken a teaching position in Tennessee.
Ayers has been familiarizing himself with the personnel, including conference player of the year Fabian Horton, and trying to add a few recruits. He wants to come into the Roanoke Valley, where he has contacts dating to his two seasons as head coach at Franklin County High School from 1972-74.
"I'd been running around, having the time of my life recruiting and putting tapes together," said Ayers, who also runs a summer camp in Clarksburg, W.Va., where Meyer and University of Tennessee women's coach Pat Summitt are his featured speakers. "Then, this other thing [the surgery] come up."
It wasn't the first time his faith had been tested.
"I would have classified myself as a one-hour-a-week Christian," he said. "I wasn't the kind of person who went around knocking over old ladies, but I wasn't the kind of person I wanted to be.
"I knew there was something wrong in my life, which accounts for a lot of sleepless nights. I don't go around [Bible] thumping and I'm not going to cast the first stone, but it's very simple. You have two choices in life: the right way and the wrong way."
Ayers knows from experience that he will have to get his rest when he begins his next round of chemotherapy July 1, and he expects to lose his hair. After so many years away from the game, however, nothing is going to dim his enthusiasm.
"It's [cancer] a wicked disease," he said. "The good Lord heals you once and all it takes is one cell to sprout again. With technology and medical advances, it's incredible the faith that the doctors have. My knees may be wobbly, but I refuse to lie on the canvas."
by CNB