ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, February 28, 1996 TAG: 9602280055
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LEXINGTON
SOURCE: DANIEL UTHMAN STAFF WRITER
THE VMI COACH'S PAST HAS HELPED him keep his priorities in order with his Keydets and his family.
He made his college pitching debut the day after his wisdom teeth were pulled.
He went out for football his senior year in high school even though his older brother, Don, had broken his neck on the same field.
He worked for Lefty Driesell, one of the most demanding basketball coaches in the business, for seven years.
Then, he took on the job of reviving basketball at VMI.
Call Bart Bellairs crazy and you might not be far off. He prefers words like ``determined'' and ``diligent.''
``He's always been a go-getter,'' said his wife, Jacki, ``but the way he acts on the court isn't the way he acts at home.''
``I like the pace of basketball; I like being aggressive. If I wasn't a coach, I'd probably want to be a race car driver,'' Bart Bellairs said while preparing his Keydets (17-9) for this week's Southern Conference tournament in Greensboro, N.C. ``I think every coach gets crazy around this time of year.''
Often noted for a working lifestyle that is similar in its pace to his team's frenetic playing style, Bellairs takes the opposite approach in his home at 908 Ruffner Place. There's no time limit on how long he plays with his sons, he doesn't have a schedule or checklist of how to interact with his family and the only things he presses are 4-year-old Andrew and 2-year-old Jacob's belly buttons. ``I couldn't ask for a better father for my children,'' Jacki said.
Bart's parents were divorced in 1970 during his freshman year in high school. His father, Don, suffered from alcoholism, and left the family to his wife, Mimi. They had been married in 1952 after meeting in Japan, where Don was a pilot and Mimi was working for the U.S. government. She had planned on entering Union Theological Seminary in Richmond after graduating from North Carolina-Greensboro in 1948, but went to Japan to ease the financial burden on her father, who had to provide for six other children.
``I had such determination, I could have done anything I wanted to do,'' Mimi Bellairs said. ``I think Bart thinks that, too. I told him he could achieve what he wanted to do if he worked hard.''
Shortly after the divorce, Mimi moved the family to Richmond, Ky., and began walking two miles a day round-trip to Eastern Kentucky University to earn a master's degree in education. Meanwhile, she was shoveling the driveway so Bart could shoot baskets in the snow. She was finding him braces to wear on his legs when he grew too quickly. She was standing up for him when, after he made a poor pass in a high school basketball game, his coach told him, ``I don't want you to sit next to me.'' And she was there taking care of him after he got struck by lightning on a mountainside during his sophomore year in college.
``I saw her as the driving force of how to succeed,'' Bart said. ``Now it's helping me stay up till 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning; it's helping me strive for my family.''
Bellairs' ambition hasn't always had a positive impact on his personal life, though.
He had a marriage and a daughter, Katie, while coaching at Wilkes (Pa.) University when he got a big break in 1986. Driesell offered Bellairs an assistant coach's position at Maryland, and he felt he had to take the job to get closer to his dream of being a Division I head coach. But his wife refused to leave her native Pennsylvania. She stayed there with their daughter and the marriage ended in divorce.
``He cried for three years,'' Mimi said.
Today, Katie, 13, lives with her mother in Oviedo, Fla., and attends a high school for gifted children. She spends summers and every major holiday with Bart, Jacki and the boys. Bart hopes she'll attend college somewhere close to where he coaches, perhaps Washington and Lee University. But he has learned from the past.
``He realizes the importance of being with his family,'' Mimi said. ``If [a bigger job] is going to come, I hope the boys are at an age where they can be a part of that.''
Andrew and Jacob may be too young to understand why their father rants and raves on the sideline or why he has to go on an 800-mile recruiting trip to Kentucky just a few hours after a game. Bart says it's important they know he loves them as much as his team.
``The reason I coach is because I love people first and I like basketball second,'' he said. ``Basketball is important, but not as important as [Keydets forward] Brent Conley going to his 9 a.m. class.
``Do I get tired? I'm exhausted. But I'm smart enough to know when to walk away.''
At those times, his destination usually is Andrew and Jacob's room at home. The boys don't like sleeping without their father, so every night Bart pulls their twin beds together and sleeps between them in the crack. No wonder his back contorts so wildly on the sideline during key plays.
While he dwells on one project, VMI's basketball revival, he and Jacki have another on their mind. They'd like to have some more children. How many? ``I want a basketball team,'' he said jokingly.
Thanks to Bart Bellairs, the VMI basketball program is a joke no more.
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS/Staff. Bart Bellairs has turnedby CNBVMI's basketball team into a winning program. color.