KANSAS CITY– Some times nice things happen to nice people.
The night before his induction to the College Basketball Hall of Fame, some 35 friends of Glenn Wilkes gathered for a dinner at the Majestic Restaurant to honor the legendary 85-year old coach, author and master clinician who helped introduce basketball to the deep South over 50 years ago.
I was lucky enough to be invited and had the chance to meet the Wilkes’ family and share in a family tradition they were introduced to by one of Wilkes’ best friends, Nike executive George Raveling and have participated in on special occasions.
In August, 1995, Raveling took the family to the Palace Restaurant in Santa Barbara, Calif. during the Michael Jordan Flight School. Every night at The Palace, they pass around booklets with the words to “What a Wonderful World,” the touching song first recorded by Louie Armstrong and released as a single in 1967.
When the music starts to play, the whole restaurant joined together to sing the song and waiters come around to clink glasses with the guests. Every year during the break between sessions, Wilkes, Raveling and their friends head back to the Palace. The family also shares the song on special occasions like weddings and anniversaries.
After the dinner, the family put on an encore performance.
It was a touching moment that created a lump in the throat and a surge of happiness for a small town kid from Georgia who has given so much of his life to educating players and coaches. Wilkes was the head coach at Stetson for 36 years from 1957 through 1993, winning 552 games with 27 winning seasons, guiding the Hatters from the NAIA to the NCAA Division I level as an independent and a member of the Trans America Conference, beating marquee college powers like Duke, Cal, BYU, Auburn and Purdue in the 80s and early 90s. During that time, he was also the athletic director, a professor of sports and exercise medicine and his own sports information director. In addition, he gave back to the basketball community by sponsoring the first coaching clinic in the South (attracting speakers like the late Adolph Rupp and Mr. Iba and John Wooden), the first basketball clinic for boys, the first basketball clinic for girls and the first officials’ clinic.
Wilkes became known as the “Godfather of Florida basketball” after he established the Glenn Wilkes Basketball School, one of the oldest basketball camps in the South, in 1958. He directed it for 37 years. Anybody who played basketball in Florida basketball during the 60s, 780s and 80s attended that camp,” said Wilkes son Glenn Jr., who has coached the Rollins’ women’s team to over 600 victories. “It was instructional and old school. You knew if you went there, you hae to work your butt off.”
Sometimes we focus so much on high profile coaches who win national championships and we forget about pioneers like Wilkes and fellow College Hall of Fame inductee Howard Garfinkel, the 84-year old innovative former executive director of the Five Star camps; who helped grow the game. Five Star introduced the world to Michael Jordan and Moses Malone and gave major college and NBA coaches and master clinicians like Hubie Brown, Rick Pitino, Mike Fratello, John Calipari, Dick Vitale and the late Chuck Daly. their first big breaks I grew up with Five Star, attending my first camp there when I was fresh out of college and working for the Trenton Times in the 70s. It was the best teaching camp i ever attended in its prime.
I had no idea just how much history Wilkes contibuted to until I spoke with Raveling and started doing some research and read a recent piece on him in the Orlando Sentinel. Glenn Wilkes is a lifer whose batteries never seem to stop running. “I remember calling him 40 years ago when I was coaching high school,” said Alcorn State’s 84-year old legendary former coach Davey Whitney. “I did it because I wanted to get better.”
It should come as no surprise that coaches still call regularly to pick Wilkes’ brain.
After retiring from Stetson, Wilkes, who has a PH.D in education, reinvented himself. He taught sports management courses at the 10 years. He is the author of several basketball books on subjects like “Winning Basketball Strategy” in 1959; the flex offense and the three point shot, after it was just approved by the NCAA in 1986.
“When I was at Florida, I took a course in basketball because I wanted to get a better understanding of what my father did,” his youngest daughter Angel said. “When i got the syllabus, I found out the textbook for the class was “Basketball,” — written by Glenn Wilkes.”
Wilkes has lectured all over the world in places like Taiwan, Portugal, Colombia, Venezuela, Latvia, Korea and Hong Kong.
Raveling, Nike’s Director of International Basketball and the best recruiter of his generation, knew all about Wilkes from his trips into the deep South in the 60s He offered Wilkes a chance to help run the Nike’s All American camps and skills academies, a position Wilkes held for 20 years. Wilkes is still an assistant director of the Michael Jordan Basketball Camp at the University of California Santa Barbara. He has his own website, BasketballsBest.com, a site dedicated to coaches at all levels and runs his own travel company– WorldClassBasketball– that takes college teams overseas on summer tours. Last summer, he and Angel took Old Dominion, where his youngest son Robbie works as an assisant, on a tour of Italy.
Del Harris knew about Wilkes, too. When Harris was the head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, in the 1990s, he hired Wilkes as an advance scout in the Southeast..
Wilkes never got into the game to become famous, but Stetson has realized his enormous value as an ambassador. The school has honored him with a bust at the entrance to the court at Edmonds Arena that is named after him. A message under the sculpture urges players to “touch the coach for luck” ..
It’s nice to see Wilkes is no longer a hidden treasure.
“When I called him to tell him he was being inducted, his wife told me he broke down in tears,” NABC deputy director Reggie Minton said. “She said this was the biggest thing that ever happened to him.”
There are some people who simply bring dignity to the game and deserve a round of applause.
