10th Grade basketball

I entered 10th grade at Eastern Hills High School as a 5' 2" 14-year old. Not only was I very small, I was younger than my classmates. By age, I should have been in the 9th grade. Unlike today, 10th grade was the first year we were actually in the high school building.

Meadowbrook and Handley junior highs fed EHHS and, if you recall from my earlier stories, Handley had beaten Meadowbrook for the 9th grade championship. That meant there would be a lot of competition for the basketball team. We didn't have a 10th grade team, just a varsity and a B-team or JV.

At 5' 2" I was very small but I was very fast and a good ball handler and defender. I thought I was pretty good. Little did I know how close I came to getting cut as a sophmore.

We practiced with the varsity. So you can get an idea of my relative size, this was the starting lineup for our varsity.
Wayne Nash, center, 7'0" senior (They listed him as 6'11" in the program to keep the expectations and hype down)
David Wolliman, forward, 6'8" senior
John Heatherly, forward 6'4" junior (Ralph Hill a 6'5" senior was in the starter here until be broke his foot and football was over bringing Heatherly in)
David Hannebutt, guard, 6'2" junior
Jerry Miller, guard, 6' senior
Tommy Thompson, guard 5'10" senior
Jimmy Aycock, guard, 5'11" senior
Other guys were Danny Harris a 6'3" senior guard
Dwight Smith a 5'10" junior guard
Phillip Berry a 6'4" junior center
and some other juniors and seniors.

As far as 10th graders my competition at guard was Jay Worley 6'1" (he was a "star", scored a lot of points but wouldn't play defense, and was given a varsity jersey as a 10th grader but chose to play on the B-team), Charlie Cook 6'0", Jimmy Swanson 6'2", and my brother Gary 5'9". Gary was playing football so he wasn't around the first part of basketball practice. When football was over the starting QB, a junior, decided he wanted to play basketball, too. He'd been the starting point guard at Handley in the 9th grade but didn't play in 10th grade. That bumped me back a little more. In addition, there were a couple of other juniors trying out as guards.

As I've said before, I thought I was pretty good. I was fast and I could play defense. Most importantly, I hustled all the time. We would run wind sprints at the end of practice and I'd win almost every time. That would remain true throughout my high school career. I remember in practice that I would particularly make Danny Harris look silly. I would steal the ball frequently on his dribble and deflect his passes like crazy. Coach Howerton would yell at him and tell him, "You're a foot taller than he is and you can't get the ball past him?" Danny was a great guy but sometimes it seemed I had his number.

I really didn't play that much in the games, so I have no memories of them. I also kept the scorebook for the varsity games. I learned later that the only reason Coach Howerton didn't cut me was that I hustled so hard and had such a great attitude. Even though I was small I could hold my own in practice and worked the varsity guys hard. Maybe I'd grow, so he kept me that 10th grade year. I'm sure glad he did and I did grow. I was 5'7" by the end of the 10th grade and ready for my junior season.