RICHMOND — With March Madness about to get into full swing this week, I would like to turn the clock back 70 years to 1938 and the debut of a great basketball coach.

That was the year Ralph Carlisle came to Madison High School as coach after he had graduated from the University of Kentucky.

As a player, Ralph was certainly qualified to become a great coach. He was an All-State player twice at Kavanaugh and the leading scorer in the state tournament his senior year. After graduation, he had a scholarship to the University of Kentucky and while there he was named to the All-Southeastern Conference Team twice.

There has been a lot written about the tough tactics that some coaches like Billy Gillespie and Bobby Knight use to produce good basketball players. Those two may well have copied some of those from the success of Ralph Carlisle as a coach.

In practice he was a tough taskmaster and would run you till your tongue hung out, then run you some more till you were ready to drop. He was a stickler for fundamentals and woe be to you if you missed an easy lay-up for you might do 100 the next day.

In practice one day, he turned a chair on its side under the basket and we had to jump the chair and make the lay-up. If you missed you went to the sideline and got a crack on the bottom with a paddle.

Ouch!

You learned to concentrate on what you were doing. Every day in practice we shot 100 free throws and the winner received a coke afterwards.

In team practices he would get under the basket and rebound with those elbows flying ala Rupp style. He broke Bobby Jennings nose and loosened some of Conrad Parrish’s teeth.

It was a hard lesson but they did learn to rebound. He sometimes carried a crop in his hand and if you did not hustle you might get a sting on your rear end.

When gametime arrived and the team did not hustle according to his standards, he was very displeased. Once, at Winchester, the team did not perform well the first half so the second half he started the second team — on which I played center.

What a thrill!

Stafford Nelson told me that Ralph, once, started the junior high team in a game because he was so miffed at the varsity.

This may sound like he was a mean person or too tough on us, but he wasn’t. He pushed us to be the best players we could be and also the best person we could be. He taught us discipline and to never give up and that is one of the best lessons I have had in my life.

I don’t know of any person that played for him that didn’t respect and love him.

In his second year at Madison, the team won the district and regional tournament and went to the state tournament for the first time in the school’s history. On that 1939 team was Ivan Maggard, Conrad Parrish, Eugene Wiggins, Bobby Jennings, Charles Francis, James Powell, Ralph Haddix, Jimmy O’Donnell, Nathan Moberly and Stafford Nelson was team manager.

Ralph Carlisle left Madison in 1945 and took the coaching job at Lafayette High School in Lexington. In 1950, 1953 and 1957 he won state titles and was honored as the coach of the decade in the 1950s.

His 1953 team was named Team of The Decade by a poll taken by the Courier Journal. Bob Mulcaly, a member of the 1950 state champions, said, “He was a drill sergeant in practice and father figure off the court.”

That is a good description of this great coach.

He always kept in touch with his former players. Bobby Jennings, Eugene Wiggins, Dick Webb and Stafford Nelson played golf with him a lot of times after he retired from coaching in 1961. I had the honor of playing with him once at Lakeside.

He made a great impact on my life and I shall never forget him. He left us for that great course in the sky in 1999 and I am sure he is missed by all the players that were fortunate to have played for him.

Aloha and God be with thee always.



Final thought

May you live as long as you want and never want as long as you live — Irish Toast.

Until next week … live, love, laugh and learn, Glenmore.