A state basketball tournament on the move

(Third of three parts)
     Consider the 60-year history of the Louisiana boys state basketball tournament and this question arises:
     Why, oh, why, did it ever leave Lafayette?
     The fifth home of the tournament -- which went from being known as the Top Twenty to the Top 24 and then to the Top 28 -- was in Lafayette, home of what was the University of Southwestern Louisiana (we've heard it called other names).
     In the university's Cajundome, from 1997 to 2011 (so 15 years), the Top 28 had unprecented success in attendance and revenue.
     The tournament had grown steadily, with an occasional decline, from its start in Shreveport (Hirsch Youth Center) in 1961-66 through several moves -- to Alexandria's Rapides Coliseum (1967-76), the Lake Charles Civic Center(1977-78), Alexandria again (1979-82) and to a very successful 14 years (1983-96) in Baton Rouge (at LSU's Assembly Center).
     There was one glorious day in Alexandria in 1970 -- a full house in the afternoon, a packed-to-the-rafters, immovable crowd at night -- that showed how much of a draw the state tournament championship games could be. 
     That 1970 tournament (total attendance: 49,385) was by far the best of the event's first 30 years. 
     The final year in Alexandria (1982) was a blip in what had been the format from the start. That year, the Louisiana High School Athletic Association powers-to-be decided to try something different: a combined boys/girls "Tournament of Champions," 12 championship games in three days.
     It wasn't the event's worst move (just wait another 20 years), but perhaps it prompted this long-anticipated happening: The move to Baton Rouge, to the Assembly Center (and its 14,327 seats).
     There, attendance for nine years was no greater than it had been in the previous homes. But boosted by success of Baton Rouge-area teams, its last five years brought some of the biggest crowds in tournament history ... to that point.
     Still, Lafayette loomed. Its organizing committee presented the LHSAA with a financial package that Baton Rouge could not match, and hardly tried.
     Fifteen years later, how good was that move?
     In the Cajundome, at SLI/USL/ULL/UL, the first-year attendance (43,973) was the fifth-best in tournament history; the second year (48,418) was the third-best.
     It got better, peaked by 1999 (69,269), 2007 (67,559) and 2004 (63,428). In 2002-03, the total attendances were 56,430 and 52,305. Only one year in Lafayette, the draw was under 40,000.
     Crowds of 13,000-plus to 16,000-plus were routine for the Saturday night finals. (It was almost like being in Indiana.)
     Everyone agreed that Lafayette's bluecoated organizers topped all previous efforts.
     At the same time, the girls tournament had moved to Hammond (Southeastern Louisiana University Center) in 2001 and established a solid base. 
     This is certain: The state tournaments have never been the same since. 
      Sure, the excitement is still there for the (boys and girls) teams that make the tournaments. But attendances and interests no longer match anything like the Lafayette/Hammond days.
     Why leave Lafayette? Well, maybe it was Shreveport's fault.
---
     The same city that took the (financial) baby steps, in 1959-60-61, to bring the state tournament into existence, in 2011 brought the LHSAA a lucrative proposal for the new Century Tel Center in Bossier City. 
     The LHSAA liked the terms and, at the same time, its brainpower -- and I use that term facetiously -- decided to change the state-playoff format, and have playoff games through the semifinals be contested on three or four regional neutral courts, then bring all the championship games (boys and girls) to one site. 
     The LHSAA voted in the new format, but Shreveport's bid -- accepted for 2012 and 2013 -- fell through. It could not meet the financial promises made.
     Hastily, the LHSAA had to play the boys/girls finals in Ruston (at Louisiana Tech's Assembly Center) in 2012 and in Monroe (at Louisiana-Monroe's Fant-Ewing Coliseum) in 2013. 
     Nice, but temporary. And it was obvious to most that the boys and girls tournaments needed their separate time and space.  
      It was on to Lake Charles and Burton Coliseum (domed roof, rodeo-arena base, home of McNeese State University basketball, seating for up to 8,500) ... and there it has been since 2015.           
---
     Which brings us to now. Seems to me that the state championships these days are a diluted version.
     Not having lived in Louisiana since 1988, only following from a distance (and not from a point of knowledge), please correct us if we are being too cynical, or if we are wrong. 
     Our reasoning: (1) These days, competition isn't as difficult; there are not nearly as many schools, especially in the lower classifications, many having folded through consolidation with bigger -- or parish -- schools; (2) there are too many classes, too many state championship decided because of (3) the select/non-select split of schools in Louisiana, a split that has so weakened athletics in the state (my opinion).
    It is a feud, the public schools not wanting to compete for championships against the private and magnet schools because of jealousy/resentment of how the privates/magnets draw their students. 
     (The magic word here: recruiting. It's all in how you interpret what goes on. The LHSAA always has had a tough time policing this area).
      So, 12 state champions (seven non-select, five select). Too many.  
      And now, in a throwback to the pre-1960 days, the non-select playoffs again are being played on one school's home court, based on pre-playoffs seedings. No state tournament for them.
     But put 12 classes (semifinals and finals) together in one place for one week -- so, 36 games total -- that's enough basketball to make a spectator, or sportswriter, spin. That's impossible.  
       We have been told that the LHSAA no longer even publishes attendance figures for the state basketball tournaments. We know it's not anywhere near Lafayette level.
      Still, there was a strong North Louisiana representation in the Lake Charles boys tournament, including two of our favorites and perennial basketball powers -- Bossier and Woodlawn.
     Bossier, which won the last top-class boys title prior to the state-tournament era (1960, Class AAA), added two last-decade titles (2011, 2016), has been the runner-up six times (1968, 2005, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2019) and has -- best we can tell -- made nine Top 28 appearances in the last 12 years. 
     The Bearkats reached the state-championship game again and might -- depending on what the LHSAA decides -- face Wossman (Monroe) on Saturday afternoon in the 3A final. 
     Woodlawn, my old school, has three boys state basketball titles (1969, 1972, 1980), has been the runner-up three times (1971, 1979, 2018) and made its third Top 28 in four years. The Knights lost to Peabody (Alexandria) in the 4A semifinals.
      Maybe it's not what it used to be, but it's still the state tournament and, for those kids, that's exciting. It's not 1961 anymore, and we just can't turn back the times, can we?
  

Melvin: A "masterpiece" game, lasting memories

Melvin Russell and Larry Davis, with the big trophy

(Fifth in a series)
     Look at the photo on the right -- that state championship trophy is in good hands.
     In the final three games of the Woodlawn Knights' 1968-69 basketball season, Melvin Russell and Larry Davis played the biggest roles.
     For Melvin, it wasn't all about scoring.
     His game was passing the ball, getting it in the right spots, lining up his teammates, and when needed, scoring on jumpers or penetrating drives. His 13.4 points per game didn't keep him from being an All-State selection.
      "He does it all," Woodlawn coach Ken Ivy told Jerry Byrd for a 1969 Shreveport Journal story. "He's a great all-around basketball player."
      What Ivy told me recently was, "He didn't go out to score a lot of points or show off; he was just playing team ball." He pointed out that if fans watched Melvin long enough and often enough "he made believers of those who questioned him being on the team."
      "He wasn't a pure shooter," teammate Wayne Barrett said. "He had a funny shot, kind of a corkscrew motion. It wasn't like my shot or Larry [Davis]; we were smoother. ... But his speed and running the fast break was what made our team so much better. ... Melvin could step it up in the fourth quarter; he was always so strong and in good shape."
      "He gave us leadership, pure D leadership," said Davis, who lives in Shreveport. "Coach Ivy would tell you he was talented, but his role to me was that he kept us all in check, he knew what all of us needed to do. He knew what I was going to do before I knew it.
      "It was a pleasure playing with him. He took a load off Coach Ivy."
      Barrett, the best basketball player to come out of my neighborhood (Sunset Acres) in the 1960s (I knew about him when he was in elementary school), now has an appliance retail business in Bossier City, and says Russell visits once or twice a year.
      "Melvin and I have the same concept about life and basketball," Wayne said. "It's the team concept: Know what your job is and do it right. ... We were a pretty disciplined high school basketball team. Coach Ivy made us run all the time. He'd say, 'We might get beat, but we'll be in great shape.' "
---
      The Knights had to be in shape to survive their playoff tests. They went to West Monroe, a district champion, in the first round and playing through a flu bug that his some players held off a hot-shooting Rebels team 94-90.
      That set up a quarterfinal game in the Woodlawn gym against De La Salle, champion of the always dominant New Orleans Catholic district and coached by Johnny Altobello, one of the great coaches in Louisiana high school history (eight state and 16 district titles, a 589-92 record, and four more state and seven district titles in baseball).
      "That was one of the best basketball teams and a coach that we ever played against," said Ivy. "They were a tough team to face. If they got the lead, they went to a stall game; they took the air out of the ball."
      It didn't happen. This was Melvin Russell's "masterpiece" game.
     Woodlawn led most of the way and by as much as 13 points. When De La Salle made a closing run, Melvin took over. In the fourth quarter, he was the dominant player, scoring on repeated drives and a couple of jumpers and making crucial steals. He finished with 21 points and Davis had 20.
      Here is the way Jerry Byrd described it in the Journal:
      The turning point of Woodlawn’s 67-62 victory over De La Salle (New Orleans) in the class AAA basketball playoffs last night came while the public address announcer lineups before the game.

      He spoke the magic words that unlocked the door to next week’s “Top Twenty” state tournament at Alexandria: “Melvin Russell.”

      Johnny Altobello, dean of Louisiana prep basketball coaches, pointed toward the Knights’ floor general and told his Cavaliers, “He’s the one you’ve got to stop!”

      The job was to big for the District 5-AAAA champions, however, as Russell did his thing again.

---
      Meanwhile in New Orleans the same night, Captain Shreve played a tight game against St. Aloysius, the Catholic district runner-up. They swapped momentum all game, trading leads and Shreve looked done for, trailing by six with a little more than a minute remaining. But Mike Harrell -- "Player of the Year" not only in Shreveport-Bossier but also in the state, the best inside player at 6-3 that I saw in that era -- made two last-minute baskets (the last from near midcourt at the buzzer) to force overtime (no 3-point baskets then).
      Then St. Aloysius won in OT, spoiling a possible Woodlawn-Shreve rematch. It wasn't the last time "spoiler" would apply to the Crusaders.
      Woodlawn's other three starters (Mike McGovern, Elton Odom and Barrett) and "super sub" Mark Hollingsworth made their contributions -- especially Odom on the boards -- but the plays at the end of the Top Twenty games came from Russell and Davis.
     Woodlawn opened the semifinal game at Rapides Coliseum extremely tight and fell behind early. With Ivy urging them to relax, they got their running game going and dismissed Lafayette 56-45. Davis scored 20 points and Russell 18.
      So it came down to Woodlawn and St. Aloysius. It was the last basketball game in historic St. Aloysius school history (100 years); the school would merge with another New Orleans Catholic school, Cor Jesu, the next fall and was renamed Brother Martin.
      St. Aloysius, which had reached the semifinals the previous season, had a young team. Junior Skip Brunet and sophomores Dale Valdery and Glenn Masson were three starters (Valdery the year before had become the first black player in state-tournament history).
      Brother Martin, with Valdery and Masson, would haunt Shreveport teams in the state finals the next two years, beating 35-1 Captain Shreve in overtime in 1970 in one of the most memorable games (and tightly over-officiated games; awful, really) in state-tournament history, and upsetting a deep, talented 36-1 Woodlawn team (with Robert Parish as a junior at center) in 1971.
      But Saturday, March 8, 1969, was the Knights' night.
---
      Before a record state-tournament crowd (12,640), the game began slowly for Woodlawn, just as its semifinal had. St. Aloysius built a six-point lead midway in the first quarter, but soon the Crusaders could not keep up with Melvin.
      He scored 14 first-half points and, as Gerry Robichaux's game story for The Shreveport Times noted, "put on some moves when leading the fast break that brought a roar from even the impartial standing-room-only crowd." (Hey, a lot of us were not impartial.)
      Woodlawn was up 34-28 by halftime, but behind again 38-37 midway in the third quarter. After that, St. Aloysius never led again ... but kept cutting into a Woodlawn lead, four times closing to one point in the fourth quarter.
       Davis just took over from that point. He had five baskets -- three jumpers, one drive, one "snowbird" layup at the end, and two free throws ... 12 points in a 26-point game. Melvin's 16 made him the only other double-figure Knights scorer.
      Then it was time to celebrate. Woodlawn had gone from doormat program to state champion in three years.
---
       Thing is, it happened again for Melvin Russell 11 years later.
      The 1979 team he coached made the state final, but got beat 14 points by Landry (New Orleans). But he had a strong nucleus of kids returning in 1980 and he had an All-State point guard named Melvin (Youngblood) who was more of a scorer but not as skilled in other areas as the clutch playmaker/defender/team leader of the 1969 state champs.
       The Knights went 31-2, rolled past Ouachita (Monroe) 67-55 in the state final ... and brought home Woodlawn's third tall state basketball trophy.
       Melvin kept much of Ivy's offense when he became the head coach, plus the trapping zone defense and the matchup zone, and the title team he coached -- all black players, as has been the case at Woodlawn for most of the past 4 1/2 decades -- had much more depth and quickness than the '69 team, pressed more defensively and was not as disciplined offensively.


Melvin and Mary Russell: Home today is Arlington, Texas

     "I could always see the game when I played," Melvin said when we met recently. "I knew how to make the adjustments on the floor, and that's what helped me in coaching, too."
      He went from Woodlawn in 1983 to work with his father one year in Dallas, then returned to coaching as an assistant at Northwestern State University for three years, followed by a year as a parttime assistant at Texas-Arlington.
      It's just my opinion, of course, but he was college head coaching material. It didn't happen and he decided that working in the transportation industry, which he had done for more than two decades while based in Arlington, and a steady family life was better than the coaching grind.
      Mary and Melvin, married for 30 years, have five children and seven grandchildren ... and a life.
      Yes, it has its challenges now with the kidney disease and the dialysis. He awaits the kidney transplant and the recovery, but he is planning to return to work after that.
      The people at Woodlawn and Centenary knew it, especially his basketball teammates. His basketball opponents knew it. So did the kids he coached through the years. Here is a young man -- now with a little gray hair and goatee -- who has always known he can handle challenges.

Melvin: The point guard, a student of the game

(Fourth in a series)
    Melvin Russell's first competitive basketball game for Woodlawn, in late November 1968, ended in darkness ... and scared the heck out of him.
    His last competitive game for Woodlawn, on Saturday, March 8, 1969, ended with glory, a trophy with a tall stand topped by a gold basketball. The Class AAA state championship was a memory for the ages. 
    The 1968-69 season had its trials for the team and the pioneer point guard who provided the leadership and many crucial plays for a tightly knit, well-drilled unit. There was some racial taunting and a racial issue involving another school, and there were three setbacks on the court.
     But in the end, there were 33 victories (four tough ones in the playoffs). The learning experience and the bonding made it a season they all would remember so fondly. It's still that way 46 years later.
---
     Ken Ivy coached high school basketball and then football for more than 40 years, the great majority of those years at Shreveport schools (Woodlawn, Southwood, Captain Shreve). He's retired now -- it was tough for him to leave the sidelines -- and living on homeland in the place he grew up, the town of Sarepta, La. (population 925 in 2000), about 50 miles northwest of Shreveport.
     He is at talkative as ever -- an interview with Ivy will give a writer plenty of material -- and Melvin Russell is one of his favorite subjects.
     "When you told him what we had to do, and why we had to do it, and what his role was, he just knew what do to, what everyone had to do to win a game. Melvin Russell understood what it took in basketball and in life," Ivy said recently. "That's what you're talking about with him."
      Ivy had him as a point guard, then as an assistant coach and then turned over the basketball program to his protege, who not long afterward took two teams to state championship games and won one.  
---  
     He always wanted to play point guard; he always knew he would.
     "I was a student of the game," Melvin told me a couple of weeks ago. "I always watched the point guards -- K.C. Jones, Bob Cousy, Lucius Allen, Mike Warren ... guys like that. Those were the idols of my time."
     And so, after having to sit out of games his first year at Woodlawn (he was a junior) because of an ineligible transfer ruling by the Louisiana High School Athletic Association -- a bogus ruling, in my opinion -- he knew he could step in to lead the Knights his senior year.
     "The system was a perfect match for my game," he said of Ivy's basic 1-4 offensive set (Melvin was the "1") and the matchup zone in which the guard up top was a key. "I practiced with the team every day that first year and I sat and watched the games, and all I had to do was learn everything. I knew that offense and defense like the back of my hand."
     There were no returning starters from the 24-5 team the previous season, Woodlawn's first winning team in eight years the school had existed. But Ivy knew he had talent; he had coached these kids in practices the previous year or two.
     Up front, he had 6-4 center Elton Odom, the team's top rebounder and battler inside, and 6-2 forward Mike McGovern, a quietly efficient scorer (second-best on the team, 16 points per game); at the wings were 6-2 Larry Davis, a prolific scorer (21.4 average and school single-season record 770 points) and 6-2 Wayne Barrett, an accurate shooter from range and the only junior in the group; sixth man Mark Hollingsworth, a 6-1 swing player who got a late start because he was the All-State end and top receiver for Joe Ferguson on Woodlawn's state championship football team; and the point guard who tied it all together.
     Davis was an athletic, exciting leaper who played much bigger than his size. His oldest brother, Wayne, seven years earlier had been Woodlawn's first All-State athlete as an end for the 1961 "Cinderella" district football champions.
     (Melvin and Larry would be teammates for five years, going on to play at Centenary and starring on the 1972-73 that had another Woodlawn guy, Robert Parish, at center.)
     The 1968-69 Knights didn't use many bench players. No need. 
---
     If there were problems concerning the first black kid to play for Woodlawn -- and in many opposing gyms -- it wasn't on the team itself.
     "I don't remember us even talking about having any [racial] problems about anything,"  Ivy said last week.
     Melvin said one of the reasons for that was his coach. 
     Talking about the "good influences" he had at the school, he said, "Coach Ivy screened a lot of things for me. If we had to eat at a restaurant or stay at a hotel, he checked ahead and made sure it would be OK for me."
     But there were some things Ivy couldn't account for, such as the lights in the Doyline High School gym.
     In the season opener -- Melvin's first game -- Woodlawn visited Doyline, a Class B school in Webster Parish, about 20 miles from Shreveport. Woodlawn was up by more than 20 at halftime and "I made a halfcourt shot at the buzzer," Melvin recalled. "On my way to the dressing room, I could hear the 'N' word out of the crowd."
     It was a stormy night with lightning in the area and just after halftime, the gym lights went out. (In fact, lights were out all over the village.)
     "I thought that was it for me," Melvin said, laughing at the memory. "I went over and hid behind Coach Ivy."
     "The lights go out, and all of a sudden, I feel two arms going around my neck," Ivy said, "and Melvin is holding on tight."
     "If they were going to shoot me," Melvin said, "we were going to go down together."
     "I remember that," said Larry Davis. "There were rumors that something like that might happen. So when those lights went off, we weren't sure what was going on."
      The game did not resume. It was a technical knockout: Woodlawn, 60-37.
      There was another "incident" shortly thereafter when Woodlawn was to play in the Homer Tournament, some 50 miles from Shreveport. The Knights' team was on the school bus ready for the trip when Ivy was told he had a phone call. He returned to the coaches' office, and the Homer coach was on the line.
       "He said, 'Coach, I'm sorry about this, but my principal said you can play in the tournament, but you can't bring that kid [Melvin].' I told him I could go back out on the bus and tell the kids that Melvin couldn't play, and I could guarantee him the other kids wouldn't want to, either. So I told him to cancel us out, and we'd stay home.
       "I went to the bus and told the kids. We got off the bus, went in the gym and had the best scrimmage we had all season."
---
       If there was taunting from the stands, Melvin didn't hear it. "I was real good at blocking out the crap," he said. "I was into the game. ... I heard of some incidents in the stands, but I never paid attention."
       What he did pay attention to was the officials. "I had some referees who told me that I was going to foul out," he said, "and sometimes I did. So I tried to play real hard early in games and help get our team going."
       Many of the Woodlawn games were relatively easy victories; the team won 18 in a row t start the season, and eight in a row to end it.
       The only losses were two District 1-AAA games with Captain Shreve, 63-60 and 61-56, after Woodlawn won the first meeting of the teams in the final of the Top 16 tournament at Hirsch Center.
        Captain Shreve, only in its second year of existence, had a team superbly coached by Billy Wiggins and led by three juniors -- Mike Harrell, Jeff Sudds (Melvin's junior high teammate and also a "freedom of choice" transfer) and Shelby Houston -- who the next year would be the nucleus of one of the great teams in Shreveport basketball history.
        Woodlawn was missing a starter in both of those games, but the Gators' district title was no fluke. Those might have been the state's best two teams that year, but Shreve wasn't as fortunate in the playoffs as Woodlawn.
       "We always thought having beaten the state champs two out of three," Harrell told me in an e-mail last week, "that we might have a claim to being the best team."
       Woodlawn's only other loss was 63-58 in overtime to Haughton in the Bossier Tournament championship game. Haughton, led by Kenny Covington and coached by Billy Montgomery, was on its way to a second consecutive Class A state title.
        Near the end of the season, though, the Knights were unbeatable.
        (Next: A "masterpiece" game, lasting memories)

Melvin: A long wait, fighting for acceptance

(Third in a series)
      "The story of Melvin Russell [integrating basketball at Woodlawn High School] is that it went smooth as silk because of the kind of person Melvin Russell is. I saw him get knocked into a wall or get knocked to the floor, and he'd just get up, pat the other team's guy on the butt, and keep on playing." -- Ken Ivy, Woodlawn coach, 1965-79
---
     "You could tell from the start that Melvin Russell was exceptional. Some [black kids] came in with a chip on their shoulder. He wasn't like that. He came in humble, not asking for anything. What he had to go through, what he had to deal with, I knew where Melvin was coming from." -- Woodlawn and Centenary College teammate Larry Davis
---

Woodlawn's Class AAA state champions, 1968-69

      The year Melvin Russell became a Woodlawn student, the school's basketball program became a winner for the first time. But he didn't play in a game.
      That was a huge blow. He had to sit out his junior season.
      After practicing unofficially with the Woodlawn team since early September and for more than a month after the start of official practice, and with the season about a week away, Melvin was told he would not be eligible for the 1967-68 season.
       The ruling came from the Louisiana High School Athletic Association, which did not acknowledge the "freedom of choice" plan by which Melvin had moved from all-black Union High School to Woodlawn (less than a mile away).
       All these years later, some of us still believe the ruling stunk. Same was true for Jeff Sudds, Melvin's junior high teammate at Union who was a sophomore that year at brand-new Captain Shreve High across town and also was declared ineligible.
       Melvin and his family did not change residences; there was no physical move involved, and they were clearly in the Woodlawn school district by LHSAA standards. The all-black schools such as Union had their own athletic association, their own rules.
       In plain terms, you could look at it as racism. LHSAA officials were not ready for integration in athletics to happen that year in Shreveport.
       "It was disappointing," Melvin said. "But I practiced every day, and I watched every game, and I tried to learn. I learned how to run the offense, what everyone was supposed to do, and I learned all the defenses."
       And when he was eligible the next year, he obviously was ready. He was the floor leader, the 6-foot-1 point guard of the Knights team that was the first in the school's history (ninth year) to make the playoffs ... and then won the state championship.
       What those Knights didn't do was win the district championship. That went to Captain Shreve and its second-year program, including Sudds, a 6-3 forward who with Melvin integrated Shreveport high school ball that year.
       And like Melvin, Sudds and his teammates were in the state championship game the next season. Here were two players worth waiting for, and fun to watch.
---
       Some Woodlawn basketball background: For the first six years, it was a wasteland, nothing close to a winning record. This despite each year having an All-City player (Charlie Williams, Jimmy Kneipp, Jon Pat Stephenson, Ken Liberto, Larry Bazer), a couple the city's top scorer. 
       In my senior year (as manager/statistician), we were 4-21; the next year the team was 5-22. Then came a coaching change, with Ivy -- the "B" team coach in 1965-66 -- taking over, his first high school head coaching job.
       His first team, with another big scorer (guard Ricky Hayes), went 16-17, missing a winning record with a one-point loss (on a late basket) in the regular-season finale. 
       Then Melvin arrived, and sat out as a team with senior starters Hayes, Bob Turner, Gary Alderman and Mike Sanders, went 24-5 but missed the playoffs, finishing third in a tough district 1-AAA. A late-season loss at home to Bossier, the district runner-up to Byrd, was the difference; Bossier wound up in the state championship game, losing to Al "Apple" Sanders and Baton Rouge High.
       Put Melvin Russell on that third-place Knights team at point guard, and he might have made a difference. 
       The next season he did.
       In basketball, as in school itself, though, he had to battle for acceptance. He couldn't fight the LHSAA, but he did fight an antagonizer in a Woodlawn stairwell, and he had to win over a teammate or two.
---
        A few weeks after school began and he had joined the basketball program, Melvin was coming from class down the main-building stairwell on the gym end (Woodlawn people will know this location) when he felt something hit him in the back.
       "I've got pretty good peripheral vision, and I saw this kid going up the stairs throw a paper wad at me,' " Melvin recalled. "I turned around and followed him to his class and I caught him and confronted him. I said, 'I don't want any trouble, but if you do something like that again, I'm going to whip your ass.' "
       Next day, same time, almost the same spot, same kid. This time, said Melvin, "he said,  'Don't nobody bump into the nigger.'
       "I grabbed him by the neck of the collar and threw him against the wall," Melvin said. "I remember he had a silver tooth and I was trying to knock it out. I was punching him in the face, but I was thinking to myself about what might happen. I thought I might get ganged up on. But to my surprise, nothing happened."
        As the fight was broken up, "I remember a white girl nearby fainted and they were carrying her off."
        Sent to the office, Melvin explained to "Mr. [J.W.] Cook [then the assistant principal in charge of discipline and devoted athletics fan] what happened. He already talked to some other kids and they verified what I told him. ... He sent me back to class. He knew I didn't start it."
        On his way back to class, a student stopped him and said, "I saw what happened and I don't blame you. I would have done the same thing.' That surprised me, too."
---
       That was the only physical challenge he had in his time at Woodlawn, but in basketball there were some tough moments, too, early on.
        "Larry Davis couldn't stand me at first," Melvin said. "There was an acceptance period there. But it wasn't so much Larry; we were OK in practice and in the dressing room. It was his friends that couldn't stand him being on the team with me. His friends tried to influence him, and maybe they did. There were some contentious moments between us."
        "I don't think I felt that way; I always had a lot of respect for him," Davis told me last week. "But older people, like my parents, were from another generation; they maybe had different feelings [toward black people]. And there were people [friends] who I didn't understand how they could hold things against certain people, but they did. ... It had always been that way, and maybe there's still some of that today. 
        "But Melvin, he was just a good person."
        They grew to be close; they played together for five seasons (four at Centenary), both in starring roles. 
        In the state championship season, Davis was easily Woodlawn's top scorer. In the last three games of the playoffs, in the stretch of each game, each of them came up big.
        (Next: Winning it all, and Russell's legacy)         
             
           
         

Melvin: Cool, confident ... a champion

Melvin Russell in action at Woodlawn:
No. 25 (top) on road, No. 24 (with ball,
 white home uniforms. 

(Second in a series)
     Melvin Russell is a "get along" and a "get after it" person, and he's never been afraid of a challenge.
      It was that way when he was among the six black kids -- and the only athlete -- to integrate Woodlawn High School in Shreveport in the fall of 1967, and it is that way now.
      His challenge all those years ago was to become accepted in a changing world, and it was a great learning experience for him and everyone. His challenge now, at age 63, is different -- a medical challenge.
      Four years ago, he found out he has failing kidneys. Three times a week, for four hours at a time, he goes to dialysis in Arlington, Texas, where he's lived for more than 25 years. A kidney transplant, hopefully to keep him going, is in the near future ... if some complications with his prospective donor (his son, Melvin Russell Jr.) can be alleviated.
     The details are here in a story that ran in The Shreveport Times a year ago: http://usatodayhss.com/2014/melvin-russell-sr-returns-to-shreveport-to-give-receive
      "Hey, I'm OK," he said when we talked a few weeks ago. "Some people have bad hearts. Some people have cancer. I've got kidney disease, but I can deal with it. I'm not that bad off."
      And if you know Melvin Russell Sr., if you look at his record of achievement in basketball and otherwise, you believe he will be OK.
---
      The basketball resume:
      -- Point guard, the 6-foot-1 floor leader of a well-balanced team that not only became the first basketball team in Woodlawn's nine-year history at that time to make the state playoffs, but then won four playoff games and the Class AAA state championship (four months after the school won the state football championship). The team's record: 33-3.
      -- First black player from Shreveport to play in the Top Twenty state tournament, first black player to be an All-State selection on Louisiana High School Athletic Association teams, first black player in the LHSAA All-Star Game. One of four Woodlawn players off that title team to sign to play at Centenary College, where in three varsity seasons he set career and single-season records for assists, thanks in part to teaming with a 7-foot freshman center named Robert Parish in 1972-73.
      -- Drafted by the American Basketball Association's Utah Stars, as was his Woodlawn and Centenary teammate Larry Davis, and Parish (after his freshman year). Parish chose to stay at Centenary; neither Russell nor Davis made the Stars' regular-season roster.
      -- Returned to Woodlawn as an assistant coach to his Knights' coach, Ken Ivy, and after two years, succeeded him as head coach. In his third season -- just as Ivy had -- his team reached the state championship game (but lost). The next season, 1979-80, his team went 31-2 and won the Class AAAA state championship. He was the state's "Coach of the Year."
      -- In seven seasons as head coach, his teams had a 173-59 (.746) record, with four district titles and no losing seasons. He left in the spring of 1983, citing the low pay for coaches in Caddo Parish as a disappointment and not foreseeing much change in that.
      And he was a person who could handle change.
---
       So here's my premise: Say Ken Ivy was the best coach in Woodlawn basketball history and Robert Parish was the best player, Melvin Russell no question is the best player and coach the school has ever had.
       I had to laugh a year ago when I opened a conversation with Melvin by asking, "Who is the second-best player in Woodlawn basketball history?" and his reply was, "Robert Parish."
       I don't think he was being serious. Some might take that as a conceited answer, but I don't and those who know him wouldn't.
        But, yes, he is a confident man, and he was a confident young man. He had to be to walk onto that Woodlawn campus in September 1967.
       "My personality was that if you didn't bother me, I wouldn't bother you," he said. "I was laid-back, I felt I could get along with anyone, black, white; I tried not to let things get to me. So I thought I would be OK going to Woodlawn."
        He chose to leave all-black Union High School -- less than a mile from Woodlawn -- on the "freedom of choice" plan designed to de-segregate schools. Kids from all-black schools could attend any all-white school they wanted, and vice versa. Few kids, certainly not the whites, made that choice.
       The six Union-to-Woodlawn transfers -- three boys (the other two were in ROTC) and three girls -- he remembers, and he can name them all, "had been handpicked because we had the right credentials and temperament" and one of the Union counselors had encouraged Melvin.
       "I wasn't sure I wanted to go," he said. "My mother didn't really want me to go; it didn't matter to my dad, and my grandmother (who had worked in the cafeteria at Woodlawn) wanted me to do it."
       And there was the basketball factor: He had played on the Union varsity as a sophomore, enough he thought to be a letterman and get the reward for that. It didn't happen.
       To be honest, the deciding factor in the move to Woodlawn was "I was mad at [Coach Clifford] Pennywell."
       Pennywell, who -- with Parish as a freshman and sophomore -- took his teams to the LIALO (all-black) state semifinals and then when Union was closed as a high school in the integration process moved to the predominant, old-line all-black school in town (Booker T. Washington), did not give the sophomore backup point guard what he wanted.
         "We had awards day," Russell recalled, "and I was expecting that sweater. What I got, like the junior varsity guys, was a 6-inch trophy. I was pissed off. I walked out of the cafeteria and threw that trophy in one of those big trash drums they had outside, and went home and told my mother, 'I'm going to Woodlawn.'
       "If I'd gotten the [light] blue sweater with the big U on it, I would have stayed at Union."
        Union's loss, Woodlawn's gain. (Same with Parish and his Union teammates three years later, but theirs wasn't by choice.)
---
        What the transfers from Union had been counseled on, warned about, and maybe even worried about, wasn't like the reality when school began.
        "I was 16 when we walked in to register, and we're among [about] 2,000 white kids, so we stayed close to each other," Melvin recalled. "You could hear the buzz and I heard some kid say, 'black sheep go home'; that's what it sounded like. I'm thinking, 'That's your thing.' I held my head high and I registered."
        Early on, there were "racial comments every day ... I had the kind of temperament that allowed me to work with it; I didn't react to everything little thing," he said. There was taunting, resentment, defiance, alienation, and for Melvin, one memorable time when he had to fight to prove himself (more to come on that episode).
         One day in the cafeteria, he sat down at a table and "20 kids got up and left," he said. "Id get in line, and people didn't want to stand next to me."
         But he had some allies -- especially in athletics. When Coach W.B. Calvert, overseeing a physical education class, saw Melvin in action, he quickly realized this was a player.
          "They wanted me to play football," Melvin recalled, because Woodlawn at that time was very much a football school, a state power. "But I wasn't going to do that. So he (Calvert) told Coach Ivy about me. ... I met Coach Ivy for the first time in front of the trophy cases [in the gym foyer). They had those pictures up there; I asked him, 'How do you get your picture up there?' "
          He was told you had to be an All-State selection. Two years later, that's what he was.
          Ivy, about to build a perennial basketball power, would become his biggest influence at Woodlawn. Soon Melvin was practicing with the team. He was switched from a regular P.E. class to sixth-period athletics.
          Here he found a distinct difference from Union. "I was given my own basketball to use, a leather basketball, and three pairs of shoes -- Converse," he said.
           "At Union, we only saw a leather ball on game days; we only got one pair of shoes on game days. We practiced with rubber balls and we had to use our own shoes. That was some of that separate but unequal crap."
           He also had a friend on the Woodlawn basketball team -- Mike McGovern, also then a junior and a year later the senior class president and one of the stars on the state championship team.. Melvin's grandmother had been the McGovern family's maid and she also cooked at the family's church, Sunset Acres Baptist (one of the most popular churches in the Woodlawn area).
           After some time, there were friends on the football team, too -- "I was cool with [quarterback] Joe Ferguson and [linebacker] Clinton Ebey, and others," he remembered, "so that helped me assimilate with the rest of the student body."
           On a personal note, there was one other friend ... in class: Elsa Van Thyn. My younger sister  was his lab partner in chemistry.
           I was a junior at Louisiana Tech University that fall and one day when I was home, my sister said, "I've got a black kid in my chemistry class. He's nice. I hear he's a good basketball player."
           She heard correctly. His name, she said, was Melvin Jones.
           And it was Melvin Jones at Union and that first year at Woodlawn. He had been Melvin Gladney early on, then took his stepdad's name when his mother remarried when he was 3. They moved from Houston to Shreveport when he was 10 and, before his senior year at Woodlawn, he had gotten to know his real father, Henry Russell, and took his last name. (Henry now lives in Dallas, not far from Melvin in Arlington.)
         But before Melvin Jones could play a competitive game for the Woodlawn Knights, there was one major disappointment and one long wait.
        (Next: Sitting out a season ... fighting for acceptance)

My schools' basketball pioneers

Melvin Russell, as a Woodlawn High School
senior guard in 1968-69

(First in a series)
     I have thought of Melvin Russell and George "Petey" Thornton a lot lately, and they will be the subjects of the next few blogs.
     Those names might be familiar to old-time basketball fans in North Louisiana because they were trailblazers -- the first black players (first black athletes, period) at the schools from which I graduated.
     Both broke the color barrier in the 1968-69 basketball season -- Melvin at Woodlawn High School, four years after I graduated there, and George at Louisiana Tech University. He was a freshman when I was a senior working in the sports information department.
     They were admirable young men, and to me, they remain admirable young men as they hit their mid-60s.  They are, in my opinion, success stories, and that's in life, as well as in athletics. They were championship caliber.
---
     One of my recent reads was Strong Inside: Perry Wallace and the Collision of Race and Sports in the South by Andrew Maraniss, the detailed and fascinating biography of the first black basketball player in the Southeastern Conference.
     Wallace was a kid who grew up in Nashville and stayed close to home to play at Vanderbilt, the rare SEC school where academics actually matter more than athletics. He had been a great leaper, great player, at Pearl High School, which won the first integrated state championship tournament in Tennessee.
     As you can imagine, in the late 1960s (he was a freshman in the 1966-67 season and joined the varsity the next season), he caught hell on trips to Ole Miss and Mississippi State and Auburn and Alabama -- among other tough venues.
     But even on the relatively progressive Vanderbilt campus and in town, acceptance of his place on the team and in the university often came grudgingly and with difficulty. He was "profiled" and ostracized repeatedly and this was a polite, soft-spoken, clean-cut young man who was very studious and determined to success in the classroom, as well as on the basketball floor.
     Long story (467 pages) short: He was an All-SEC player, graduated with a degree in engineering, earned his law degree from Columbia University in New York City, worked as a trial lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice and now is a professor at American University's Washington College of Law. His jersey No. 25 was retired by Vanderbilt (but it took more than three decades).
     Reading the book, re-living those rocky days of the civil-rights movement in the '60s, made me think of the basketball trailblazers I knew.
---

George Thornton, Louisiana Tech, early 1970s

     Neither Melvin Russell nor George Thornton had as rough a time as Perry Wallace. But their transitions into Woodlawn and Louisiana Tech -- and into the basketball programs -- weren't seamless; there were hardships and challenges.
     That's just the way it was for black athletes integrating programs and black students integrating what had been all-white schools.
      I had done stories on Melvin and George in the past, but those stories did not deal with race relations -- not in any detail -- or with the issues they faced. So in talking to them the past couple of weeks, we talked about those times.
       They were not familiar with each other -- maybe just name recognition -- although they played in college at almost the same time (George was a year ahead of Melvin in school).
        I thought maybe they had played against each other -- Melvin played for Centenary while George play for Tech -- but in a strange twist, the two years that their teams could have met were two years that the Tech-Centenary series was interrupted (they had played twice or three times a season for 25 consecutive years prior to that).
       They each have their examples of where they faced racial prejudice, and I think it'll be a good read to see what they had to say.
       So I'm going to do some blog pieces on each, take them back to their Woodlawn and Louisiana Tech days, and follow the "whatever happened to ..." format that worked so well for our sports staff at the Shreveport Journal in the early and mid 1980s. And we'll tell you where they are now.