Newport News title team fondly remembers mentor
The death in October of Warren Mitchell, coach of the 1963-64 Newport News High basketball team — and later coach at William & Mary — conjures memories of a magical time for Typhoon faithful.
The excitement during that unbeaten Group 1-A state championship season began each time the 15 players trotted onto the court for warmups in front of sellout crowds, and they were all sellouts that year.
That was true at the beginning of a season that began in the ancient 900-seat “Pit” inside the high school. It continued when the entertainment moved across the street into the sparkling new 2,500-seat, $400,000 Julie Conn Gymnasium after a few games.
The larger gym provided a fitting stage for the players, who, upon reaching the floor, broke into two circles and treated the fans to freestyle displays of dribbling and passing. Fans stood in line for hours to get tickets to the show.
“It was like watching the Harlem Globetrotters,” said Betty (Burton) Gary, the school’s basketball queen that season and the wife of 54 years of Rocky Gary, the Typhoon point guard.
State ‘capital’
Like the Globetrotters, the Typhoon never
lost — not even when they scrimmaged the College of William & Mary — other than consecutive defeats to their own secondstring players. Considered by many one of the best basketball teams in state history — and perhaps the best of the pre-integration era — the Typhoon went
24-0 in ’63-64, outscoring the opposition by an average of 76-43.
“Newport News High was the ‘Capital of State Basketball,’” said Chris Ellis, the second Virginian ever named a Parade All-American, sharing a
spot on that team in ’64 with future Basketball Hall of Famers Wes Unseld and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (then Lew Alcindor).
Ellis isn’t just another guy in his 70s waxing nostalgic about his youth when he says that. The Typhoon’s 66-54 win over archrival Hampton in the Richmond Arena on March 14, 1964, was the program’s 10th state championship in 14 finals appearances dating back to 1929. Those numbers still rank second in Virginia High School League history, although June will mark 50 years since Newport News closed as a high school.
The Typhoon began the ’63-64 season with more than 80 consecutive home wins, a streak that would reach exactly 100 before ending two seasons later. Equally impressive was the string of head coaches hired by athletic director Conn — coach of the Typhoon’s first six state titles — who used Newport News basketball success as springboards to NCAA Division I head coaching jobs.
Bill Chambers (the Typhoon coach from 195457) went directly from Newport News to nine seasons as head coach at William & Mary. Lefty Driesell (1957-60) moved from Newport News to Davidson, the first of four collegiate coaching stops over a 41-season Hall of Fame career. Charlie Woollum (1964-71) landed his first collegiate head coaching job four years after Newport News closed, guiding Bucknell for 19 years and W&M for six.
Woollum’s predecessor, Mitchell (1960-64), is the tie that binds them all. He succeeded Driesell as Newport News’ coach, then joined him as an assistant for two seasons at Davidson before succeeding Chambers as W&M’s head coach.
Mitchell, who died last month at 87 from COVID19, left an indelible impression on his players at each stop. Warren Mitchell Jr. says that upon his father’s death, former W&Mplayer Ben Pomeroy spoke of his dad’s continuing positive influence in his life on and off the court.
Cherished memories
To a man, the players on Newport News’ ’64 state champs cited Mitchell’s calm, busi
nesslike demeanor as the key to their success. Gary respected the fiery, in-your-face Driesell, but doesn’t think his style would’ve fit with an experienced, all-senior starting five already fiercely competitive and motivated by their only loss as juniors in the state semifinals.
“Coach Mitchell was a godsend for that ’ 64 championship team,” said Wayne Stokes, a reserve on the second-team group that won two preseason scrimmages against the starters, forcing two more hours of practice for the first five. “He started building that team when he got to Newport News (in 1960), putting players in the right position.
“If your job was to feed the shooters or stop the other team’s scorer, that’s what you did.”
Added Gary, “Coach Mitchell worked you hard, got you in good condition and concentrated on fundamentals and the game plan, but he never intimidated you the way Lefty did.
“He made sure I got to school every day, studied and passed my classes. If it wasn’t for him, I don’t think I’d have finished high school.”
Gary said Mitchell’s genius was in “dividing the game among everybody.” Ellis, he says, could’ve been a prolific scorer the way his teammate at Edwards (North Carolina) Military Institute, Pistol Pete Maravich, was.
But Ellis was more interested in following in the footsteps of older brothers Nelson and Donald, who played on state championship teams at Newport News, than he was in individual glory. So the 6-foot-4 Ellis earned his All-American honors with a relatively modest 16.5 scoring average, while 6-6 Jimmy Rama (15.8 points per game), 6-4 Ken Henderson (12.9), 6-5 Billy
Taylor (9.1) and Gary (8.1) all regularly joined him in double figures.
“I don’t think I could’ve played with a better bunch of people,” Gary said. “Everybody was complementary of everybody else and everybody supported each other.”
Defensiveminded
The family business was defense. Mitchell employed a matchup zone defense so unique at the time that Ellis said a national magazine published the coach’s writeup about it.
The defense was so effective during their junior season — when the Typhoon won 22 consecutive games before bowing in a state semifinal — that the Norview coach apologized to Mitchell after a 23-13 defeat.
“Their coach told Coach Mitchell that he wasn’t stalling, but that his team just couldn’t get a shot off,” Gary said.
“When we played that to perfection, the other team couldn’t score.”
The closest regular-season game for the Typhoon in ’63-64 was a nine-point win over Hampton.
The Crabbers were a talented bunch themselves, with W.R. Deskins — who would join Ellis at Virginia Tech — and 6-8 Wayne Chapman, a key reserve on Duke’s 1966 Final Four team.
But defensive standout Henderson so neutralized Chapman that the Typhoon would beat the Crabbers by double figures in their subsequent three meetings. Mitchell was so concerned his Typhoon was getting big-headed, he set up a scrimmage with Chambers’ William & Mary team to humble them.
“We beat them twice,” Ellis claimed in a Daily Press article 44 years later.
One day, two wins
The only close call came in the state semifinal early in the afternoon of March 14, 1964, against George Washington of Danville. With the score tied in the final seconds, Mitchell gave Gary the option of running a play to Ellis’ side or Rama’s.
Gary said Ellis figured the defense would focus on him, so he told him to run the play to Rama. Henderson set a pick on Gary’s man, and when Rama’s defender moved toward Gary, the NN point guard passed to him.
Wide open, Rama buried a 9-footer from the baseline to give the Typhoon a 45-43 victory.
“C o a c h Mi t c h e l l designed the play perfectly and Jimmy never missed that shot,” Gary said.
Later that night, the Typhoon pulled away from Hampton in the second quarter and never looked back.
“That was the best team Hampton ever had, but by that time, they were scared of us,” said Ellis, who was joined in the Division I ranks after high school by Rama (William & Mary) and Taylor (William & Mary).
Gary, who gave up basketball shortly after high school upon being drafted into the military, concurred.
“It’s very difficult to beat a team of Hampton’s caliber four times, but I think they were kind of intimidated by us,” he said. “The student body was out in such large support (at the state tournament) that the main thing for me is that I didn’t want to disappoint them.
“Those fans motivated me, and without them, I don’t think we’d have won that state championship.”