‘All kinds of fun’: Huntington High hit the road for national basketball tourney

For young men from the impoverished East End of Newport News in the mid-1950s, it was the trip of a lifetime.

Joe Buggs remembers the excitement of boarding Greyhound buses and riding with his Huntington High boys basketball teammates to Nashville, Tennessee, in 1955 and ’56 to play in the annual National High School Athletic Association tournament.

“We had all kinds of fun,” recalls Buggs, now in his 80s and the only surviving member of Huntington’s starting five.

The NHSAA tournament decided the nation’s best Black high school team at a time when the ink was still drying on Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation in schools. Huntington lost close games to teams from Alabama and Texas on those trips but left a legacy as one of the best basketball teams in state history, Black or white.

Buggs said Coach Freddie Travis was a big reason for the success of the Vikings, who won Black schools Virginia Interscholastic Association (VIA) state titles in 1955 and ’56.

“He took care of us in all ways,” Buggs said.

“He was very personable and would take us to his house and feed us after practice sometimes. He got along with everybody.”

The star of the team was Lonnie Humphrey. Buggs said Humphrey, who played at Virginia State University briefly after high school, rarely scored fewer than 20 points.

“He was the best high school player in this (Peninsula) area before Bubbachuck (Allen Iverson) came along,” Buggs said.

Humphrey and 6-foot-5, 245-pound future All-Pro football lineman Earl Faison barely let Halifax County get a rebound in the 63-48 victory for the 1955 VIA state championship. Faison, who helped the San Diego Chargers win an AFL title, intimidated with his size.

Buggs was a sharpshooter, scoring about 14 points a game, and Caeser Williams contributed about 12 rebounds a game. Clarence Townes ran an offense that included the four corners, a possession tactic Travis learned playing at North Carolina Central for John McClendon, who became the first African American head coach at a predominantly white college (Cleveland State).

The Vikings were treated as conquering heroes in 1956 when they repeated as VIA state champs by beating Addison High of Roanoke 69-63 and recognized for earning a second trip to Nashville.

“Our students, our principal and the city treated us very well,” Buggs said. “It was a great time.”