Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
BROWARD COUNTY SPORTS HALL OF FAME Dooling, Crocketts recall formative years
FORT LAUDERDALE — Keyon Dooling remembers the days he and his friends yearned to play basketball but could not find a place to play in Fort Lauderdale that had the right combination of asphalt and hoops.
So they got creative, cutting the bottoms out of milk crates and nailing them to trees. They found wood to use as a backboard.
“We would do anything to get our game in,” Dooling said. “We did not have the luxury of all the parks that are available today. We made the crates just high enough to where we could dunk and do our best Michael Jordan impersonations.”
The skills Dooling learned in Fort Lauderdale would eventually help make him a first-round NBA draft choice, and on Tuesday night one of eight luminaries inducted into the Broward County Sports Hall of Fame.
His fellow inductees include South Florida high school sports insider Larry Blustein, retired NFL players Henri and Zack Crockett, late Broward Public Schools athletic director Damian Huttenhoff , international fishing Hall-ofFamer Michael Leech and two South Florida high school coaching icons: Cardinal Gibbons wrestling’s Frank Pettineo, and Laura Rountree, who started Douglas’ soccer program and led the girls team to multiple state titles.
Dooling, 36, was born and raised in Fort Lauderdale and was one of the county’s all-time greatest basketball players. Dooling started at Cardinal Gibbons before ultimately graduating from Dillard High School. He played college ball at Missouri before going to the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers as the 10th pick in the 2000 draft. (Originally taken by the Orlando Magic, the 6-foot-3 shooting guard was traded before draft night ended.)
“I am truly blessed to be here tonight,” Dooling said at the induction dinner Tuesday at the Fort Lauderdale Convention Center. “This is my home, it is where I grew up and I played with some great players that came out of this county. To be considered one of the best is truly humbling and something that I will never forget.”
The Crockett brothers remember what it was like growing up in Pompano Beach before they starred at Blanche Ely. In a neighborhood where a football was hard to come by, the two Crockett boys and their friends played a game they called “murder ball.” They used a Gatorade bottle or a milk carton, and whoever had the bottle would be tackled by 10 other guys as they tried to pry the bottle away.
Henri Crockett said: “It was a lot of fun except for the kid that had the bottle. He would get murdered by 10 other guys.”
“We had a lot of fun growing up in Pompano,” Zack Crockett said. “We sometimes had to be innovative and enterprising in what we had to use, but we had a lot of fun.”
Zack remembers the hard work and dedication it took to get from Ely into Florida State, where the siblings played together and earned a national title before both played in the National Football League.
“It really makes you reflect what you went through to get this far.”
Pettineo is the first wrestling coach inducted into the county hall. He was sentimental Tuesday about a journey that has seen him amass a 724-42 record so far. That record is still in progress as Pettineo continues coaching at Cardinal Gibbons.
“I might be the first to get in, but I certainly did not set the standard,” Pettineo said. “I had two mentors that deserved to get in as much as I did. I have to remember John Lozat from McArthur and Roger Tavernier from Stranahan, who inspired me to become the coach that I became.”