USA TODAY International Edition
Outgoing coach molded men for four decades
Fork Union’s Arritt, admired by legends, flew under radar
FORK UNION, Va. — Fletcher Arritt Jr. stands at midcourt in the gym he’s known as home since before most of his players’ parents were born. He lightly pops a basketball in the palm of his left hand, punching it with his right.
It’s a restless, happy habit. He is waiting for his players to appear. How many practices has he run on the honey- colored floor of this blessed bandbox of a place? “Oh, gosh, I don’t know,” he says with a wry smile. “Lots, I guess.”
Arritt, 70, is the best basketball coach you’ve never heard of — and whom the coaches you have heard of hold in high regard. He numbers Roy Williams, Bob Knight, Bill Self, John Thompson III,
Rick Barnes, Tubby Smith, Billy Donovan and many more among his friends.
Arritt coaches his last home game today at Fork Union Military Academy, where he has piloted the postgraduate program for 42 years, plus four more as an assistant. His career numbers are staggering: 888 wins, 280 losses and more than 400 players sent to college, including more than 200 to Division I and seven to the NBA.
His teams are made up of high school graduates who, for one reason or another, need one more year before college — to get stronger or get noticed, to grow taller or grow up, to improve their grades or their games. His teams play against junior varsity college teams and other post- grad teams. Arritt knows firsthand how it works: He played a postgraduate year at Fork Union in 1959- 60.
He can point to the spot on the tongue- and- groove floor, out near the three- point line that didn’t exist then, where he hit a jumper during a tryout that impressed then- coach Bill Miller enough that he offered Arritt a scholarship.
“The jump shot was unusual then,” Arritt says, eyes twinkling, “true story.”
The way Arritt sees it, that long- ago, long- range jumper determined his life’s course. His postgraduate year led him to play at the University of Virginia, which led him to the woman who would be his wife, towhom he proposed when he decided to take a teaching job at Fork Union, where they’ve lived happily ever after.
Arritt said before this season that it would be his last.
“You got to quit some time,” he says. “I mean, I’m doing the same at 70 as I was at 25. Who does that?”
A lucky man does that, and Arritt continues to think of himself as ineffably lucky, even after discovering a lump on his neck late last year.
“The biopsy came back just before Christmas, and the doctor said it was a lymphoma, which is not an easy thing to accept,” Arritt says. “You’re sitting there, and the guy says, ‘ We’ve got to take it out.’ That was a Tuesday, and they took it out Friday, and I started chemo 10 days later.”
His cancer is Stage 3, Arritt says, advanced past local stages but not widespread. He says his doctors tell him it can be treated effectively with chemotherapy. He has missed four games, plus a few practices and classes, nothing more, and only on his chemotherapy days.
Arritt’s players were told at a West Point hotel, before Fork Union played Army’s JV in their first game after Christmas break.
“It was like getting stabbed in the heart,” guard Dontae Carter says.
“Coach acts like nothing’s going on,” center Kion Brown says. “That’s the kind of man he is, straightforward and strong.”
The Blue Devils are 16- 10. They’ll finish with two games in a tournament at instate rival Hargrave Military Academy and two more at Princeton’s JV. That’s how seasons end at this level, hidden betwixt high school and college, no championship to play for.
The satisfaction comes from taking a dozen or so players, new every year, and making them a team. The secret: Keep it simple. And pass the ball. Always find the open man.
One leg at a time
Phil Wall played at Fork Union ( 2002- 03) and Williams College ( 2003- 07). These days he is a filmmaker working on a full- length documentary on Arritt that he hopes will be out by next year. ( The trailer can be viewed at Thepassinggame. com.)
“Coach Arritt offers that perfect mix of challenging you and nurturing you,” Wall says. “And he does it all in this aw- shucks, Andy Griffith way.”
Wall couldn’t believe it on the first day of practice when Arritt stood in front of his charges, fully dressed, and showed them how to put on a jock strap, one leg at a time.
“I remember thinking, ‘ Am I supposed to laugh?’ ” Wall says.
Today’s players mostly wear compression pants, not jocks, but at Fork Union it’s still 1970 beneath the basketball shorts. That means more than simple expression of old school values.
“The message,” Wall says, “is profound: ‘ If I can’t trust you to do this one little thing right, how can I trust you to do the big things?’ ”
Wall’s documentary includes clips of famous coaches singing arias of praise. Barnes says Arritt’s is a household name among coaches who have household names. Knight says Arritt should be considered for basketball’s Hall of Fame. And Williams says, “I’ve probably known Fletcher Arritt since 10 years before I was born.”
Arritt coached against Williams when Williams coached North Carolina’s junior varsity in the 1980s.
They got a chance to catch up this month when Fork Union beat UNC’S JV 77- 74 in the undercard before the Tar Heels varsity hosted Virginia.
Arritt shrugs off flattery from the famous.
“All it means,” he says, “is if you do something for a long time, at least you know a lot of people.”
He also has coached a lot of people, including Shammond Williams, who played at North Carolina and for seven NBA teams. Williams says the best coaches he ever played for were Arritt and Dean Smith.
“Coach Arritt teaches you X’s and O’s,” Williams says, “and he teaches you about life.”
Also among Arritt’s former players are Don Majkowski and Mike Quick, who had distinguished NFL careers, and Chris Washburn and the late Mel Turpin, who had troubled NBA careers.
Arritt says he’s been able to handle problem players thanks to Fork Union’s military structure and its rural home in central Virginia, about 30 miles from Charlottesville and 60 from Richmond. “This is a great place for telling a kid what he has to do,” Arritt says. “We make sure they study.”
The private boarding school is affiliated with the Baptist General Association of Virginia and has boys in grades 6 through 12, plus postgraduates. Students wear military uniforms. Arritt is called colonel but says that’s honorary.
He likes that his players live away from the distractions of family and modern life, a coaching advantage he quantifies as the five P’s: “No press, no parents, no posse, no phones — and no perfume.”
Family feel
Betty Jean Hauser was a student at James Madison University in 1964 when she and some friends visited UVA during semester break, when hardly anyone except the basketball team was on grounds.
“We were staying with a friend at the dorms, and I had new Samsonite luggage, and I forgot my key,” she says. “So I knocked on the door of the room across the hall. I thought if someone had that kind of luggage, their key might work.” Arritt answered the door. “She was pretty, and I liked her all of a sudden,” he says, “so I told her I had a key but I’d have to look for it. Then I hustled down to Sears and got one. So I’m not afraid to take a gamble, true story.”
They dated for a couple of years. After college, Arritt taught biology elsewhere for one year and then was offered a job teaching it at Fork Union. Miller, his old coach, said he would take Arritt on as his assistant.
“But Bill said, ‘ If you’re going to come here, this ain’t the place for a single man. It’s too far to Charlottesville or Richmond.’ So I got to that tree over there” — Arritt points out a window of his cluttered office — “and I thought, ‘ I’m going to marry Betty Jean.’ ”
He proposed on campus, among the rolling hills of the Piedmont, and has been here since, teaching biology and coaching basketball, just like his father, a high school biology teacher and coach in West Virginia when Arritt was growing up in Fayetteville.
Arritt’s middle child, Fletcher III, has his doctorate in biology and teaches at North Carolina State. His oldest, Ben, is CEO of a marketing company in Atlanta. His youngest, Amy, is a clinical dietician at the University of Virginia hospital. Her husband, Brooks Berry, played for Arritt.
“I remember one time at Bucknell we were up 25 with three minutes left and Brooks dives for a loose ball,” Arritt says. “And I thought to myself, ‘ That’s the kind of guy you want to marry your daughter,’ true story.”
Arritt appends some variation of that to many stories. It’s not that they’re untrustworthy, it’s just that he’s told them so often their edges have been smoothed over, like rocks in a river.
“I don’t think Amy would care if I dove for a ball,” Berry says, laughing. “Good thing we didn’t meet when I played here. I would have been too scared to talk to her.”
One summer, after Berry played at West Virginia, he and Amy worked one of Arritt’s basketball camps for kids. They dated, married and have two children, but Berry is more than a son- in- law to Arritt.
Berry is also his assistant coach. He is the one who told the players about Arritt’s cancer and coached them in his absence. And he’s the one who will succeed Arritt next season.
Keep it simple. And pass the ball. Always find the open man.
“I don’t look at it like Fletcher is retiring,” Betty Jean says. “He’ll still be over there, going to practice, maybe take some of the trips.”
They live in a home overlooking the James River, train tracks running between house and rapids.
Their neighbors are dozens of deer and one black bear. In the distance, the whistle of an approaching train sounds.
“Carrying coal from West Virginia,” Arritt says. “I like that. Sounds like home.”
True story.