Woodling: Juco visit brings back memories

By Chuck Woodling     Mar 27, 2007

Maybe, as they say, you can’t go home again. But why can’t you go to your first home away from home?

So four decades later there I was sitting in the Hutchinson Sports Arena watching a couple of games during the National Junior College Div. I Men’s Basketball Tournament.

Back in the mid-1960s, when I worked for the Hutchinson News, this annual event was known as the National Junior College Basketball Tournament. There were no juco divisions then, and there was no NJCAA women’s tourney.

And, of course, back then none of the participants wore baggy pants or had any idea that all they had to do was wait another 20 years for the arrival of the three-point line.

Still, one aspect that hasn’t changed is the facility itself. The Sports Arena is as perfect a place for this national tourney as it was when it was built in 1952, or three years before Allen Fieldhouse went up in Lawrence. The capacity, they say, is 7,600, or less than half the seats in the home of the Jayhawks.

The Sports Arena has undergone a couple of refurbishings over the years, yet the building remains structurally unchanged from the days when I covered the NJCAA tourneys in 1965 and 1966.

Thus it was with a strange sense of nostalgia that I walked from the parking lot to the west entrance, into the hallway and up the ramp to the second level, where my wife and I plunked into general-admission seats.

One of the lures of the NJCAA men’s basketball tournament is the opportunity to see talented players before they move on to the major-college ranks. Not many ever reach the highest level, yet the juco tourney is a prime showcase for future mid-major players.

These juco standouts know they are auditioning for scholarships, so they seem eager to play to their strengths. The guards shoot threes, the small forwards dunk, and the big men exaggerate every rebound and embellish every blocked shot.

Perhaps only at this tournament, too, can you see a husband-and-wife coaching tandem. Marty Cooper is head coach of Itawamba (Miss.) JC, and his wife Jennifer is the assistant coach. The two have been coaching together for the last 16 years.

Amazing. I mean, I’m sure Bill Self loves his wife Cindy, but I think it’s safe to say he won’t be tapping her to fill any vacancies on his staff.

Perhaps my biggest surprise was glancing at the tourney program and seeing that Sam Butterfield was listed as the man in charge of the tournament timers and scorers. Butterfield retired as Hutchinson CC’s coach 41 years ago. I know because I covered his last game, a third-place finish in the ’66 NJCAA tourney.

Moberly (Mo.) won the national title that year. The coach was the late Cotton Fitzsimmons, who went on to Kansas State and later the Phoenix Suns.

Midland (Texas) won the national title this year, thanks mainly to 24 points in the title game against Chipola (Fla.) from Rodrique Mels, a 6-foot-3 guard from, of all places, the island of Guadeloupe.

Over the years, KU has recruited precious few players who appeared in the NJCAA Tournament, but you’ll find one familiar name in the program. The winner of the 1973 sportsmanship award was a 6-6 forward from Olney (Ill.) JC named Roger Morningstar.

A year later, Morningstar – Brady’s dad – was playing for the Jayhawks in the NCAA Final Four.

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