Some of the most impactful and lighthearted moments from Monday night’s induction ceremony for the Catawba County Sports Hall of Fame’s Class of 2018 at the Highland Recreation Center in Hickory (from one man’s point of view):
Hickory native Rick Barnes gave a great speech about how those he came into contact with when he was younger — especially coaches or those associated with sports – helped shape his life.
COMMENTARY BY CHRIS HOBBS, OWNER/STAFF OF HOBBSDAILYREPORT.COM
He’s head men’s basketball at Tennessee with 663 wins, ranking sixth among active college coaches, and shared some interesting tidbits – from the first time he saw former Hickory High star athlete Al Young (a member of the CCSHOF) as a fourth-grader to a day in 1962 when he was in a gym with Gene Miller and shot a basketball for the first time to being roommates at Lenoir-Rhyne (then College) with former Bears head coach John Lentz.
Barnes on Young: “I knew then that he was going to be a great player.”
Barnes on Lentz: “He taught me the meaning of intensity.”
“Growing up in Catawba County was special,” Barnes recalled, and he said “My heroes are in Catawba County.”
Barnes also shared a poignant moment in his life, one that came after he said he’d become too caught up in the fame, fortune and other things that can arise with success at high levels of sports.
He said his daughter approached him one day at home and candidly told him his family was not pleased with the way he had been living his life during that time.
She mentioned to him — in a stinging comment of honesty — that her goal was to share Heaven someday with all of her family and she didn’t think, at the time, that her father was on the path to reach the family goal.
That changed things for Barnes, who reminded the young student-athletes at the induction ceremony “Don’t waste your life; it’s too good. It’s too valuable.”
NASCAR crew chief MIKE BEAM said he thought someone was pulling a prank on him when he received a phone call that he’d been elected to the CCSHOF.
Beam, 62 and in racing for more than 40 years, grew up in the St. Stephens area and his first exposure to racing was at Hickory Motor Speedway when it was a dirt track.
When Beam was 5, he watched Catawba County native (and fellow HOFers) Ned Jarrett race at HMS and was hooked.
“I knew then,” Beam said, “that I wanted to race.”
Former Bandys High and Duke football star CHRIS DOUGLAS, who now lives in Washington, D.C., told of moving to Sherrills Ford from Charlotte prior to his ninth-grade year in school.
Life was much different in a more rural community, and Douglas said his parents’ decision to move back to Catawba County – his mom is from Newton – ultimately changed his life.
He was voted an ACC Legend in football – he still holds rushing and all-purpose yardage records at Duke – and was in position to make the New York Giants in 2004 until he sustained an injury in an exhibition game against the Carolina Panthers in Charlotte.
“Twenty years later, I can look back (on life), especially in Catawba County, and see how it shaped me into the person I am today,” Douglas said.
WATCH this video to learn more about Bob J. Lutz and this year’s CCSHOF Team of Distinction — the Howard’s Furniture/Western Steer softball team.
https://vimeo.com/259047772
Bobby Lutz, a former Bandys High athlete, introduced with words and stories his calm natured yet athletically intense deceased father, BOB J. LUTZ, who was a much better athlete than he ever took credit for.
Lutz, who left law school to follow his dream of coaching basketball and had great success at Pfeiffer University and Charlotte as a head coach and most recently as a key assistant at N.C. State, said his dad never told him a story about his success as a high-scoring guard in 1954 at Sherrills Ford High. Self-promotion, Bobby said, was just not his dad’s thing.
Bobby described his dad’s intensity in only a way someone who grew up in the Sherrills Ford area could immediately relate to.
The fifth of six boys in the Lutz family, Bob J. told his son this of being intense and competitive: “We used to fight over the last biscuit on the table…”
VERNON ODOM – always affectionately known as ‘VO’ — shared some unique insight, really for the first time, about his basketball-playing family.
He scored 2,575 career points — which would probably had been 4,000 if there was a 3-point line back then (1979-82) — and led Bandys High to a state title game in three of his four seasons.
When Odom was a freshman, the Trojans finished 14-15 and second in the state 2A tournament. That was a team I nicknamed the ‘Baby Brigade’ because head coach (the late) Bill Bost used to wear out the quotes about how young the team was.
“Coach,” I asked one night, “just how young is this team?”
Bost, knowing the table was set, grinned. “They are so young,” he said. “I don’t call timeout to talk to’em, I call one to change their diapers.”
In VO’s other seasons, the Trojans had a fourth-place state finish, another second his junior year and won the 1982 state 2A title over Sampson Union in the Greensboro Coliseum in his senior year.
His older brother, Curtis, was a star who scored 1,960 career points while playing on teams on which Bobby Lutz was the point guard. Curtis played basketball on scholarship at Gardner-Webb.
“I didn’t want to play because there was so much pressure,” Vernon Odom, now 54 and living in Taylorsville, said. “It was basketball, It’s what I lived, but basketball wasn’t my No. 1 sport (favorite) because Curtis set the bar so high.”
‘VO’ said things began to change for him after he took some advice at a North Carolina basketball camp around his sophomore year at Bandys.
“I wanted to be like Dr. J,” he said. “But I couldn’t jump … and I did have the afro (hairstyle)!”
While at the camp, someone advised VO to pick the shooting mechanics of a Tar Heels player and copy them.
He chose Al Wood.
TWO OF THE BEST basketball stories I recall from nearly 45 years of covering high school basketball in the Greater Hickory area involved the Odom brothers.
I was classmates (Bandys, Class of 1976) with Curtis Odom and Bobby Lutz. And during a game early in their careers, the Trojans won big at Fred T. Foard on a night when Curtis broke the scoring (48 points) and rebounding (24) single-game records for the old Southern District 7 2A.
I remember asking Foard head coach (the late) Jerry Copas post-game what he did and what went through his mind when, with about 3 ½ minutes (if not fewer) left in the first half, his center (guarding Curtis) had fouled out.
Copas had his ‘Iron Five’ and you played until you fouled out.
He said he went to the bench (and then brought his hands up over his face to demonstrate where he’d put them), sat down and shook his head “because I knew that Odom boy was gonna kick my butt.”
At some point in the second half, Copas ventured toward the center of the scoring table to get within range of Bost to assure Bost could hear him.
“Bill, Bill,” Copas shouted out, looking in Coach Bost’s direction. “You can take that Odom boy out anytime you want … won’t hurt my feelings none.”
Bost left Odom in and he set the new records.
After the game, Copas approached Bost – they were the best of friends – and sternly but politely told Bost, shaking his finger at him: “Bill, I gonna get you back for that…I will.”
Later that season, with Foard visiting Bandys and the Trojans needing just to win to wrap up a conference title, a player whose name I wish I could remember exploded. From memory, he scored somewhere between 32 and 46 points as Foard won. He came in averaging maybe seven points a game.
Copas made a point to remind Bost that night of his promise for letting Curtis Odom have perhaps the game of his career.
THE OTHER HOOP STORY was the night Vernon Odom defied gravity, so to speak, and got a call out of a referee that even Bost could not influence the ref to change.
Odom was driving the left baseline on the goal closest to the locker rooms at what is now Bost-Matheson Gym.
As he got to the left side of the backboard, Odom went airborne. His feet never touched the ground, and he never touched anything. When Odom floated and then turned his body just enough to face the right front side of the backboard – in bounds – and hit a 2-footer, the ref blew the whistle and ran his arm up and down the line, indicting VO was out of bounds.
Bost went nuts, turning redder in the face than usual, and the ref approached him at the Bandys bench (I was just a few feet back of Bost).
“Now, Bill… now Bill,” the ref said. “I know what you are going to say before you even say it.”
“He was not out of bounds,” Bost said repeatedly.
And the ref calmly said: “Bill… Bill… Listen to me! That (what Odom did) ain’t humanly possible… so, yeah, I blew the whistle because it just ain’t.”
AND A BONUS one worth repeating, as told by Bobby Lutz at Monday’s ceremony: Lutz was an assistant with Bost at a first-round old SD-7 first-round tournament game at Newton-Conover against Bunker Hill, coached by the late (and always engaging) Mark Carter.
Lutz said a foul was called on Bunker Hill that Carter didn’t like and certainly did not agree with.
Carter got the ref’s attention and, as the ref approached him, the ref said “Coach, he fouled Vernon (Odom).”
Carter, who was 6-foot-10 and had a great sense of humor (although I don’t think this had anything to do with humor for him), said: “Name one! Name one of my players! You don’t know the name of a single one of my players… but they fouled Veeeeeerrrnon!”
If you ever saw Carter coach or get started on a referee, that alone was worth the price of admission.