Thursday, Jul. 02, 2009

'A brilliant teacher of life': Players remember Coach Fletcher

COLLINSVILLE -- Kevin Stallings can laugh about it now, but his years as a Collinsville High basketball star were occasionally bumpy.

Stallings, a 1978 graduate, had his share of disagreements with coach Vergil Fletcher, who died Tuesday night at the age of 93.

After practice one afternoon, Fletcher blew his whistle to bring the Kahoks to a huddle. Stallings said he was a couple of seconds late because he had been attempting to palm a basketball as he bent over to pick it up. Finally, he grabbed it with two hands and joined the rest of his teammates.

"As soon as I got there, everybody started backing up. I could see them out of the corner of my eye," Stallings said.

Suddenly, Fletcher passed the ball at Stallings' head. Stallings ducked to avoid it. Shell-shocked and wide-eyed, he stared at Fletcher, who told him to go get the ball.

That evening, Stallings told his father what happened as the family sat down for dinner. He expected to find an ally, but his dad sided with Fletcher.

"He said, 'You better figure out what you're doing wrong and get it fixed,'" Stallings said.

Stallings couldn't believe it. After all, Fletcher could have injured one of his star players had the ball hit Stallings in the face.

"I realized later that if he had wanted to hit me with that ball, he could have," said Stallings, the head coach at Vanderbilt for the last 10 years.

Stallings, who played one year at Belleville Area College (now Southwestern Illinois College) and finished his career at Purdue, said Fletcher always knew how to get him to perform at a higher level.

"He knew he could make me mad," Stallings said. "He had about four or five things he knew he could say that would instigate my inner soul -- and do it immediately. One of his favorites with me was, 'You've been sleeping with your press clippings again.' I got so mad when he said that. But he would always get what he wanted because I would then go out and play like a guy possessed."

Stallings recalled another conversation his dad had with Fletcher. It came in the offseason when Stallings believed nothing could happen to him after he cut class.

"The phone rang, my dad answered it and said, 'Oh, hi, Coach. Yes, sir. Uh-huh. Is that right? OK. Yeah that will be fine.' Dad got off the phone and said, 'Were you not able to find your way back to school this afternoon?'

"Then he said, 'Coach wants to see you first thing in the morning.' So I had to go in first thing the next morning and he told me something I've never forgotten, and I can't tell you how many times I've used it with my own team.

"He told me, 'Athletes get used to getting a bunch of attention in their season. But when the season ends, in an effort to do something to keep the attention, they'll do something wrong.' It may be a subconscious thing, but the truth is you're probably still trying to get some attention in some perverse way."

Stallings said he has incorporated that lesson from Fletcher in season-ending speeches to his players the last several years. It reminds them to stay clean in the offseason and wait for recognition to arrive the right way.

"He was brilliant. Not just as a coach, but a brilliant teacher of life and a brilliant molder of young men," Stallings said. "It's impossible for me to adequately express how much I loved him, how much I appreciated him, how much he did for me. I thank my lucky stars I was fortunate enough to be under his tutelage and supervision because my life has been changed in an unbelievably positive way because of him."

Stallings has many other stories about Fletcher.

"You wouldn't have enough space for all of them," Stallings said.

Another 1978 graduate, John Belobraydic, remembers one of his first practices under Fletcher as a sophomore post player in 1975.

"Fletcher had an unusual way of making you feel really, really good about your playing ability and turning around and making you feel really, really small about your playing ability," said the 6-foot-7 Belobraydic, an all-state player in 1978 who went on to play four years at Arizona.

"When I first got onto varsity, he wanted to make sure I didn't dribble the ball in the post, so he would take the air out of the ball and throw it into me. His idea was that if you dribbled the ball, the little guy would take it away from you. His whole thing was to catch it and turn to the basket without dribbling the ball.

"Look at guys today. They catch the ball and the first thing they do is take it down to the their waist. That's where everybody is."

Former Collinsville coach Bob Bone, a guard for three years under Fletcher, said Fletcher made his players feel like they couldn't lose.

"He was so good at instilling confidence in his players through the way he motivated," said Bone, a 1973 graduate. "There were things that worked with Kevin. There were things that worked with me that wouldn't work on somebody else. He was such a master of motivating and finding the right buttons to push on each player.

"We knew when we walked on the floor that we were better than the other team because of Coach Fletcher. He was such a presence."