John Shearer: Remembering Baylor Hall Of Fame Basketball Coach Jack Stanford

Jack Stanford spent the last few decades of his life as a headmaster, interim headmaster and consultant to several prestigious independent schools after being hired by their boards of trustees.
 
But for a few years earlier in his career, the main board he worked with was the backboard of a basketball court.
 
From 1960-71, he enjoyed a successful career as varsity coach of the Baylor Red Raiders boys’ team when the then-military school was still all male. He went 164-84 during that time for a winning percentage of .661, won four straight Mid-South championships in the old prep school conference, and had only two losing seasons.
 
Because of that, the coach has posthumously joined another board of distinguished people – the Baylor School Sports Hall of Fame. Last fall during the school’s alumni weekend reunion activities, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame along with multi-sport athlete Charlie Baker from the Class of 1957 and baseball player Scott Smith ’89.
 
A look back at Coach Stanford’s career now that basketball season is in full swing for the first time since his selection reveals a coach who practiced and coached hard, but one who also generally won players’ approval along with games.
 
“He was a players’ coach in that he cared about his players on and off the court,” said Chattanooga attorney Bill Aiken, who played for him before graduating in 1968. “His life was Baylor.”
 
Current Baylor teacher and coach Bill McMahan, who was a year ahead of Mr. Aiken at Baylor and also played basketball, remembered that Coach Stanford’s compassion was obvious, but he also knew how to maintain respect.
 
“You liked him and respected him,” said coach McMahan, who is also in the Baylor Sports Hall of Fame for his career as the varsity track coach. “It takes a special person to draw the line in the sand.”
 
Although Coach Stanford became head coach in 1960 after the retirement of Bob Hill, another Hall of Fame inductee who won 62 percent of his games while coaching 31 seasons, he arrived at Baylor fulltime in 1953.
 
A former University of Chattanooga football player who caught a tackle eligible touchdown pass against Alabama in 1952, Coach Stanford taught such classes as biology and chemistry and coached a variety of sports at Baylor. He had initially started out in the business world after college but realized his heart was more in working with young people.
 
Among his early Baylor jobs was as an assistant under the legendary football coach “Humpy” Heywood, and serving as the “B” team basketball coach, often playing after the varsity games instead of before as is more typical.
 
When he became head varsity coach, he certainly helped keep the fans in their seats. After an 8-11 start his first year, he won four straight Mid-South championships from 1961-65 with records of 17-6, 18-5, 19-4 and 18-5, respectively.
 
Two of the four losses of the 1963-64 team – which was considered his best -- were to the freshmen squads of the University of Chattanooga and Georgia Tech.
 
Among his standout players on those early teams, according to a history of Baylor by the late teacher Jim Hitt, were Jack Sample, Rodney Windham, Pete Dunson, future Georgia football player Happy Dicks, future Alabama basketball players Tom Jones and R.G. Wilson, Kevin Clower and Bill Aiken, then called “Billy.”
 
His best natural athlete and all-around performer was said to be boarding student Rusty Kidd, whose career as a Tennessee football player was cut short by injury and who later suffered a paralyzing accident as a middle-aged adult.
 
Coach McMahan remembers some others from his era like Buddy Henry and Danny Kyle.
 
Gerry King was a boarding student from Anniston, Ala., and also played on some of coach Stanford’s earlier teams before graduating in 1965 and playing basketball at what is now Rhodes College in Memphis.
 
He remembered playing against the Georgia Tech freshmen in the circular Atlanta arena still used by the Yellow Jackets, although it has been remodeled and renamed McCamish Pavilion.
 
“It was such a great big coliseum,” said Mr. King, who works for the state of Alabama in Anniston after a longtime career in banking and financial services. “We did OK. We didn’t win. But we held our own in the second half after getting over the shock” of playing in a big college arena.
 
He said the players were also often motivated due to their respect for coach Stanford.
 
“He wasn’t a tough-nosed coach but he was demanding and expected you to perform,” said Mr. King, who also remembered that coach Stanford occasionally used to enjoy smoking a cigar in those days.
 
“He could get the most out of you because we wanted to play well for him and we respected his efforts to help us.”
 
He added that they were pushed hard in practice, but not to the extent where the players dreaded practice.
 
Mr. King said he was also around Coach Stanford at other times, including as a dorm student who ate at the dining table in Guerry Hall with the Stanfords, including wife Jody and daughters SusanBeth (Purifico) and Lisa (Stanford). He even recalled Mrs. Stanford kindly making rum cakes for him and some of the other students around the Christmas holidays.
 
“He took care of you as well as coaching you,” he said.
 
Coach McMahan, who played for Coach Stanford for three years and was admittedly not as talented as some of the other players, remembered that Coach Stanford’s practices held in the gym where Baylor still plays were focused but not loud.
 
“He was very cerebral,” he said. “He wasn’t a hollerer or yeller. He was always mostly under control in practice. As a general rule he was very composed.”
 
Mr. Aiken said Coach Stanford was really good at teaching fundamentals, whether it was learning to set the right kind of screen or passing the ball where an opponent was least likely to intercept it.
 
Concerning tactical strategy and in-game adjustments, Mr. Aiken later realized that talented assistant coach David Longley – who along with Dean Sterling was one of the Stanford varsity assistants or “B” team coaches – often helped.
 
He thinks Coach Stanford’s greatest contributions and skills as a coach were maybe in the life lessons taught. That included teaching the players to give their all and represent Baylor School well.
 
“He was intensely competitive,” said Mr. Aiken, who went on to play some baseball at the University of North Carolina as a Morehead Scholar. “Practice wasn’t a lot of fun. You competed but competed fairly. You respected your opponent. And you represented the team and the school the right way.”
 
Mr. King remembered that coach Stanford and the coaches of other sports also taught the players to think on the court and field and not just rely on physical conditioning or ability.
 
After a disappointing 10-12 year in 1965-66, Coach Stanford’s teams went 17-7 and 15-7 the next two seasons before Mr. Aiken – a quarterback on the football team who was considered one of Coach Stanford’s favorite clutch players – graduated.
 
In Coach Stanford’s final three years, beginning with the 1968-69 season, Baylor went 17-8, 11-11 and 14-8. By this time, the Red Raiders were having to transition into playing more public schools as well as some of the other military schools that, unlike Baylor by this time, were still playing post-graduates.
 
The best player at the end of Coach Stanford’s tenure was Nixon Costner, a boarding student who had arrived from Johnson City, Tenn., in 1967 as a ninth-grader.
 
Mr. Costner recalled over the telephone recently that he was quite a basketball enthusiast at that time, who ideally would have been thrilled if Coach Stanford had used even more complex strategy during games.
 
But he remembered that Coach Stanford was always cordial, and Mr. Costner loved the experience of playing for the Red Raiders when they played state powers Riverside and Howard and Notre Dame High when it had Bob Brown.
 
Mr. King added that coach Stanford’s tactical strategy was not real complicated but seemed sound and focused on execution. “He had certain plays and would allow more freelance for the players,” he said.
 
Many of Coach Stanford’s teams also played Gadsden (Ala.) High in the community where the coach had grown up. Mr. Costner remembered that one of Gadsden’s players was John Croyle, who played football for Paul “Bear” Bryant at Alabama before running the Big Oak Ranch for children and later seeing his son, Brodie Croyle, play quarterback for the Crimson Tide.
 
“I remember taking bus rides all over the place,” said Mr. Costner, who went on to enjoy a successful career in insurance work. “And we had a good group of guys on the team.”
 
Other Baylor standouts he remembers from his era were future Alabama football player Tommy Prestwood, multi-sport athlete and Vanderbilt baseball player Ted Shipley, future Georgia tennis player David Dick, Skipper Eldridge, and Tom Pritchard.
 
Of Mr. Costner, Coach Stanford once said that he had the best eye for the basket of any player he ever coached.
 
Mr. Costner -- who suffered a broken arm his junior year when Baylor struggled to a .500 record but was a top scorer in Chattanooga and averaged 34 points a game his senior year – also remembered that McCallie was always tough.
 
Coach Stanford was able to beat the Blue Tornado under Coach Bill Eskridge twice his last year in 1970-71.
 
By 1971, Coach Stanford – who had also headed up the Baylor summer camp for a number of years and lived on the Baylor campus – had already transitioned into school administration. That would lead to a headmastership of Presbyterian Day School for elementary boys in Memphis in 1972 and the Hutchison School for girls, also in Memphis, in 1979.
 
After retiring from Hutchison in 1995, he moved back to Chattanooga but kept busy serving interim headmasterships at several schools – including Baylor in 2004 – and worked as a private consultant with schools that were hiring headmasters.
 
Before he died suddenly in December 2012 at the age of 82 after undergoing a heart procedure, he had reconnected with Baylor in a number of ways and had renewed acquaintances with his former students at reunions and other events.
 
To many of them, he was still simply Coach Stanford, their former basketball coach they admired.
 
“He taught us that basketball is a game, but you are going to compete in everything you do,” said Mr. Aiken, summing up his influence.
 
Jcshearer2@comcast.net