The Unthinkable Game

Published 12:00 am Sunday, April 24, 2011

“March Madness” always reminds me that basketball was once a segregated sport in America. My father played a segregated high school basketball schedule in West Virginia during the years 1944-1946. However, in the neighboring state of Ohio, blacks and whites attended the same schools, and that meant my father played integrated basketball whenever Stonewall Jackson High School scheduled the Ironton “Fighting” Tigers or the Portsmouth Trojans.

The first black person my father associated with was the janitor’s son at the Central Methodist Church.  He would come to the church gym on Saturday mornings for pick-up basketball. My father soon learned his friend would have to attend a different school and eventually Garnet High.

“They have their way of life, and we have ours,” my grandfather told my father. “Your childhood friendships will dissolve among the friends you have yet to meet.” There was no warning with that message, so my father learned segregation at a tender age and the lesson that social pressure can alter individual lives irrespective of personal feelings or actions.

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Charleston sport writers covered the Stonewall Jackson basketball teams voluminously, especially in the year 1946.  And, fans back in the day packed the local gymnasiums, perhaps thinking Stonewall Jackson was the ‘46 West Virginia State Champions.

Stonewall went undefeated that year and earned the right to play in the state championship game at the West Virginia University Coliseum in Morgantown, West Virginia. To this day, people do not remember (or refuse to admit) that Stonewall Jackson lost the championship game to the high flying Beckley Eagles.

At least one local basketball team and their fans must have thought of Stonewall as the state champs. Garnet High School challenged Stonewall Jackson for bragging rights in the Kanawha Valley.  And, play they did.  The game took place in secrecy at the end of the season. Sports writers Dick Hutson (Charleston Daily Mail), A. L. “Shorty” Hardman (Charleston Gazette), and the scribes of Huntington and Beckley never knew about that non-segregated game. Only those who played, officiated, kept score, or attended bear witness to the “unthinkable game.”

Garnet had a good team with a solid won-loss record among the black schools. The Stonewall captains exchanged what little could be learned before discussing the reality of playing Garnet.

What if Stonewall Jackson lost again, this time to the upstart Garnet High squad? Should a ball game like this be played, especially in the gym of Garnet High School?  Could the Stonewall Jackson players function without their great coach Clyde “Pud” Hutson? Finally, how would “black folks” treat the Stonewall team and fans?

The captains considered inviting the football squad in a brief period of paranoia, but better judgment made the guys realize the value of playing a game like this exceeded any real or imagined dangers in their minds.

Garnet and Stonewall agreed that team captains would coach, substitute players, and represent the teams in all matters.  George Pierson and my father (C. W. “Bill” Jarrett) led Stonewall Jackson onto the floor, and the ball was tossed high into the air for the center jump.

George Pierson tipped the ball to my father, and he (in mid air) immediately tipped the ball toward George King, who had slipped around the jump circle and now sped to the hoop for an uncontested bucket. Stonewall had scored within a split second with a “double tip,” and there was no turning back.

Garnet was prepared to play that morning to the last man. Scouts knew that Bobby Blubaugh and George King could handle the basketball whenever necessary, and that Jim Maddox was a deadly set shooter from the outside, and that the substitutes could replace any starter without a noticeable loss of talent.

The game was as intriguing as the circumstances surrounding segregation. The score was tied at the half and again at the end of the third quarter. Garnet took the lead late in the game, until a furious run at the end gave the coveted win to Stonewall. To this day, my father wonders if Garnet’s fairness in every aspect of the game resulted in the slim margin of victory.

No unfair advantage was taken with the officiating or the game clock, and the word black never factored into the pure competition. Stonewall learned the Garnet players were as talented as their own. On any other day, the outcome may have been different.

The “unthinkable game” may have been a mere moment in time for the young men present, but they played the game as a partial cure for the insanity of the Jim Crow Era. Integration meant the destruction of schools like Garnet High.

The players live on in their accomplishments. George King became an outstanding college and professional basketball player, a local icon who also coached collegiately and in the National Basketball Association.  George Pierson played for Washington & Lee University and later became a noted physician. Jim Maddox is a retired business man living in or near Parkersburg, W.Va.

Bobby Blubaugh is a retired county school administrator living in Florida.  The whereabouts of Jerry Frazier, Richard Sines, Al Cavender, Howard Lowe, Ross Parker and Harden Scraggs are not known, nor can my father account for the team managers Jim Bird and George Davis. Jack Norman, an excellent player for Garnet High, graduated from Harvard Medical School and practiced medicine in Boston, Mass.

My father wonders whether the Janitor’s son ever played basketball at Garnet High. They were the same age when they played in the church gym on Saturday mornings so many years ago.

Their friendship had been limited to Saturday mornings and a mutual love for basketball. The romantic side of my father’s personality hopes his friend from the church arranged the last game ever played by the incredible ’46 squad.

Dad likes to think so saying, “there lies a golden day yet to come – a family in thy presence Lord – this time forevermore.”

Charles W. Jarrett, Ph. D., is the associate professor of sociology at Ohio University Southern.