Lefty

From the old book (the one that wasn’t finished or published), not this book (the one that was) …

(This was written literally a decade ago.)

(I was barely 21.)

(Please don’t judge.)

(Anyway …)

Longtime Davidson trainer Tom Couch and Lefty once were on a recruiting trip in Virginia over Christmas break. Perhaps pushing the Wildcat Buick a bit too hard, Couch got pulled over by a state trooper. Not to worry, Lefty said. After all, this was the coach’s old stomping grounds. Lefty began to make his case. It didn’t work. “Look,” the cop told Lefty, according to Couch, “I don’t give a damn who you are. You better sit down and shut up.” Said Couch: “That’s the first time I ever saw Lefty intimidated.” But with troopers out of the way, Lefty, who sold encyclopedias on the side when he was a high school coach, could recruit better than just about anybody back in that era.

Case in point: Terry Holland, his first land at Davidson, the initial inclination that he wasn’t blowing smoke, that he could attract top-rated talent to Davidson, that the Wildcats could be a success story in the major college ranks. In front of a basketball who’s-who at an Atlanta dinner in December celebrating Lefty’s 700th coaching win, Holland, now the athletics director at the University of Virginia, told his story.

He was all but a Demon Deacon, the 6-foot-7 Clinton, North Carolina, high schooler grappling with his college decision. Len Chappell and Billy Packer were the duo that made Bones McKinney’s Wake Forest squad the cream of the Atlantic Coast Conference. His next-door neighbor was the student manager for the Deacons. He had friends in Winston-Salem.

But give Lefty a chance. Just recently hired, the energetic salesman already was on the road peddling his message, his vision of what Davidson could and should become -- in a way, his newest set of encyclopedias. He arrived at the Holland home. It was prom night 1960. Basketball was important for Holland, but definitely not the most important thing that evening -- after all, Ann, his sweetheart and future wife was waiting. Lefty still made his pitch. Holland’s mother liked him and Davidson immediately.

“My mother kept thinking Davidson was a great place for me,” Holland said in his office in Charlottesville. “But I just couldn’t see how we could be successful basketball-wise.”

Still leaning toward Wake, Holland tried to extricate himself from the meeting. He had other things on his mind. Lefty offered to help. “Take my car,” he said. Holland graciously accepted the keys to Lefty’s 1956 Ford and sped off.

“I got to Ann’s house and took her to the prom,” Holland told the crowd in Atlanta. “And then I realized I had left Lefty at home with my mother. When I got back, not only was I going to Davidson, but we had a new set of encyclopedias.”