Hall of Fame-bound George Raveling's Delco coaching roots

It sounds like one of those uplifting sports movies Hollywood loves, those whose stirring sound tracks are designed to mask cornball plots and historical inaccuracies:

In the early 1960s, when African Americans were rare on Catholic League and Big Five basketball rosters and the Civil Rights Act remained a dream, the players on an all-white, Catholic grade-school team in Delaware County asked a young, black Villanova graduate to be their coach.

Those Havertown kids had their horizons expanded and learned to love one another and the sport that united them. The coach, meanwhile, discovered his true calling and committed himself as devotedly to those youngsters as he later would to six NCAA tournament teams.

This weekend, George Raveling and several players from St. Denis School's 1962-63 and 1963-64 teams will reunite in Springfield, Mass., where the 78-year-old ex-coach who now is Nike's top liaison to the sport will be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

"I'll always remember those kids," Raveling, whose coaching career at Villanova, Maryland, Washington State, Iowa and Southern Cal spanned three-plus decades, said Monday. "Nobody else knows it, but that was the first time I'd coached in my life."

He invited those players, many retired now and scattered around the country, to Friday night's nationally televised induction ceremony. Afterward at a hotel reception, they'll mingle with Nike stars and the great players Raveling coached and recruited. At some point, they'll present their old mentor with a photo-shopped version of the team portrait they never had.

But mainly they'll laugh, argue, and drink beer. And, as is typical at their periodic get-togethers - another of which is set for next week in Florida - they'll try to recapture a past in which Raveling played such a large and unexpected role.

"He showed patience with kids that would remember his influence for the rest of their lives," said Steve Murphy, who is 66, retired and living in Florida. "[He helped] a bunch of 12- and 13-year-olds learn the game of basketball the way it should be played. He asked only that we listen to his instructions and be on time. . . . He never yelled or got upset when we lost."

Maybe more important, Raveling introduced those suburban youngsters to a world they barely knew, scheduling inner-city opponents for St. Denis, bringing black Villanova players to practice, taking them to his games in the gritty and amply integrated Eastern Basketball League.

"I'd gone to a private Catholic high school in upstate Pennsylvania and I don't think I ever thought about black coaches or white players," Raveling said. "But I did know that the 40 minutes of a basketball game was one of the few times when race and religion and ethnicity could be forgotten."

He caught the coaching bug in those two seasons at St. Denis and during that time also guided the 3 Country Boys team in the Narberth Summer League. That formidable squad included black Philadelphia players like Irv Staggs, white Catholic League stars like Fran O'Hanlon and even two St. Denis alums, Chris "Sup" Turner and Paul Lang.

"Many of us [lived] in lily-white surroundings, including our schools," Turner said. "Many of us had nearly all Catholic kids as buddies. I used to read in The Inquirer about players from the Philadelphia Public League, but never saw those games. George brought to the Narberth League many of the best area high school players, from the Public and Catholic Leagues. You could consider this a type of integration. I know it broadened my horizons for sure."

It all started in 1962 when Frank Blatcher, who'd played on La Salle's 1954 NCAA champions, stepped down as coach of the Havertown parish's team.

At St. Denis' awards banquet that spring, the guest speaker was Raveling. A 1960 graduate of Villanova, where he'd been a basketball star, the Washington, D.C., native was by then an extremely busy 25-year-old.

Raveling had failed to make the Philadelphia Warriors after the NBA team made him its eighth-round pick in 1960. When St. Denis called, he was playing with the Camden Bullets of the EBL, working as a Sun Oil Co. intern and serving as a graduate assistant to Villanova coach Jack Kraft.

"Sitting there at the banquet, someone had the bright idea to ask George if he would be our coach," recalled Mike Druding, 66, a California attorney. "He seemed interested but said he'd have to check with Father Getz," the parish's athletic director.

Raveling, who said, "My first instinct was always to say yes", did so and soon afterward was the team's coach.

He immediately impressed the starstruck seventh and eighth graders. Despite his schedule, he never missed a practice and always wore a suit to games. And for a team with no one taller than 5-foot-8, his 6-6 frame was imposing.

"His size initially wowed us," Turner said. "He always was impeccably dressed. He was polite and well-spoken, very friendly but serious too. We always addressed him as Mr. Raveling."

While enhancing the fundamentals Blatcher had preached, Raveling installed a pressure defense for the undersize group.

"I just used a simplified version of what I'd learned at Villanova," Raveling said. "These were just kids, so you didn't want to get too complicated."

They practiced three times a week and the players incorporated the lessons into their pickup basketball at area playgrounds and into their round-the-clock games in the Sup's Basketball League (SBL) on a court behind Turner's Whitemarsh Road home.

"The full-court press he taught us enabled us to win more than we would have otherwise," said Turner, 65, a retired nurse and physical therapist who lives in Franklin Forks, Pa.

Raveling also took the St. Denis players to several of his Bullets games. During one halftime, they scrimmaged Sacred Heart of Havertown. Another time, he brought Hubie White to a St. Denis practice, then went one-on-one with the Villanova star.

"I can assure you Hubie won," Raveling said. "He was much better than me."

No one can recall exactly how many games St. Denis won that first season. Turner has it at 13-3, Murphy at 16-6. Whatever, the team came within a victory of its CYO league's title, losing to St. Matthias of Bala Cynwyd in the championship.

"George was crushed afterward," Druding said, "as we all were."

Raveling insisted his players behave gentlemanly even after tough losses or bad calls and he extended those strictures to himself. The loudest, foulest reaction anyone can recall from him was "Cheese and Crackers!"

"When he was happy with something, he'd leap off his chair and into the air like he was propelling himself for a rebound," said Druding. "When he wasn't happy, he would stomp his foot. Either way you got the message."

Over the years, as they all scattered, the players had only sporadic contact with Raveling. As a full-time Villanova assistant, he recruited such stars as Howard Porter and Johnny Jones. At Maryland, he became one of the first black assistants in the Atlantic Coast Conference. He then coached 11 seasons at Washington State, three at Iowa, and eight at USC. A serious auto accident in 1994 ended his career on the bench.

When Washington State visited Stanford in the early '80s, Druding, who then as now lived near San Francisco, contacted Raveling.

"I called his hotel room and I started out by saying, 'Coach, you probably don't remember me . . .' and he interrupted and said, 'Mike, how have you been?' " he recalled.

No one from St. Denis achieved the kind of basketball fame Raveling would earn. Druding and Steve Dahm became California attorneys. Bob Schuster is a Main Line physician. Murphy owned a bridal business in Tennessee. Bobby Cabrelli became a UMass football star.

Dave Chermanski, a NASA engineer and world-class fly fisherman, died in 2012.

But this weekend they'll rehash their glory days at St. Denis, their exploits in the SBL and, most frequently, their good fortune to have been coached by a 6-6 legend headed for the Hall of Fame.

"I'll say this about Mr. Raveling," Druding said, "he was easy to idolize."

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Referee Dick Bavetta

Coach John Calipari

Louis Dampier

Coach Lindsay Gaze

Spencer Haywood

Coach Tom Heinsohn

John Isaacs

Lisa Leslie

Dikembe Mutombo

Coach George Raveling

Jo Jo White

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