Family History
Hoops and Horses
A Family’s Legacy of Basketball in the Bluegrass State
“We don’t just play college basketball, we are college basketball.” — John Calipari
When most people think of the Bluegrass State, they tend to think of one of three things, the Kentucky Derby, the classic southern twang found in a Bluegrass song, or Kentucky basketball. And there’s a reason why this is, especially for the latter. Kentucky basketball for decades has cemented itself in history as being one of the most dominant and impressive states to ever step foot on the court. This all began with Adolph Rupp, the coach of the Kentucky Wildcats from 1930 to 1972, and his phenomenal string of years coaching. He lead the team to four national titles, showing the world that Kentucky basketball was not to be reckoned with.
With one of the most hostile and long running college basketball rivalries being just a mere hour away from each other, the University of Kentucky Wildcats and the University of Louisville Cardinals, and raging fans in every county corner of the state, one can safely assume Kentucky is full of people aggressively waiting until the next winter to get their fair share of the college basketball pie.
However, a stable farm hidden in the rolling hills miles away from the town of Cynthiana, Kentucky, and a young aspiring basketball player would beg to differ. My family, at least on my father’s side, has always tried to live a simple life. They’ve always put family first, and quite literally too, separating themselves from other people for miles on the countryside. This isolation doesn’t make them void of personality however, and they are far from introverted, despite this separation. They are hardworking, consistent people that find the beauty in the little things. And I don’t think anyone embodies this more than my dad, Christopher Clark Stone.
Growing up on a cattle and tobacco farm, there wasn’t the elegant lifestyle that came with raising Kentucky’s beautiful horses. Instead, they were the long, tiring workdays that tagged along with being a farmer that focused primarily on livestock and crops. My dad on many days would go through the constant cycle, go to school, come home, help on the farm, and shoot outside on the basketball goal given to him by the main farmer himself, my dad’s father, Walter Stone. Each day it was almost wash, swish, repeat. For my father he never thought of basketball as a way to go to college. His mother, Wanda, was a school teacher at the nearest high school to them, Harrison County High School, so academics were in the forefront of my father’s life. Instead, he just found it to be a way to pass the time, especially after all the hard work he’d done with his dad. Little did my dad know that over time his talents (and a helpful growth spurt in the middle of high school) would take him all the way from the rusty goal planted in the driveway pavement to Morehead State to play an integral role on the collegiate team.
Although he played in front of thousands of fans at Morehead for four energetic years, today he has seemed to not let it get to his head. Me personally, I wouldn’t know how to feel after playing for a top college team. For many past college stars, they seem to make that the highlight of their life. Everyone’s heard, “Basketball has become soft,” or, “It was a man’s game back when I played.” But never from my dad. In fact, he doesn’t seem to mention his time at Morehead unless he’s directly asked about it. He very much lives in the present and nothing else, living a calm life as a high school business teacher. Personally, this perplexes me. I am always trying to strive for bigger and better things, and am constantly thinking about and thinking towards the future, asking what’s next. Not to say my dad is not thinking of better things, or how to better himself in that matter, but the future (and the past) don’t seem to affect him like they do to me so much.
Because of this difference, I wanted to focus this family history project on some of the stories and moral lessons my dad has learned from his time on our family farm and in basketball itself. Kentucky is a very special place for both of those things, and I wanted to see how it has so directly effected one of the people I know best. Also in this project I hope to strive towards some insight on how we got our farm in the first place and how both it and basketball has left a mark on our family all together.
“Hard work, hard work, hard work”
A conversation with my father
I had already planned to talk to my dad about his past, but I didn’t realize how easy it was going to plan. From September 6–8, my dad made the long trek from London, Kentucky to my school, Christ School, in Arden, North Carolina, for the bi-annual Father-Son Weekend. After a fun weekend visit to Duke University, a stop by the amazing Brasilia Steakhouse in Asheville nearby, and small talk in the car driving back and forth from Duke to Arden, I thought the end of the weekend was the perfect time for the interview. So, on the last day he was around, we sat down on campus and discussed his early years in life.
These first few questions are a little silly, but just for the purpose of the interview…What’s your name?
My name is Chris Stone, or Christopher Stone.
Where and when were you born?
I was born January 6th, 1976, in Cynthiana, Kentucky. My parents live in Sadieville, Kentucky.
Where have you lived other than that?
I lived in Sadieville for the first 18 years of my life, and I went to college in Morehead, Kentucky, where Morehead State is, and spent 4 years there. Then, I lived in Lexington, Kentucky for about a year or so after college, moved to Pineville, Kentucky, lived there for about a year, left there to follow a career, moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, and lived there for about 4 years. Then returned to Kentucky to go to London, Kentucky, and I live there currently and have been there for the last 15 years.
What jobs have you had in the past?
When I first got out of college I tried to play professional basketball, and I had a couple small offers from foreign countries offering about $50,000 a year, but with my degree I could make $60,000 so I decided to stay in America and find my career here. The first job I took was with Toyota in Georgetown, Kentucky, doing logistics. I was in charge of ordering parts for Toyota Camry's and Avalon's. I then left there and got into sales with a small family car dealership in Pineville, Kentucky. I worked as a salesman and eventually worked my way up to the service department manager, and then an assistant manager working at the family owned business along with sales. I left there to join a small company called CLT out of Dayton, Ohio.
After that, I moved to Indianapolis, Indiana. This was when CLT was bought out by Tyler Technologies, a company based out of Dallas, Texas. I worked with them for about 6 or 7 years. I started off as a property appraiser and a project manager. I worked my way into their computer programming department where we actually worked on algorithms for their computer software that we sold to state and local governments. That’s why we moved back to London, Kentucky, because I was in charge of the southeastern territory of the United State. When I completed my work there, after about 6 years, I then joined in EI Lilly, a company out of Indianapolis, Indiana selling pharmaceuticals. I sold Humalog, which is an insulin for diabetes patients, along with Cialis. I sold those two drugs for EI Lilly for about 6 years.
After about 6 years, I decided to make a change in my life and went to become a high school teacher and a coach. I’ve coached everything for girl’s basketball to boy’s basketball, and currently I’m now the golf coach. I started off teaching mathematics, and got into business as well. Currently I only teach business classes, and we focus predominantly on marketing, co-op entrepreneur, sports management and sports marketing. And that’s what I currently do as a teacher and coach.
Nice. So I know you played basketball in college, but while you were growing up, how important was basketball to you?
Well, going back to where I grew up, we lived in a little community called Sadieville, Kentucky, and it only had about 40 people in it, but we lived outside of the city, if you’d want to call it a city, in the country about 15 miles away from any normal sized city. So growing up you didn’t have much to do, other than working on the farm, raising tobacco, working the gardens, those types of things. So, to find a little fun, my father put a basketball goal on the side of the barn. I started shooting there, but decided I needed to move it closer to the house. So, dad and I taught me at a young age how to make my own backboard, but it on a pole, and put it in the front yard.
With nobody around us out in the country, there weren’t many people to go throw the baseball or throw the football with. But, basketball was something you could do on your own, so I started playing basketball in the front yard and that was my kind of fun time. We didn’t have all that TV and video games you all do now. So I started there. My dad was a pretty good basketball and baseball player. Unfortunately, he also grew up on that countryside away from people, and in his time it was hard to find rides. So he didn’t get to play much in high school, so he made sure I had the opportunity to play. So that’s how I started to play basketball and grew into my passion.
Also, as a kid, did you have any sports heroes, basketball or not, that you looked up to?
Yeah. You know, I never played football, but I always liked watching the Broncos and John Elway only because my aunt lived out in Colorado and she swarmed us with Broncos stuff. As for baseball, growing up in Northern Kentucky, and only living about an hour away from Cincinnati, the Reds were always one of the teams we watched. Some of my favorite players, Pete Rose and Johnny Bench, I watched those guys too. Of course, I played baseball and grew into that. As for basketball, growing up in Kentucky, you grow up being a huge Kentucky basketball fan and I could name you players all the way from ’78 to the 90's until high school began. I could still name you some players, but once you’re in high school, you don’t see those guys as being… your idols anymore. Any UK basketball player from the 80's you pretty much watched and knew everything they did.
Were there any specific UK players that you based your game around?
I wouldn’t say there was a UK player I based my game around when I was younger. I would say that when I was about… middle school age…. In Kentucky, high school basketball is pretty much right there as the same thing as God. So the state tournament, the Sweet Sixteen, is a really, really big deal. And to be able to play in that is amazing. And during March, usually no matter what name you were, you were always paying attention to the Sweet Sixteen, or the state tournament. And around that time when I was in middle school, the big rival for the state championship for a couple years in a row was with Louisville Ballard and Clay County. Clay County had Richie Farmer, which is a big deal in the mountains…
But Ballard had a player, his number was number 20, which was my number, and was the reason I took number 20, Allan Houston. He played for them and then went on to play for the University of Tennessee for his dad when his dad was there, and then he went on to play for the Knicks for several years. He was kinda an inside outside guy, played the 2–3, could shoot from anywhere, could take you inside, was a bigger kid for that time playing a guard. And I kinda… kinda wanted to be Allan Houston, I wanted to go to the state tournament, I wanted to shoot the 3, I wanted to go to the state tournament, I wanted to post people up… I don’t know, it was just something about Allan Houston, I liked the way he played, so… I kinda guess that’s why I was number 20 in high school.
Sort of adding onto that, did you ever imagine yourself playing at the collegiate level?
Well, when you’re young you don’t necessarily think about college, you’re just thinking about “I wish I could be taller…” and “I wish I could play pro sports and get paid.” As I got into middle school, I really didn’t think about that much, I just wanted to play and score a lot and try to be the best ball player I could be. But as I got into high school, I actually started thinking about I want to do this, and then you start to wisen up and realize that pro sports is not for everyone, so you gotta start somewhere, and that’s with the collegiate level. And so as a freshman and sophomore started working on doing what I needed to do to become a college basketball player, and that meant some travelling, and some 5 star camps, and some prep star camps, and some invitational camps that you had to get invited to, and just working on your game, and a lot changes after your sophomore or junior year to where you really want to plan on being a collegiate athlete, and at that time, my goal was to play Division 1 basketball.
You mentioned work, especially on the basketball court, but I do know our family has a farm that, especially your dad, works on. So, as a child what was working on the farm like?
Well, when I was in school and young, my mom was a teacher, so when school was over, we’d come home and use that to come home, play out in the yard and play basketball, waiting for dad to come by with the tractor or the wagon when they were getting tobacco together, and I’d hop on, and when I was young, a lot of the time my job was to go out there and drive the tractor — yes, I was probably 8 or 9 years old driving the tractor — and I would drive the tractor while they were setting up tobacco or picking up tobacco after cutting it.
As I got a little stronger, I could handle the tobacco and helped them hanging it the barn by handing it up. But at a young age, at around 10 or 11 years old, I went from just being to that tractor driver to being that tobacco hanger, and you’re out there setting tobacco, cutting tobacco, hanging tobacco… that was our cash crop. And of course during the summer I was driving the tractor, raking, bailing hay, and mowing hay, along with just your normal job of just… planting your garden and picking beans. I’ve picked beans so to where I don’t want to pick another bean again. But as for tobacco, I wouldn’t care to do that again for some odd reason… It’s become part of your life and you wouldn’t mind for maybe one day just in the barn hanging up tobacco, but not too many days.
You were telling me this before the interview started, but how long has the farm been in our family?
Well, as far back as we can see, you know, there’s a lot of history in this part… I tried to do some family history, looking up… And come to figure out, our farm land has actually been in our family name prior to the United States becoming the United States, so prior to 1776. I have found out that our… it would be my great great grandfather, so Luke, for you it would be your great great great great grandfather — four greats — actually grew up in a home on the same homestead that my grandfather grew up on that recently we just tore down… he grew up there. And we’re talking about 1780.
The farmland was actually in our name prior to that, but trying to find that information has been quite difficult, but… according to everything we’ve looked up, that farmland has been in our name prior to the United States, and its originally — where our original farm land was — it’s still in our family name. It’s approximately 700 something acres, I think I gave you some paperwork saying exactly, but like 780 acres of farmland and then there’s 50 acres of farmland out in Georgetown that are not part of the original plat, but the original plat in Sadieville has been in our family name prior to the United States… some information I got from a professor out in Goshen, Indiana, was most likely… my 4th great grandfather, and your 5th great-grandfather, was a… was from Germany and was most likely enlisted with the British army to come over and protect the American armies… And at that time, according to that professor, a lot of these enlisted soldiers after about 5 years were allowed to go out and plot land…
So that’s the theory, so there’s nothing behind that, but supposedly that’s when he went out there and plotted the land that we have in Kentucky now. I do have some plots and some records that go through Scott County that go all the way back to 1780 showing that that land was in our family name, and showing that where they grew up is actually just a mile away from where I grew up… that’s where my dad grew up, and of course you’ve ran all over that farm yourself.
Do you have any particular stories of you working out on the farm as a kid?
Well Luke, I got stories on everything, you know I’m a big story teller and I’ve probably wrote a bunch of them down. And to try to tell you one would not be telling you justice but not telling the rest… Some fun stories are just I remember being out there on the farm and riding out there on the tractor several times… you know you’re either going too fast or too slow…
But some of the best memories was learning out there how to drive a truck at 8 years old, and not some ordinary truck, but a 2 ton Ford flatbed truck… with a steering wheel that looks 3 foot round and has a shift that’s about 4 foot out of the floor of the truck… And I’ll tell this story, I was driving it, the first time my dad, your papaw, told me to pull it — we were picking up hay — and he told me to “just push the brake, you gotta push this other pedal next to it.” Well, I thought it was just two brakes, but in reality, one of them was a clutch and the other was a brake. So when I pushed the lever on the left hand side thinking the truck would stop, it wouldn’t, because that was the clutch, and those were neutral.
And you know, I happened to be on a little downslope so when I pushed that, I kept getting just a little bit faster. I was getting ready to run into a pond, and I couldn’t turn the wheel too much because it was too big for me to turn… but Papaw came running that way running telling me the other one was the brake, not that one. So that’s one little story, but I got tons of other stories I could tell you, just being out there, raising cattle and every now and then, a cow would pass away or not take its calf and we’d have to feed ’em — bottle feed ’em — and keep them up, and so forth… and I got tons of stories but that’s probably one of the best ones to learn how to drive a standard… I didn’t realize one was a clutch, I thought there were two brakes. Now when I tell you that, I was used to driving on a bulldozer… and you’re driving a bulldozer by pulling the brakes on one side, and it makes it turn the other way. So that’s why I thought there were two brakes, one was the left side and the other was on the right side. But… not the case.
So, your dad really treats the farm, and all the livestock, and all the plants really gingerly from what I’ve seen, so like, how has that work on and off the farm affected you personally?
Well, it makes you take… a deeper look at life. Especially know, I’m a little older so I’m giving you an older talk, but there are a lot of people out there now that think a cucumber comes from a grocery store. They think the tomato comes from the grocery store. And they don’t realize all the hard work that actually goes into that, and where it comes from. And there is something to be said about growing your own plant and growing your own tomatoes, and those type of things…
And I know it’s hard work, but you learn… you learn the benefits of the benefits from your hard work. Like when you’re on the farm and you have to raise your own tobacco or your own garden, and you really have to put a lot of hard work and effort into it, you get to see the reward of it, after all the time and effort. And how does that play into my personality? It helps me cherish the things I work hard for when I get rewarded for ’em. It’s one of the biggest things I try to instill in you too, and that’s to always work hard no matter what, because if you just work hard on something, eventually you’ll be rewarded. If you don’t work hard at something and expect something in return you will not get something in return. But if you work hard you will eventually be rewarded.
What are some other lessons you’ve learned from your dad, whether they’re farm or basketball related or not?
Well Luke, you asked about idols and people you looked up to, but truthfully I looked up to my father because I didn’t have a lot of other friends out there, and he was always guiding me, in some shape or form, and that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s always happy… I know I would go outside and think I could just shoot anytime, and your papaw, my dad would say, “You need to make 50 left-handed layups and 50 right handed layups before you come inside and eat supper.” And you know, at a young age you thought that was awful, but at the time… you did it. And now you realize it… I can make a left-handed layup and a right handed layup without even looking. And it was for a reason… But a lot of the things he instilled was just hard work, and taking a look at the other side, like there might be two sides to the story. But one of the biggest things my dad instilled in me was hard work and keeping your nose to the grind, and don’t worry about other people and what they’re doing, and don’t compare yourself. Just do what’s best for you, and take care of that situation.
So, we’re going to take it back to basketball, and a little more on the family side of things, but how involved was the rest of your favorite with basketball?
Well, basketball pretty much became the sport of the entire family. You know, truth be told my dad actually played a lot of softball, and that’s because in high school he couldn’t afford for anyone to take him back and forth from practice so… as he got out of high school, playing softball was a whole lot easier. That was a recreational sport that him and a bunch of his friends and brothers could play… and that also a sport that my other grandfather played a lot of… on the other side of the family — Papaw Nickels. He actually played professional fast pitch softball for a team out of Cincinnati.
So they did a lot of that type of athletics and played a lot out there, but basketball was one of those sports that we did together outside in the front yard… and you know, from a young that was pretty much all I did. I mean I played other sports, but basketball was that one sport I always came back to, and as for how it affected our family, it actually lead to my sister wanting to play basketball too. My sister got sick in high school, so that kind of hindered her chances of getting to play sports in college… but she played basketball as well, and it was pretty much a family thing, and at every ballgame, my mom and dad were there, and my papaw was there.
My sister was also drug to every ballgame I had too, she wasn’t playing… and then when I went to Morehead, at every single game, my mom and dad were day, and my papaw was there too… my sister Kim was there. That was actually the reason Kim went to Morehead State herself, because being there and being drug there she didn’t want to hang out with her mom and dad, so she found another place to sit in the stands and happened to find some seniority girls that she sat with… and her plans to go over to Florida for college changed real quick because she fell in love with those friends over there at Morehead, so she decided, “Well, I might as well go to Morehead too.” So, yeah, basketball kind of played a role of where she went to school too.
As for my grandmother, she never came to any ball games, because she was too nervous, but she listened to everyone on the radio… she had a legal pad and would keep stats of every player we had in the game by listening to it on the radio. So she never missed hearing a game, she just could not come there together. But basketball became a full family thing, or event. Even some of our summer vacations were taking me to a camp, and then my mom, dad, and Kim visiting the beach. One of the camps I went to was in Charlotte, North Carolina, and I spent a week there, and they spent a week in Charlotte as well, but they toured the city while I was at camp. So, basketball pretty much was our life. You played it year round, during the summer we had some breaks, and of course we worked around the farm part, but basketball was a family event.
How do you think basketball culture in Kentucky, in general, differs from other states?
Well… That just goes back to the University of Kentucky being so good and so dominant in the game of basketball themselves, that it’s pretty much, unless you live in Kentucky you don’t really know the difference. But, in Kentucky, basketball is the end all, be all. Every kid grows up wanting to be a UK basketball player. Every kid grows up wanting to play basketball. And even though we have other sports there, and kids play other sports there, the one thing that draws the attention is basketball. Even now, during the football season, most of our reporters are already talking about basketball.
Even our high school sports are talking about basketball, like who’s gonna win the region, who’s gonna win the districts, and who’s gonna win and go to the Sweet Sixteen, you know? And the Sweet Sixteen is where the 16 regions come together to play in the state tournament at the end of every year. If you win your region, you become one of those 16 teams that goes and plays in the tournament at Rupp Arena where UK plays. But it’s really a big deal… schools cancel classes when there teams go to play there, everybody goes to Lexington and spends the night, and you’ll have 15 to 20 thousand people there just watching high school basketball… and yes, I said 15 to 20 thousand people just watching high school basketball. And it turns into an entire week of events there, and like I said, schools cancel if your team’s there and goes.
It’s kinda…immortal, you know, and I don’t see that happening in a lot of other states. I don’t think they have all that history behind it. I know some states like Indiana have class ball, even here in North Carolina you have class ball. Kentucky does not have class basketball. You have one state champion. It could be a small school, it could be a big school, but we have one state champion. There’s no independent state champion, there’s no single A championship, there’s one state championship in the entire state, out of the 300 some odd high school we have there. So it’s pretty big.
I know your high school, Harrison County, was in Cynthiana, which is a really rural part of Kentucky, I’d like to say, and I know you lived a bit farther from it, like you lived a bit more of the countryside part of Kentucky, but was it difficult for you to try to get inside of a basketball gym or was it just meeting with your friends when you were living in the countryside?
Yeah, actually, I played on my own in the front yard for about 7 years, but I did, about a mile away, had another kid, it was a boy about 2 years older than me… and every now and then, you know, it was a trek, but you’d hop on your bike and you’d bike a mile or two down the road and then we could play basketball together for a little bit. But, one on one doesn’t go very far. But, growing up was mainly my basketball. And you know, I really liked school… and one of the main reasons for that was because I got to see all my friends. Cause, it’s not like now where you can call and text and, you know, Snapchat and all that stuff…
So you would play basketball at the house a lot and every time you had the chance to go to the park, like maybe your sister had a ball game or something like that I would play basketball there. But getting into the gym, my mom was a teacher, so she taught summer school… so during the summer, we would go up there for summer school, and we would go up there and my mom would let me stay in the gym, and I would stay there and shoot all day during the summer school. My sister would go to the pool. The pool was right there next to the high school, so she would go to the city pool and I would go to the high school gym and play basketball all summer while my mom was there during summer school.
If you go back even younger, when you go back to when I was 8 or 9, or even younger, before I even got to the high school level and when my mom was teaching summer school. We lived out in the middle of nowhere, so we had this thing we like to call a cistern, and it’s what we kept our water in. We didn’t have a system, we didn’t have a well. We’d have to go to Sadieville, like I said, it was a pretty small community, to get water. We’d fill it up in a big tank and put it on the back of the truck. And over the hill there was an old elementary school building there — actually, your papaw was the last 6th grade class there, were talking about 19… oh, 1950 something — well that school closed down, well that school was still there…
What we ended up doing was, while dad was getting water for those 30 minutes or so, I would walk up the hill and sneak in the back window, and of course, you know, it’s an old abandoned high school, but at least it had a goal there, and I would go a shoot there for about 30 minutes while my dad was getting water for us to have water at the house. So, that’s pretty much where and how I played. So, getting into the gym wasn’t like today where you call a coach and get into the gym… when I get into high school and I could drive a little bit, our high school coach was allowed to open up the gym for us, so he would lock the chain around the door of the gym a little looser so we could pull it open and sneak through the crack of the gate and crack open the door to get in the gym to play. Of course, after about 6 o’ clock, you had to stop playing, the sun was going down and you needed light to play.
So, yeah, you talked about how hard it was, but once you start actually playing at Harrison County High School, would you say most of the town centered around the high school sports when you were there? Because I know that’s sorta the case with where you work now in Laurel County with North and South Laurel.
Yeah. Harrison County being a small school, Cynthiana was bigger than Sadieville by far, but at my high school I had about 100 kids in my class, about 500 all together… but our school was a basketball and baseball school. So those two sports were followed by our community greatly. It was the only thing in Harrison County to do but to go to a Harrison County basketball game or see the baseball team, or baseball game. So during basketball season, the stands were full, the student section was crazy… not like you see now, it was more, because there was nothing else to do.
But every Friday night, the only thing to do was to go to a high school game and watch us play. We were pretty good, so we’d have big crowds. We’d have about 3,000 people and every one of our ballgames. Baseball was sort of the same way. When baseball season comes around, what you did was you came to the baseball game, you parked your car all the way up the other side of the hill, you’d watch from your vehicle or from the bed of your truck, you laid out a blanket and sat on the hill and watched, and if you’d hit a home run they would honk their horns and flashed their lights… and as for basketball, it was the same way. It would be a packed house, and when you hit a 3 they would hold up 3 signs, and when someone dunked the refs would have to call a timeout because the fans were coming out onto the court to give high fives. So… it was something you did, and it was a big deal.
When you were in high school, how would you say recruiting for college was different then from how it is now?
Well we didn’t have all this AAU. We did have AAU but you played in a tournament every year with an AAU team or your high school team, and it was only during the summer, and it was only in your state. And if you won the state tournament, you went on to the national AAU tournament. There wasn’t a tournament every weekend. There wasn’t 4 or 5 national tournaments a year. There was only 1 national tournament, 1 state tournament.
Recruiting was different. How my recruiting came was that coaches came to your games. They watched you play during the season, and it wasn’t YouTube videos, it wasn’t none of that stuff. Matter of fact, when I was a sophomore there was a recruiting agent… and what you could do is you could get with those people, and they would take your video clips and they would put them on a VHS, they would take your profile, which was your picture and your stats, and they would mass mail them out to colleges. They would send them wherever you wanted them to, but they also knew what type of playing you are, so they would send them out to those colleges. And from there, those colleges would reach out to you, see you at those summer camps, or see you at those ballgames. So recruiting was a little different.
You were allowed one phone call a week, and every now and then you’d go home and have a message on the messaging machine, and you’d call that coach back and you’d talk with them. My recruiting was pretty local, all up until I played AAU and we won the state tournament my sophomore or junior year, and we went on to play in the national tournament. And from there, that’s when St. Joseph’s out of Indiana started recruiting me, Ole Miss, Oxford, Mississippi, started recruiting me, Morehead started recruiting me… I had a few smaller schools recruiting me but a couple of those were NAIA or local schools… But mainly it was a coach talking or calling you, we didn’t have any emails, so that’s how recruiting went.
Yeah, so you mentioned Morehead State, that obviously where you played college basketball. But, was it weird knowing you were now going to play against the major teams you grew up hearing about and watching?
Yeah actually… When I first went to Morehead…actually before when I was doing the recruitment process… all those same UK guys that I watched were pretty much the same as me being recruited, they were just better players. So when I got to Morehead and started playing… though you still loved UK, they were the same as me, they still put their shoes on the same way, and put their shorts on the same way I did, maybe they were just a little taller and faster than I was… So you were kind of apart of a little group where that’s what you do.
While you were playing there, did you have any particular stories, in a game or during practice that’s stuck with you over time?
Well I have a lot of stories that are probably for a better time whenever you get older… I have tons of stories because the guys and friends you play with when you’re in college will be the friends you have for the rest of your life, and you’ll have those stories to tell for the rest of your life. This interview could be forever if I started telling you those great stories, and some of them were basketball related and some of them were just buddies of mine.
But… when it comes to playing, some of the things I remember are at Morehead, you know it’s a Division 1 school but we’re not a big school, we’re just a mid major school. But we got to play UK, and that was a big deal because everyone dreamed of playing at UK and now I get to play UK. We played UK twice in the years 1996 and 1998. That was when UK won the national titles, so we gotta play the best team in the nation.
But every year we gotta play a Louisville, an NC State, Tennessee, Indiana — we played Indiana when Bobby Knight was coaching there — had some really great stories, but one of the best ones is we got to play George Mason, and the coach for George Mason at the time was Paul Westhead… he coached the LA Lakers… a really well known coach. After that game I had 17 points and 17 rebounds, and afterwards he came into our locker room and he said, “I just wanted to tell Coach Fick, and tell all you all, that in all the years of coaching NBA and college basketball,” that he thought I had one of the biggest hearts of anyone he had ever seen anyone play. He said that if he had to pick 5 guys to play basketball with right now, I would be one of those 5. That’s pretty big when you get it from an NBA coach…so…
That’s awesome… Sort of to wrap things up, do you think without your dad’s guidance, or our farm, or playing at Morehead or basketball in general you would’ve had the same character you’d have today?
I’d like to say no. You know, I’d like to say I’d still have the same type of character and be the same person, but the truth is the way you’re raised, the things you go through, the challenges and experiences that you have younger in life… mold you.
And I’d have to say that the farm, and basketball, and the way that I was raised are the same things in me, the hard work ethic… to play the cards that I’m dealt… to not complain about the problem but instead finding a solution to the problem and move forward, to be able to fight through adversity… and those are some of the things, growing up on the farm, you had to do.
Because, there’s times when the crops are not good, and you don’t have money, and you have to find a way to survive and move on, and those were some of the things I put towards basketball and actually have lead me to now, and those are some of the things that I try to instill in you… you know, when we were younger trying to teach you about basketball, but the one thing I’ve always kept the same is hard work, hard work, hard work. So, I’d have to say that is a big deal.
My Project Reflections
How did your perception of community history change, from before the interview to now?
When I was younger, I never thought about my family’s past all that much. Especially for my dad’s side, I always thought their lives were really mundane, and if I’m being honest, I still think this a little bit. But after exploring this lifestyle, and my dad’s past through basketball and the farm, I never realized how it wasn’t that my dad’s side of the family had boring lives, but it was instead their pursuit for a calmer, simplistic lifestyle. This gave me much more appreciation for how my dad and his family lead themselves day by day.
How did this project inspire you to learn more about your family and community?
When I began researching my family’s backstory for the project, I realized how little I actually knew about my family’s past. Granted, I didn’t necessarily go too far into my family’s past, only about 20–25 years, and that was only with my dad. I’d like to figure out more about where our family came from to get to the US, our deep roots way into the past, and a bit more about the origins of our farm.
What were some of the challenges you faced during this project?
One of the main challenges I found with this project was the lack of pictures to go along with my topics. While my dad had a lot of pictures of his earlier days on the farm and in college, there are not many pictures online of his Morehead team, his hometown, and Kentucky farms (that don’t involve horses). In the future, I’ll try to get images ahead of time instead of doing it last second. That way I’ll be able to find good and high quality pictures.
What could you do differently in your next oral history interview?
If I was going to do another oral history interview, I would focus on the history of my family, like the origins of our family or farm, rather than how my dad was affected by his past.
If the roles were reversed and you became the tradition-bearer, what stories would you like to tell?
If I was being interviewed for an oral history project at this very moment, I would most definitely talk a lot about Christ School. This school has been my life for the last 2 and a half years, and I have made many memories, both good, bad, and informative. As cheesy as it is, Christ School has been my “coming of age story,” so I know I would focus on that a lot.
“The truth is the way you’re raised, the things you go through, the challenges and experiences that you have younger in life… mold you.”
Work Cited
James Duane Bolin, Adolph Rupp and the Rise of Kentucky Basketball, The University Press of Kentucky
Rick Maese, “In Kentucky, basketball is part of the definition of who you are”, The Washington Post
Chris Stone College Basketball Statistics, Sports Reference College Basketball.
Morehead State College Basketball Statistics, Sports Reference College Basketball.
William A. Penn, Kentucky Rebel Town: The Civil War Battles of Cynthiana & Harrison County, University Press of Kentucky
And just for fun, here’s a picture of me when I was younger playing basketball.
