Disney basketball movie has county connection
By SUSAN MARSHALL
News Editor
The clippings are yellowed and fragile, carefully folded so they fit on aging oatmeal-colored pages of the scrapbooks. Page after page of stories. The headlines steadily become bolder, leading finally to an explosion of large type atop long columns of print.
Photographs — the old black and whites — go with the stories. Action shots of running young men, carrying the ball to the hoop. Wide grins of pleasure and excitement stopped in time, forever young, on faces gathered around a plaque or trophy.
This is the stuff of long ago memories, the glory days.
The scrapbooks were carefully compiled by the mother of one of the players. Eileen Myers of Peabody blushed with pleasure as she shared the pages, pointing out pictures, headlines, and even an old "Sports Illustrated" with cover and feature article about the proud young men.
"It was so exciting," she said. "And it's still going on. Those boys — well, men — have stayed close because they were close then."
Next week Eileen Myers' son Dick, his wife, three children, and two of his grandchildren will travel to El Paso, Texas. They will meet at the University of Texas-El Paso with Dick's 1965-66 basketball teammates and their families, and former UTEP basketball coach Don Haskins to enjoy a pre-preview of "Glory Road," a Disney movie about a game the team won 40 years ago.
That game just happened to be the 1966 NCAA Championship.
The movie is based on the autobiography of Coach Haskins who took his racially mixed team to the NCAA tournament. Although many college teams already were integrated, Haskins was the first coach to fill all five starting tournament positions with African-American players, and on a nationally televised game at that.
"I hadn't thought of it as putting an all-black team on the court," he said in a 1991 interview with the Dallas Morning News. "I was simply playing the best players I had. It's what I'd done all year."
Eileen Myers also is sure the college boys in the old news clippings didn't think of the game as historic, they just wanted to win.
But as often happens with events of importance, they are not recognized as such until they are viewed with the benefit of hindsight.
In her dining room Myers pointed to a large poster of the team as they looked in 1966. "They were close friends who kept up with each other over the years. None of them thought about race," she said.
"You wouldn't believe all the hate mail that came to the college after it was over. But the boys never felt any of that. They were a team.
"None of those kids had any money," she added. "Dick had enough talent to get himself through four years of college. It was the same with the others. They were just playing ball to get through school and get an education."
High school standout
At Peabody High School Dick Myers was high-point man in most basketball games in 1962-63, his senior year. The Warriors only lost two games by a total of five points. They battled through post-season play and took the state title.
Myers was the only unanimous pick for the all-tournament team and was named an all-state first team pick by the Wichita Eagle, Topeka Capitol-Journal, and the Kansas City Star.
After high school he played for two years at Hutchinson Community College. Following his seasons with the Blue Dragons Myers was recruited for Texas Western College (now University of Texas-El Paso) by TWC assistant basketball coach Moe Iba. He accepted an athletic scholarship from TWC which covered tuition, room and board, books, and fees for his remaining two years.
The wrecking crew
It often is stated, incorrectly, that the 1966 Miners were the first team to put black players on the court. But Haskins inherited black players when he came to TWC. The school had recruited its first black athlete in 1956 and had long had an integrated campus.
Haskin's predecessor had left him with three black players and he continued to recruit and play African-Americans.
By the time Myers arrived in the fall of 1965, he was one of only four white players on the team.
Myers' first year in El Paso the TWC Miners loped along virtually unnoticed by collegiate sports pundits, piling up wins in the Southwest Conference.
After nine straight wins including an 86-68 thumping of the fourth-ranked Iowa Hawkeyes, the sporting world sat up and took notice. Suddenly the TWC Cagers were ranked ninth in the nation.
The team kept mowing down opponents all season (one sports writer termed them "
Then came postseason tournament games and the Miners just kept winning. Teams like Kansas, Cincinnati, and Utah fell to the scrappy kids from Texas Western.
A Cinderella Team
Finally on March 19, 1966, in College Park, Md., they came face to face with the legendary Adolph Rupp and his Kentucky Wildcats who were looking for their fifth national title.
The two teams had identical win-loss records. However, Kentucky was a recognized powerhouse and the TWC Miners were viewed as the underdog, a "Cinderella Team."
But the Miners had plans to change all that.
By the time the dust settled the Miners had whomped the Wildcats, 72-65.
Myers was a rookie community college transfer who played sparingly that year, making an appearance in about half the games. He did not get into the championship game at all. Nor did any of the other white players or the lone Hispanic contender.
The next year as a senior he saw more playing time, but several members of the 1966 championship team were injured, had graduated, or left school to work. The Texas Western College Miners had a less than stellar season.
Myer's coach, Don Haskins remained at the university until he retired in 1999.
Haskins compiled an impressive 719-353 record, including the 1992 surprise upset of a much-favored Kansas University team coached by Roy Williams. That game knocked KU out of the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA tournament.
However, Haskins and the UTEP Miners never played another NCAA championship game.
All black starting five
Haskins chose to start five black players, the first team to have an all black starting lineup. In that game the players off the bench also were black, although all the players had seen court time during post-season play.
The Miners' 72-65 win over Kentucky became a benchmark event in American sports history. A subtitle for the movie reads "Winning changes everything."
That game did much to change the perception of black athletes and it broke the barrier of segregation on the college campus.
Years later David Palacio, the team's Hispanic player, said, "We were so insulated
One of the African-American players agreed. Willie Worsley said, "It was more about young guys trying to prove who was the better team, not to prove who was the better color."
Long after the 1966 team had moved on Haskins continued to battle the subtle and hateful business of prejudice. NCAA investigations, accusations of exploitation of black athletes, and rumors of recruiting violations haunted the coach for a dozen years.
At one point he was quoted as saying, "If I could change one thing about my coaching career, I'd wish we came in second in 1966."
An exciting time
By the time the team was reunited in El Paso for its 25th reunion, Haskins was a decade away from retirement, looking back on a long and successful career with his beloved Miners.
Before a reporter for the Dallas Morning News he told his players, "We won some games while all you guys were here. But the thing that makes me the happiest is that each and every one of you has turned out to be a fine citizen and a good person and all of you are doing well. That's the most important thing of all."
Dick Myers and his wife currently live in Morristown, N.J.
"It was an exciting time," said Myers. "The dream of every college basketball player. And its still exciting now — 40 years later.
"The university has had us back numerous times for reunions at anniversary years or for special events. It's always nice to get to see each other again. We have kept in touch and it (being part of the team) has held us together."
"Glory Road" is based on coach Don Haskins' autobiography of the same name. The movie, written by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Jim Gartner, stars Josh Lucas as Haskins and Jon Voigt as Adolph Rupp. Myers is played by newcomer Mitch Eakins.
The movie will be in theaters Jan 13, with the premiere in Los Angeles a week before. However, Myers and other team members will attend the special showing Monday in El Paso. Later that evening the team and Haskins will be featured at a UTEP $250-a-plate fund-raiser. The event also will include the unveiling of a Wheaties box depicting the 1966 team and a ceremony renaming Baltimore Ave., Glory Road.
Myers still wears his NCAA commemorative watch and ring.
"People notice and ask about it," he said. "It's amazing how many people remember the game."
Eileen Myers may have to invest in yet another scrapbook to keep up with the latest news about the 1966 NCAA basketball champs. Their game has become an historic event — more than a mere athletic contest. It deserves a closing chapter as well documented as the beginning of the story.
