Marv’s Boys - A tribute to Coach Marv Sanders

50 years of excellence in sports

Marv’s Boys

A tribute to Coach Marv Sanders

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

 

            My last walk to center court took place in near darkness.

            The game was over, we had showered, and, rather than turning and walking out into the night to join friends and teammates, I walked alone through the door and entered the gym. The crowd was gone and the lights had been turned off. The only light came from the scoreboard. The score, no longer in my memory, punctuated the moment. The humid smell of crowd and basketball hung heavily in the air.

            The last game had been played … my last game of high school basketball was over. My life would forever be altered. Never again would the sound of bouncing balls, the voice of Coach, or his whistle mean quite the same thing as it had for the years I had been with him.

            I knelt at center court, bowed my head … and cried like a baby.

            Marv Sanders

            Among all of Marv’s boys, I lay claim to have known him first.

I wasn’t a member of his first teams. I came some years later, but my dad had been in school at what became Western New Mexico University when the newest Indiana connection recruit by the name of Marv Sanders arrived in Silver City. Marv was a gangly blond headed baby faced kid who played along with names that still ring in my first college sports memories … Dragmeister, Pace, Brancheau, Saucedo, Ruiz, and Young, were among the athletes who, as a little kid, I watched with utter fascination.

They were so much different from the rodeo and high school athletes that were the extent of sports memory for me at that time. These guys were good enough to be asked to come to that outpost of higher learning in southwestern New Mexico with scholarship support. Marv had even talked to me one afternoon in the shallow end of the college swimming pool. He told me and some other kids to hide him from somebody in the deep end. I was no more than six at the time.

“Okay!” 

Coach Sanders graduated from Western in 1960 and returned to coach in Indiana for a couple of years. He was purported to have emerged from a three week assault of freezing Midwestern winter not having seen the sun, and his memories of sun drenched New Mexico beckoned. He realized he was no longer simply an Indiana boy. Something had changed him in the Desert Southwest. He started inquiring of coaching opportunities in his adopted state, and, in 1962, he returned “home” for good.

His first job was at Hatch, the home of the greatest and the best known chile in the world. The distance between Hatch and Indiana cannot even be computed in miles, but the 100º days that make Hatch chile so special had infinite appeal over the dreary winters of the Midwest. He’d take the New Mexico sunshine!

And, he won basketball games.

His first state championship came 50 years ago. He took a moderately talented team of kids from Hatch to the state tournament and won the small school state championship in 1964. They finished that season with only an 18-11 record, but they became the model that Coach Sanders would strive to achieve every year thereafter. They were a TEAM. Looking younger than many of his players, Marv was 25 years old.

Coach Marv Sanders FR far right, 1964 State Champions Hatch Bears

Coach Sanders’ next stop came at Silver High School in Silver City. It was a real homecoming for him in that it was where he had played college basketball. Coach might agree that he had some very talented players through the years at Silver High, but he struggled with a Silver City phenomenon of a scarcity of TEAM. He finally overcame that hurdle with his midsized high school state championship in 1975. That ’75 team may have been the team that simply overpowered a snakebit mindset of previous Silver teams by shear talent. They were hugely talented, they had size, and they had superb floor leadership.

Coach Sanders was then lured away from Silver City by oil influence of southeastern New Mexico at Lovington. That was down the road from the standard of big school basketball success in New Mexico history, Hobbs. It was at Hobbs where the famous Ralph Tasker set the standard for all New Mexico basketball coaches to emulate with his 1122 victories and 11 state championships over 49 seasons. Perhaps Marv even viewed the decision to move to eastern New Mexico with more in mind than simply making an intermediate stop at Lovington where Tasker actually recorded his first state championship in 1949.

The Hobbs job never happened, though … Tasker would remain at the helm of the extraordinary Hobbs Eagles program until late in century.

By that time, Marv had won two more state championships in his next and final stop in the northwestern corner of the state and the state’s other oil patch, Farmington. He concluded his run of state championships at the big school level accomplishing something that Tasker and New Mexico’s second winningest coach, Cliff’s Pete Shock didn’t … winning in all three levels of competition.

Coach Sanders retired in 2003 completing a 41 year career with just under 19 wins a season over the span. His win record ranks third behind Tasker and Shock in New Mexico sports history.

The celebration

Marv’s first state championship team, the Hatch Bear team, celebrated the 50^th Anniversary of their state championship last Friday night, February 21. It was a wonderful event. I was honored to be present for more reasons than one, but perhaps the comments I was allowed to make best explain my presence. The words were:  

My name is Steve Wilmeth, and, no, I am not part of the Hatch team that won the state championship in 1964. I wish I had been. That was a special team.

No, I am here for another reason.

Prior to this process I thought I knew only one of your group personally and that was Connie Joe Hewitt. Connie came into our lives following your state championship when he was a student at Western New Mexico University. It was there he became part of subsequent Coach Sanders’ teams including my teams at Silver High School. Connie drove our activity bus. He was the unassigned assistant and he sat on the bench with us. He’d coach alongside Coach Sanders, but he was the bad cop of the good cop, bad cop duo. Coach Sanders would maintain that smooth demeanor we all knew so well and Connie, well, Connie would get down in the ditch with us. He’d use words on us that none of us would dare utter in Coach’s presence.

He also married my cousin, Karen Brown Hewitt, who is here in attendance tonight.

            Karen is joined by another member of the Marv Sanders sports family and that is my wife, Kathy Gregory Wilmeth. Karen and Kathy were Silver High School cheerleaders, and, although we didn’t achieve your success, we dang sure had good looking cheerleaders!!

            So, why am I here?

            I always wanted to meet some faceless fellow by the name of Danny Martinez. A similar team that followed yours in Marv’s journey, we were not a talented team. The difference between you and our team was that you were a TEAM and life has taught all of us what that means. Your team had cohesiveness that we did not. Your team had leadership that our teams did not display, and your team had this character by the name of Danny Martinez of whom we were constantly reminded … at least I was. 

After another loss, I’d be in Coach’s crosshairs and he’d remind me if I had half the determination of Danny our team would improve immensely. It became Danny this and Danny that … and then it was “you remind me of Danny Martinez in all ways but your heart … Hearing about Danny Martinez grew tedious!

            But Danny and I have met and I agree with Coach’s assessment. Danny’s a special guy and you know that by how he doggedly organized this celebration. Thank you, Danny.

            So, why am I here?

I am here because I represent the group that is not here. Those are the other boys that did and didn’t win state championships at every level stop on Coach’s journey. Among us are good players and not so good. We have all kinds of names. We are now scattered across the country, but, hopefully, we are generally the men that Coach prepared us to be.

Collectively, WE ARE BROTHERS CONNECTED THROUGH AND BY COACH SANDERS … WE ARE MARV’S BOYS …and what a wonderful honor it is to be part of this celebration and this special fraternity that spans 50 years of integrity and excellence in sports.

Thank you, Coach … thank you for allowing us to be part of your life … and thank you for what you have given each and every one of us.

    ON BEHALF OF ALL of MARV’S BOYS … COACH SANDERS … WE LOVE YOU.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. He has the honor of submitting a rancher’s perspective each Sunday to America’s premier western blog, The Westerner.