They are bound together by shooting drills and suicides. By tryouts and times when the coach gets on you (“dial him back!”). By 3 pointers and by remembering that time he scored 54 points in a game and we didn’t even have the 3-point shot.
This is Clinton High School boys’ basketball, and one thing its legendary coach insisted on as a legacy foundation is named in his honor is that ALL coaches receive recognition for the work they have done on and off the hardwoods. This happened at Saturday evening’s 12th Annual Coach Bobby Brock Legacy Grouo reunion banquet and fund-raiser. The weekend started with a double Red Devil varsity win over Chester, and a program in the CHS auditorium. For some ex-hardwoods players, it was the first time they had ever been in the “new” high school.
In recognizing these Coaches: Bobby Brock, Harold Williams, Sam Moore, Todd Frazier, Tosh Corley, Eddie Romines, and Dontavius Glenn, they were “remembering the past, assisting the future of CHS Boys Basketball.”
“This foundation was to help kids coming up in our town to become better basketball players, and it has done that,” Red Devil player, coach and legend Chuck Waldron said. “The high school has done very well over the recent years, and this foundation was a model for our tennis foundation, The Rufus Sadler Tennis Foundation. We are basically doing the same thing as this group is doing.”
The foundation’s namesake, Bobby Brock, fondly remembered his former player, the late Columbus Copeland, who had the idea to do something to send Red Devil boys basketball players, and later teams as a whole, to skills camps to enhance their play. “The thing about Columbus,” Brock said, “is he would dream big and sometimes he would drag you along with those dreams. He begged me to let him do something to thank me (as his boys’ basketball coach at Clinton High) and I told him, ‘Columbus, that’s not what would be on my mind - we have so many people who played basketball for me and did things. I think we ought to do more than that.’”
Copeland and Brock came to an understanding - as players and their coaches sometimes do — and they recruited Buddy Bridges to be boots on the ground for the foundation. Brock said he approached Bridges about 15 years ago at Whiteford’s in Clinton, as Bridges prepared the Saturday Morning Rewind show for WPCC highlighting Clinton High Football.
“I talked to Buddy. They (he and Columbus) got together and that’s the beginning of the story,” Brock said. Since then, money has been raised, boys have gone to camps, the entire team has been to camps some summers, and Red Devil basketball players from the 1970s and 1980s have been inducted into a Legends group.
“People asked me, ‘why are you doing this event on this weekend in particular?’” Bridges said to the program attendees in the CHS auditorium, after they gathered for a District 56 Child Nutrition-catered meal in the school cafeteria. “I never got to meet the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but I know he had love in his heart, and so did Columbus Copeland. He had heroes and we’re going to talk about some of those heroes tonight.”
Bridges said Copeland, who overcame a speech impediment to earn a college basketball scholarship after a stellar CHS career, and later became a successful public speaker and author, “wanted to assist the future Varsity and JV basketball teams. We want you (players) to stand and be recognized - we put you in the middle of everything,” he said of the Red Devil hoops players who sat together in the front rows middle of the auditorium.
The Varsity was coming off a night-before’s home win over Chester. The Lady Red Devils won also, to improve their region record to 3-0 and continue their run as the #1 girls’ basketball team in Class 2A.
“This was never meant to be about girls’ basketball …,” Bridges said, “but, that’s how the Holy Spirit works. Last year our program was to celebrate the entire history of Clinton High School girls’ basketball.”
In Saturday evening’s program, several members of the 2003 and 2004 back-to-back region champion teams of retired coach and math teacher Sam Moore were able to catch up with him and each other.
The gentle giant of a man, Harold Williams, who was Brock’s assistant and then took leadership of the team, and the legacy of The Big Chief, Todd Frazier, who starred for the Red Devils, became an All-American at Newberry College which has retired his jersey, and then came back to walk the CHS sidelines, were honored. Tosh Corley talked about stepping in as “an emergency” and Eddie Romines gave special acknowledgement to his assistants, Josh Bridges and Dontavius Glenn.
Contributions of the Clinton Family YMCA to the town’s basketball success were acknowledged.
The Legacy of the Bell Street and Martha Dendy junior high school programs was celebrated - those gyms were absolutely packed, the players and coaches remembered. That transitioned, when the schools were combined into Clinton Middle School, in a fiercely competitive Red vs White game between the 7th grade players and the 8th grade players.
And, in 1971, Clinton High School had its first integrated basketball team.
Basketball at Clinton High School does not have a state championship, but trips to the Upper State finals and the memories - and, yes, a few grudges - were shared among the coaches, players, and attendees at Saturday’s event. Nowadays, they don’t have Lower State and Upper State; instead, they have a State Final Four - the Clinton girls played last season in this tournament in Florence and have a great shot at making it again this season.
Today’s varsity boy’s head coach Dontavius Glenn - who in his CHS playing days would “let it fly anytime,” the audience was told - challenged the former players and Red Devil alumni to mentor his players. Glenn also coaches football, so he said, “I see my players all year long,” and he explained that until football is done, basketball concentrates mainly on conditioning. “Our early numbers weren’t very impressive,” he said, “but we’re getting better.”
All former varsity boys basketball coaches, or their representatives, were gifted commemorative basketballs for the occasion. And, Brock received a special ball - he coached with football head coach Keith Richardson on a state championship team and received a football for his collection of memorabilia for that accomplishment.
If you would like to be part of honoring the legacy of CHS Basketball, and improving the teams of the future, donations can be sent to: The Bobby Brock Legacy Foundation, 103 Henry Street, Clinton, SC 29325. The Coach Bobby Brock Legacy Group was established 2011.
