Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 4, 1994 TAG: 9401040112
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
There was someone at the Bast Center on Monday night who truly understands how much basketball and television miss Valvano. He misses him more.
Bob Valvano is the brother of the late coach-turned-telecaster. They were separated by 11 years of age before they were separated by the cancer-stricken older brother's death last April.
Valvano, the head coach at St. Mary's (Md.), had a unique experience in the Domino's-Valvano Classic at Roanoke College. Not only did he have to coach against the host team. He was coaching in a tournament named for his brother.
Hearing Valvano answer the phone is an eerie experience. His voice is his brother's voice, but the younger Coach V is taller, more chunky. And he doesn't mind being called "Jim Valvano's brother."
"I've always enjoyed that," said Valvano, 36. "If we weren't close, it would have been unbearable. But we were so close that people who knew us called me that even before Jim was famous.
"I enjoy it even more now. I figure it kind of keeps him alive in me, in all of our lives."
Proceeds from the Maroons' tournament, which closes tonight, will go to the V Foundation - established by ESPN in the late coach's memory to fund cancer research - and to the American Cancer Society. In the nine months since it was founded, the V Foundation has received about $700,000 in contributions.
The foundation's motto, adopted from Coach V's own words, is "Don't Give Up; Don't Ever Give Up." His younger coaching brother said that message is what too many people missed about the person they miss.
Through the glory of his 1983 NCAA championship at North Carolina State and the shame of the program's crash, Valvano's image was shaped and reshaped. His younger brother saw through both images, however.
"The characteristics Jim displayed in his last months were who he really was," Bob Valvano said. "Not to sound arrogant, but the package you saw at North Carolina State, the Jimmy V, was not what he was about.
"The last year is what he was about. He came across as cocky, but actually I don't think he was ever that sure. At times, it sort of came out that he had this arrogance. I told him that sometimes he was his own worst enemy.
"Jim wore his heart on his sleeve a lot. He said what he thought. I told him that some coaches who had done half of what he had done went around acting like they had discovered penicillin, like they were better than him. He and they were all like me. They were basketball coaches."
A Virginia Wesleyan graduate, Valvano is proud of his own accomplishments, even though they are shadowed by those in the bright lights that belonged to his older brother.
At Kutztown, he was the youngest college head coach in the country, at 24. Two years later, he became the youngest head coach in Division I, at St. Francis (N.Y.).
He established school records for wins in a season at both, although at the Brooklyn school, he said, "they didn't have a fight song, they had a surrender song."
He's been the head coach of a pro team in Sweden and is in his fifth year in Division III and second at St. Mary's after three years at Catholic that ended in turmoil.
"Being in Division III doesn't mean going third-class," he said. That's why the Seahawks play a game this season at USAir Arena, the former Capital Centre.
Valvano has his own TV show on Home Team Sports and a radio show back home on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Does he want to coach in Division I again? His answer is different than it would have been two years ago.
"When I first got into coaching, everything was a means to an end," Valvano said. "At Kutztown it was get to St. Francis, and at St. Francis it was get to somewhere else.
"In the last year, I've found out life doesn't work that way. Jim taught me life can be short. Jim always felt we all ought to try a lot of different things because people can do many things. It depends on whether they try."
Valvano's older brother challenged other worlds besides coaching "and somewhat immodestly, if you'd permit me that, I'd say he conquered them," said the proud younger brother.
Bob Valvano isn't sure where life after his brother's death will lead. One thing he does know, however.
He won't give up.
by CNB