ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 21, 1996 TAG: 9601220104
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Jack Bogaczyk
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
As expected, Burrall Paye came to the Crestar Roundball Classic on Saturday.
As expected, he was anxious to see how a very familiar William Fleming High School team fared against Science Hill, a Johnson City, Tenn., club ranked third in the nation by USA Today.
Paye insisted he had a good seat.
It was four rows from the roof of the Salem Civic Center.
It might be a good time to look at not just how Paye got into the cheap seats, but how high school basketball has reached the point where the City of Roanoke is searching for two head coaches.
Early this month, Patrick Henry coach Woody Deans revealed he would retire from coaching - at age 47 - after this season. Then, Paye bolted in the middle of his 20th year at Fleming, a season that was likely to be his last, too.
``Mostly, I'm relieved,'' Paye said as he watched the Colonels barely fall to Science Hill. ``I don't want to say anything other than I still love the kids, and I love William Fleming.''
A former coaching foe of Paye said the word was Paye was going to be suspended by Fleming's administration for a couple of days after cursing at a player during practice.
Instead, Paye quit after 486 victories, 17 district championships, 10 regional titles and five state championship game appearances in 26-plus years as a high school head coach.
If he wants 500 victories, he probably can get the 14 he needs. Since word leaked through his profession of the midweek decision formally sealed with his resignation letter Friday, he's gotten calls about coaching from four schools.
Then, he doesn't know whether he wants to coach again. In that regard - as in so many others - he is different from Deans, who said he will continue as the Crestar Classic impresario but won't be back on the sideline again.
Deans and Paye have been Roanoke's odd couple, or maybe it should be odds couple. Each at times bristled when the other's name was mentioned, and each did his job differently, but with the same results.
Paye is more of a disciplinarian. Deans has been known to nurture the coach-player relationship. Each has been very successful. Each will be a very tough act to follow.
``Maybe Woody and I can go into business together,'' Paye said, obviously joking. ``We can call it `Paye & Deans,' not `Deans & Paye.'''
OK, the competitive fires still burn, but maybe the next question shouldn't be who will succeed Paye and Deans, but who wants to do it.
In retirement and resignation, each is something of a victim of his success and what high school hoops has become.
It's a different world than it was when Paye began coaching varsity ball in 1969, even since Deans drew his first PH diagram 13 years ago. Some of it is societal.
``I think there's less loyalty from players [to a coach] than there used to be,'' Deans said Saturday. ``Kids are more concerned about themselves and playing time.
``I think it's less prestigious to play on a varsity team than it used to be. It used to really mean something in school. And now there are so many other distractions.''
The AAU programs that have mushroomed nationwide have helped make players better, but they also have eroded the high school coach's authority.
Who's in charge here? If the AAU coach says one thing and the high school coach something different, to whom does the player listen? Coaching basketball has become a 12-month job.
So has playing it. Deans took his team to six camps during the past summer.
``You used to do something in the summer to get ahead,'' Deans said. ``Now, you have to do something in the summer just to keep up.''
Parents are more involved than in the past, too. As one high school coach at Saturday's games said, ``The kids don't buy into it as much. It used to be that a coach's word was it. No more.''
Players go home and tell their folks a coach has cussed at practice. They say the small forward isn't as good, so why is he playing ahead of me?
``You just have to be careful,'' Deans said. ``Like they say, the U.S. has too many damn lawyers as it is.''
Deans praises the parents of his final Patriots team, but that hasn't always been the case. And when programs become as successful as those at PH and Fleming have become, the stakes are higher.
Deans coached PH to Group AAA titles in 1988 and '92. When he called Hawaii about placing his team in a tournament there after the first crown, the organizer knew who he and the Patriots were.
When you become too well-known, however, your players are ripe for the picking by prep schools. Deans lost George Lynch, Curtis Staples and Tim Basham - for different reasons - to prep schools. Paye spent two years answering questions about whether point guard Derrick Hines would bolt. He didn't.
``Oak Hill steals players,'' Deans said, with emotion. ``They entice kids away by buying players, not with money, but with trips and other things. ... It's unethical.''
Whether it is or not, it is more pressure for coaches such as Deans and Paye. There also are more racial tensions in the sport today, and Deans and Paye are white coaches with predominantly black teams at racially mixed, urban schools.
Another way high school basketball has changed in the City of Roanoke is what Deans called ``a lack of school spirit. We don't draw well. These days, we don't get as many students out at games.''
It's the same at Fleming. For Saturday's Crestar opener, the Tennessee visitors had more fans who made the three-hour drive up I-81 than the Colonels could get to cross a city border.
You also have recruiting publications naming ``the best sixth-grade prospect in the nation,'' and so forth. The competition for playing time, stardom and scholarships - and who will control those commodities and the players - starts long before puberty now.
If you correctly used the adjectives ``astute'' and ``successful'' to describe Paye, then ``controversial'' wouldn't be far behind, either.
He knows his hoops, however. Denny Crum once asked a reporter visiting Louisville about Paye. The Cardinals' coach had read a couple of Paye's instructional books.
Paye said Saturday he was ``99.9 percent sure'' he would be leaving at the end of this season, but he said he ``is relaxed'' about his early exit. Deans said he feels ``very good about my decision.''
Their comfort zones speak volumes about where they and their sport have been, and are going.
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