THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, March 2, 1995 TAG: 9503020597
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE CARLSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 239 lines
Jerry Capel sat in the Indian River High gym, a radio in each hand.
One was tuned to the Old Dominion-American basketball game - husband Jeff Capel Jr. coaches ODU. The other carried the Duke-Clemson game - oldest son Jeff III is a guard for Duke.
And on the basketball court below, Indian River and youngest son Jason were battling Booker T. Washington.
``That was absolutely crazy,'' Jerry says while relaxing in her Chesapeake home. ``Finally, I gave up and put the radios in my purse. I couldn't sit there with two radios and do justice to the cheering I wanted to do for Jason's team.
``People must have thought I looked really stupid.''
Not stupid, just committed.
During basketball season, Jerry Capel sometimes feels she's ready to be committed. She figures she has attended 41 Capel games in the last 15 weeks and watched almost 20 more on television.
``As much as I enjoy it, it does get to a point sometimes when you get tired of it,'' says Jerry, a physical education teacher at Western Branch Middle School. ``Everybody is going different directions.''
Jerry runs a three-man weave through the winter months. She's the point mom, giving it up so everyone else can shine.
She washes practice clothes. She runs a shuttle to and from games. She plays two positions, mother and father, during long stretches when her husband is on the road.
``She's always there,'' Jeff III says. ``She's really the one who raised Jason and I.''
Here is March Madness, Capel style: In the span of eightdays, a Capel will play or coach in the Eastern Region, CAA and ACC tournaments. And Jerry will be at all three.
``Jerry is the one who deserves the halo,'' says her husband. ``I know she gets tired of it, but she's special.''
So are the ties that bind this family.
Jerry and Jeff Capel met their freshman year at Fayetteville State. Jeff says it was a natural - he was the best athlete on campus, she was the best-looking woman. They were married at 19.
Capel was on a basketball scholarship. After one year, there was a dispute about his grant money, and he was told he would have to pay $800 his sophomore year.
About that time, back in his hometown of Southern Pines, N.C., Capel ran into a high school buddy who was in the Army. The friend said he basically just ran track, and suggested Capel could play on the Army basketball squad.
``I jumped in my car, drove to Fayetteville that day to enlist and told them, `I want to play basketball,' '' Capel says.
When he stepped off the bus at Fort Jackson, S.C. - sporting gold bell-bottom pants, a green and gold dashiki and an enormous Afro - the drill sergeant did not invite him to shoot hoops.
He grabbed Capel, snarled for him to cut off that hair and, in a drill sergeant's inimitable fashion, advised the new recruit of the three ways to make it in this man's Army:
DO AS YOU'RE TOLD! DO AS YOU'RE TOLD! (EXPLETIVE), DO AS YOU'RE TOLD!
``I said, `Mama,' '' Capel says. ``That was reality.''
He did get to play ball in the Army, and also spent 86 days in Vietnam, although his paratrooper outfit did not see live action.
After the Army, Capel completed his degree at Fayetteville State, then taught at his alma mater, Pinecrest High School, where he was asked to coach wrestling.
``Wrestling practice was upstairs in a room overlooking the gym,'' Capel says. ``I'd just let those guys kill each other while I sat there watching basketball practice.''
Eventually, he got to run those practices as head coach, a position he held seven years.
Those were good times. Jeff and Jerry were in their early 30s. Jeff III would soon be in high school, playing for his dad. Capel could have stayed there forever.
That changed one summer day in 1986 while Capel was fishing at the park his father owned.
Felton Capel gave the ``creek whistle'' - which was used to send signals in the rural area where Felton grew up - and summoned his son to shore.
``Bob Staak is on the phone,'' Felton said.
Staak, the coach at Wake Forest, wanted Capel to come on board as a part-time assistant. Felton was beside himself with excitement.
Jeff wasn't.
``I think it surprised Bob I didn't say yes right away, but I wasn't looking to leave,'' Capel says.
He did leave Southern Pines for Wake Forest, but three years later he was looking for another job. Staak and his staff learned they were fired when empty moving boxes appeared in the basketball office one morning.
``Nobody knew what their future would hold,'' Jerry Capel says. ``But I was more worried about how Jeff felt about himself. I saw him worried, and he's not a worrier. The fact he felt like he would seem like a failure in the eyes of the children and me, I never understood that.''
Jeff III and Jason grew up around the game. Capel even dropped a regulation-size basketball in their hospital cribs just hours after each had been born.
``Just put it in there to let them touch it,'' Capel says.
Both sons were ballboys at Wake, and were pictured on a media guide cover in a crowd of kids surrounding Muggsy Bogues. They were 14 and 9 when Wake's staff was let go.
``The rug was pulled out from under him,'' says Jerry Wainwright, a fellow assistant at Wake and now the head coach at CAA rival UNC Wilmington. ``That was a very, very tough time for him.''
Jeff Capel rebounded quickly. He had been chasing the head coaching job at Fayetteville State, and a week after leaving Wake he got the job.
Fayetteville State was 7-21 Capel's first season, and went to the NCAA tournament his fourth season.
``There was a time at Fayetteville State where the only recruiting budget we had left was the credit left on our credit cards,'' says ODU assistant Mark Cline, who has been Capel's No. 1 assistant all six seasons he has been a head coach. ``You just do what you have to do. We came up the tough road.''
Cline lived with the Capels his first year at Fayetteville State. He and Capel took turns washing the uniforms and practice gear. Sweeping the gym floor. Tutoring players. Buying socks, jocks and other equipment.
They got the job done, and Capel got a Division I job at North Carolina A&T in 1993-94. The Aggies made the NCAA tournament, and Capel moved on to ODU when Oliver Purnell left for Dayton last spring.
He was an instant hit at ODU, where his 17-11 record probably will earn him Coach of the Year honors in the CAA.
``We all love playing for him,'' senior guard Mike Jones says. ``It's almost like he's one of the guys, but he's an older one of the guys - like a big brother or a dad.
``He has a college sophomore and a high school freshman. He knows how to relate to players our age.''
If it don't kill you, it'll make you stronger.''
Capel learned that philosophy in the Army, and he embraces it still. As difficult as it is to watch what Jeff III and Duke are going through, Capel knows his son will get stronger.
``This is part of his education process,'' Capel says.
Jeff III sits in empty Cameron Indoor Stadium. He calls this season, in which Duke is last in the ACC a year after losing in the NCAA title game, the strangest he has ever experienced.
``It seems everything that could possibly go wrong has gone wrong,'' he says.
Jeff III, 20, calls his father his role model and hero, and has always dreamed of playing for him. If Capel had been at ODU instead of Division II Fayetteville State two years ago, his son would be at ODU now instead of Duke.
``No doubt about it,'' Jeff III says.
Rumors have persisted that he will transfer to ODU after this season. Dad denies it, saying he had a long talk with Mike Krzyzewski, who indicated he will return from his back problems to coach Duke next year. If Krzyzewski is back, Jeff III will be also.
What if Krzyzewski isn't?
``If Mike's not there, Jeff will play for his dad,'' Capel says. His son confirms that.
Jason, meanwhile, may not be as easy to convince. Recruiting services rate him among the best high school freshmen in the country. Capel jokes that he recruits Jason every night over dinner.
``I'd love to play for my dad, but I've got three more years of high school left,'' Jason says. ``If he wants me, ODU would definitely be one of my top schools.
``But he's going to have to recruit me. He's going to have to treat me like he does every other recruit. I'm not going to be easy.''
It's not easy for Jeff III to admit this, but Jason is better than he was at this stage. And Jeff III was a high school All-American.
``To me, it's scary how good he is,'' Jeff III says of Jason.
Jason, 15, is already 6-foot-7. He was 5-3 and a stocky 168 pounds as a fifth grader, then in two months grew seven inches and went from a size 10 to size 13 shoe.
The Capels have moved so many times in recent years, Jerry says she has lost count. But she remembers how angry Jason was when Capel took the North Carolina A&T job and the family left Fayetteville.
When they moved to ODU, Jerry and Jeff, both 42, promised Jason he would play his entire high school career in one place, as Jeff III did. Jason says he likes it here and is just trying to fit in.
``Jason's going to graduate from Indian River High School,'' Jerry says. ``That's the kind of stability he needs right now.''
Jerry Capel provides stability. She has seen all 24 of Jason's games this year. During Jeff III's high school career, she missed one.
``I was tired,'' Jerry recalls. ``It was a bad team and I said, `I know you're going to beat up on them.' He told me afterward, `Mama, I looked over and it didn't feel right not seeing you there.'
``I felt so guilty for not going.''
Jeff Capel's schedule doesn't permit him to get to all his sons' games, but he goes when he can. It's the house credo.
``We're a family that supports each other,'' Jerry says. ``You don't ask if you're going. If you're breathing and feeling well, you're going.''
And the family keeps growing. Jerry's 18-year-old nephew, Henry Jimerson, moved in with the Capels last August and is a junior at Indian River. His mother died from complications caused by diabetes.
Jimerson lived with his father a couple months, had too much freedom and was courting trouble. Finally, he picked up the phone and fulfilled his mother's dying wish that the Capels care for him.
``They didn't have to take me in,'' Jimerson says. ``But my aunt and uncle told me if I wanted anything to just call them.''
``That's all I needed to hear, and he was here,'' Jerry says.
At a recent Indian River game, a different kind of call doesn't sit well with Jerry. Jason picks up his third foul with four minutes left in the second quarter, and Jerry turns to her husband: ``Did he foul him?''
``He called it, didn't he?'' Jeff replies.
``That doesn't mean he did it,'' Jerry says.
The Capels are seated near the top row of the gym. At one point, Jason dribbles upcourt and Jeff shouts ``Keep it!'' Jason dutifully takes the ball to the hoop and scores.
Does Jason always listen so well? Capel smiles and says that Jason never listens ``unless I give him the creek whistle - watch this.''
Capel put two fingers in his mouth and lets out a piercing whistle. Jason, lining up along the lane for a free throw, immediately fixes his eyes upon his father.
The night is a typical one for the Capel family, seated around a basketball court instead of a dinner table. Everything revolves around basketball. They celebrated last Christmas on Dec. 23, the day Capel returned from a 10-day swing with ODU to Hawaii and Seattle, and the day before Jeff III was headed to Hawaii with Duke.
In North Carolina, the family automobile's license plate read ``N2HOOPS.'' The Capels were disappointed to find out someone in Virginia already has that vanity plate.
Maybe they should try ``N2FAMLY.'' ILLUSTRATION: BILL TIERNAN/Staff
[Color Photo]
MOM Jerry Capel, right watches with husband Jeff at an Indian River
High game. "We're a family that supports each other," she says. "You
don't ask if you're going. If you're breathing and feeling well,
you're going."
DAD Ten years ago, Jeff Capel was content to coach high school
basketball in his North Carolina hometown. Now the goal is an NCAA
berth for Old Dominion.
JASON The Indian River ninth-grader is going to hear from the
college coaches, including his dad: "He's going to have to treat me
like he does every other recruit."
JEFF III The Duke sophomore guard says that if Mike Krzyewski
doesn't return as coach, he would transfer to Old Dominion.
Courtesy of Capel family
Jeff Capel, right, played at Pinecrest High and later coached there
before going to Wake Forest.
BILL TIERNAN/Staff
Jeff Capel talks with son Jason after an Indian River High game. He
and wife Jerry promised Jason that he would play his entire high
school career in one place, as Jeff III did.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE by CNB