THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, January 16, 1997 TAG: 9701160483
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PAUL WHITE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 171 lines
At 4:30 each morning, 47-year-old Gordon Cook can be found delivering newspapers throughout the city's Kempsville area, something he hardly considers a big deal.
At 4:30 most weekday afternoons, Cook can be found in the Tabernacle Baptist School gym, preparing to add another victory to a resume that places him among the winningest high school basketball coaches in Virginia history.
He's not sure what the big deal is there, either.
``You see those?'' Tabernacle Baptist principal Dr. Carl D. Bieber said as he waved his hand toward a series of red state championship banners that decorate a wall in the Patriots' gym. ``We're supposed to have a couple more, but Gordon hasn't ordered them. He just doesn't care about getting attention.''
Sorry, coach, but the secret is out. Despite the fact that when he began coaching, his only experience in basketball was as the manager of his high school team, Cook's teams have compiled a 498-125 record in 26 seasons. According to the Associated Press, fewer than a dozen state coaches have won more. Cook is tied with Norfolk Academy's Dave Trickler for the most wins locally. Leo Anthony, the area's winningest public school coach, retired with 407 victories.
The worst record for a Cook-led team was 16-9, a record he fashioned out of a group so inexperienced he scheduled its first six games on the road so the home fans wouldn't have to witness the early carnage. Cook's worst fears were then realized with the Patriots lost their season opener by 28.
``Thank God we were in Charlottesville!'' Cook roared.
But somehow, that team wound up winning an Old Dominion Association of Church Schools state title. It was one of six state titles Cook has engineered, in addition to four second-place finishes and one fifth-place result in the American Association of Christian School National Championship.
And except for the first three years, all of his success has come at Tabernacle Baptist, an unremarkable-looking school on Whitehurst Landing Road that is so small the last graduating class numbered 11. A school so obscure its best-known player is probably the principal's son, Joel Bieber of the law firm Joynes and Bieber, who's notoriety comes mainly from his wacky television commercials. And a school so devoid of media attention that this is only the second time this decade its nearly 500-win coach will see his name appear in the local newspaper he delivers every morning.
``Sometimes I dream about what it might be like to coach at a higher level, but I've never really had a desire to move on,'' said Cook, whose team is 12-2 this year. ``There's no place I'd rather be. This is God's will for my life''
It helps to believe that the Lord works in mysterious ways to understand how Cook became a basketball coach. He played football in at Elkton High in Maryland, and only managed the basketball team because he enjoyed the company of the teacher who taught his favorite subject, math.
He graduated from Le Tourneau College in Longview, Texas, with a degree in aeronautical technology and immediately landed a job maintaining aircraft in Maryland. A recession caused Cook to get laid off, but he figured it was only a matter of time until his next job.
In the meantime, Dr. Bieber, then the principal at Elkton Christian School, was noticing the personable way Cook handled himself at church.
``We'd have work parties where the guys would be sweeping floors, cleaning bathrooms and such,'' Dr. Bieber said. ``If you can be happy and joyous doing that ...
``Plus I sensed that he loved the Lord. That love is the beginning of the kind of love we should have for our students.''
Realizing Cook specialized in math, Dr. Bieber offered Cook a math teaching job at Elkton Christian. Not long after he arrived, Cook found himself in charge of the school's basketball team.
That team went 15-4.
``It was like, wow!'' Cook said.
Cook followed Dr. Bieber to Pennsylvania's West Chester Christian School, where he taught and coached for two years, then to Tabernacle, where he took over a 1-year-old team that had been loosely run by the pastor and the physics teacher.
``It's funny how the Lord leads your purpose in life,'' Cook said. ``This place felt right from the first moment I got here, and it still feels right today.''
Cook's enthusiasm for Tabernacle Baptist spills out all over the school. Although he's an assistant principal, the athletic director and a math teacher in addition to being the basketball coach, you might also find him helping serve lunch if the cafeteria staff is shorthanded. He teaches his math classes at such volume a student could probably do ``A'' work if he took Cook's course from an adjacent room.
``These walls are kind of thin, and I'm very loud,'' he said.
But Cook's kingdom at Tabernacle is the gym, a 200-seat facility in the middle of the school that's so intimate fans in the front row spend most of the game with their feet inbounds. The baseline is so close to the exit door that one player who took a hard foul under the basket landed with half his body on the mustard-colored floor, the other half in the main lobby.
Since the school has but a handful of minority students and virtually none from the inner-city, the temptation is to assume Cook's teams resemble a group of extras from the movie ``Hoosiers,'' passing and screening out of a half-court set. In fact, this year's team plays a freewheeling uptempo game, always looking to get into its fastbreak.
``Run, run, run,'' Cook said. ``We've got the athletes.''
There's rarely any size to speak of - this year's pivotman is promising 6-foot-3 1/2 freshman Jared Chalk - but Cook has been able to coach around this deficiency since there aren't many skycrapers at this level of the game.
But to really appreciate a Cook team, watch for the little things. Picks. Boxing out. Footwook on defense.
``He stresses hard work, discipline and stick-to-it-iveness,'' said Larry Smith, who played for Cook during the '70s and is now the head coach at Portsmouth Christian. ``His players excel at the fundamentals.''
They'd better, because Cook has little tolerance for poor practice habits. Smith said he once put them through 100 suicide drills after a poor workout.
``We were dying,'' Smith said. ``But our attitudes were better after that.''
One player said Cook had ``a little Bobby Knight in him,'' and that was Cook's own son, 23-year-old Todd, the oldest of the three Cook boys who have played for their father.
Brooks, whose paper route his father took over four years ago, came next, followed by Lance, a 17-year-old junior who's currently the team's point guard.
``He doesn't take any guff,'' Lance Cook said.
``During my senior year, we were playing this team we should have been killing, and we were only up one at the half,'' said Dave Matson, a Tabernacle assistant who starred for the Patriots in the mid-'80s. ``When we got in the locker room, coach Cook was so angry he picked up this water bottle and he chucked that thing and it landed about 2 inches from my ear.
``Sometimes, if you didn't know he loved you, you'd think he hated you.''
What helps make Cook's tough-love approach more palatable is the fact that when the players look over to the sidelines, they see their coach working just as hard as they are. He does so much shouting his assistants joke that they take turns sitting in the seat next to him because doing so for a full game leaves them deaf in one ear.
And Cook's only bout with technical fouls came in the mid-'80s, when a ``seatbelt'' rule put restrictions on when coaches could get out of their chairs. ``I couldn't stay down,'' he said.
Otherwise, Cook has been cagey enough to avoid major trouble with officials. And the one time he couldn't, he moved quickly to make amends.
When the 1980 state semifinal ended with a Patriot shooter not getting a foul call on a potential game-winning jumper at the buzzer, an enraged Cook stormed on the court and ``gave that ref an earful.'' Embarrassed, Cook apologized to his team in the locker room, then returned to the court and apologized to the crowd. Upon learning the ref had already left the gym, Cook got his home number and placed a call with yet another apology.
``I try to take the basketball court and make it another classroom,'' Cook said. ``I just felt like I was setting the wrong example for the kids when I did that.''
Those close to Cook say he has mellowed. His wife of 23 years, Dixie, says he doesn't dwell on losses as he did in the past. There's even talk that when Lance graduates in the spring of 1998, his father might finally step away from the sidelines.''
``Yeah, he's talked about when his last one graduates he might think about hanging it up,'' Dixie Cook said. ``But I can't really see it happening. He loves what he does too much.
``Besides, when Lance leaves, another promising player will come along, and he'll be right back at it.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
HUY NGUYEN PHOTOS
The Virginian-Pilot
Gordon Cook's players may not look imposing, but over 26 years
they've given him 498 victories and six state titles.
ABOVE: Considering Tabernacle Baptist's dominance among Christian
schools, it's not surprising that young Joshua Elliott found a
recent 68-46 victory over Landmark a yawner.
LEFT: The fans are so close to the action in Tabernacle's 200-seat
gym that fans in the front row sit with their feet inbounds most of
the time.
ABOVE: Cook has ``a little Bobby Knight in him,'' says his son Todd.
Dave Matson, another former player, adds: ``Sometimes, if you didn't
know he loved you, you'd think he hated you.''
LEFT: Tabernacle has all the ingredients for Cook's happiness,
whether he's on the court, in the classroom - or serving up lunch
when the cafeteria staff is shorthanded.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE