At long last, Dean Blevins returning to Norman High (and he will not be alone)
At long last, Dean Blevins returning to Norman High (and he will not be alone)
Old Tiger's wish to reconnect with program should make for a special night at NHS Gym
Note: This column is also appearing in The Norman Transcript. It’s a great story and I’m happy that it can find an audience there, too. Also, if you want to see some old-timers who could really play and a very strong current crop of Tigers, get over to Norman High on Friday. Thanks, Clay.
NORMAN — The gist of the story?
Dean Blevins is returning to Norman High Friday and he’s bringing company.
Also, he’s really excited about it. More than you can imagine.
“It gets bigger every day,” he said, “as I talk to someone else and then talk to someone else.”
So that’s kind of the story.
But let’s start here.
Abbey Billingsley, whose father is the late Robert Ross and whose son, Beau, is NHS’ point guard, contacted Blevins about reconnecting with his old high school basketball program.
Ross and Blevins, the former Sooner basketball player, quarterback and the longtime sports director at KWTV-9 in Oklahoma City, were close friends.
Indeed, even if channel 9’s never been your source for local TV news and even if sports has never been your thing, you may recall Blevins and “Rosser” extolling the virtues of Interurban restaurants on the radio.
Their ads ubiquitous, you couldn’t run away from them.
Blevins, the Tulsa World’s 1974 Oklahoma high school basketball player of the year, though he’d not been back in his old gym for about 30 years, was interested.
“I am embarrassed to say this, but I was [last] there when Sherri Coale was the basketball coach,” he said. “I was there covering the game.”
Cory Cole, NHS boys coach, had his own idea.
Though his team’s riding high, taking a 10-game winning streak and a 15-4 record into Westmoore Tuesday*, it remains his wish to introduce his players to the terrific, if lapsed, tradition of Norman High boys hoops.
* The Tigers won that game, pushing their win streak to 11 games and for the second straight season will host a Class 6A regional tournament.
“We’ve been tradition depleted in recent years,” Coale said. “These kids don’t understand how good Norman used to be.”
He gave Blevins a call.
That’s why he’ll be there Friday, inside the NHS Gym, speaking to the Tigers before they take the court to meet Lawton in their final home game of the regular season.
It is also why Blevins may be handed a microphone, maybe at halftime, to introduce not just himself, but several other program legends.
That Wall of Fame that rings the Tiger court? Well, it might just come to life.
Cole is calling the event “informal” and perhaps next season it will become more organized, more official. Yet, even informal, it sounds pretty cool.
From where Blevins sits, it couldn’t get much cooler.
He said a majority of the company he’ll bring will be from his three seasons in the program — ’71-’72, ’72-’73, ’73-’74; freshman did not play varsity back then, you know — but other huge names will join him.
Former Sooner placekicker John Carroll, from NHS’ 1970 state title team, is planning to attend. So is Butch Roberts, the star from the Tigers’ 1963 state title team. As is Jack Herron, who played on the 1959 state title squad. As is Don Masters, point guard from the 1955 state title squad.
Gregg Byram, one class behind Blevins, who played football at Oklahoma, has been the namesake of an NHS-hosted track meet and who was once named the state’s high school basketball player of the year by the Oklahoma Journal, back when Oklahoma City had three daily newspapers, is scheduled to be there, too.
On Monday, Blevins was still hoping to track down Rick Kersey, yet another old Tiger, who like so many of the others can be found on the Wall of Fame.
Perhaps he’ll make it.
The process has been a labor of love.
Here’s just one of Blevins' memories.
He was on the court and huddled around his father, Dexter, was a who’s who of collegiate coaches, among them Barry Switzer, Arkansas football and basketball skippers Frank Broyles and Lanny Van Eamon, North Carolina’s Dean Smith, Kansas’ Ted Owens, Kansas State’s Jack Hartman and Alabama’s C.M. Newton.
“I had never been happier because my father was such an important figure to me,” Blevins said, “and he just loved commiserating and talking with them and they all loved him.”
For those who knew Dexter, of course they did.
Blevins remembers NHS pre-game warm-ups to “Sweet Georgia Brown,” the whistling tune most associated with the Harlem Globetrotters.
Blevins, whose hero was Pete Maravich, was known for flashy passing before anybody kept track of assists, and coach Max Marquardt allowed the Tigers to put on a show before the opening tip.
“We literally packed gymnasiums,” Blevins said.
The players who listen to him Friday may have a hard time imagining just what NHS hoops looked like in in the early and mid-’70s, but they might have an easy time understanding one particular message.
As an athlete, a college football analyst who traveled the nation for Saturday games, as a television and radio journalist and media personality, Blevins has been everywhere, seen everything and met everybody.
“But of all those things,” he said, “the most fun time in my life was playing with those basketball teams.”
Friday, he comes back.
He’s bringing company.