Woodrow champs, 1954

<b>Unlikely heroes recall their historic state championship</b>

By Dave Morrison

How it happened? Well, even the players, to this day, 55 years later, aren’t quite sure.

Suffice it to say, Woodrow Wilson was not supposed to win the state championship in 1954.

Despite being the three-time defending champion.

Despite having a lineup that included showstopper Dwayne Wingler and Howard Hurt, the guy who would go on to become Woodrow’s all-time leading scorer (a record set without the three-point line in a day when freshmen absolutely did not play and sophomores rarely did. And a record that still stands).

But win it Woodrow Wilson did, despite finishing the regular season with a less-than-ordinary 11-9 record.

And to do it, they had to beat Mullens, a team that had beaten the Flying Eagles twice during the regular season.

“I was in awe of that team,” Tony Lusk said of Mullens. “We probably had a mediocre team.”

“I figure most people thought we’d lose to Mullens again,” Wingler said. “We weren’t the best team. We had a good team, and we worked hard.”

How did it happen that Woodrow Wilson would beat a Mullens team that entered that game 25-1? And beat that team 84-66.

Most credit coach Jerome “The Grey Eagle” Van Meter.

For instance, Hurt wasn’t even a starter when the season started. But ol’ Van knew what he had.

“Coach wasn’t real big on playing sophomores,” Hurt said. “But we went to Hinton early in the season and somehow I got in and I played OK.”

“When coach put Howard Hurt in the lineup, that was probably the thing that put us over the top,” Lusk said.

“Coach was big on defense,” said Julian Trail, who would go on to make all-tournament that year with Wingler and Lusk. “I wasn’t a scorer. We had Dwayne and Tony and those guys. But he put me on the best scorer Mullens had and I shut him down. Nobody told me, but I have a feeling that’s why I was on the all-tournament team.”

An era filled with characters

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“The only reason we beat Mullens was because we wanted it more than they did,” starter Norm Southern said. “Coach Van Meter wouldn’t let you quit. And we didn’t. It was a strange year. But we came together.”

It was a team of character. And characters.

And nobody fit that mold better than Wingler.

Some folks call him the greatest athlete to come out of Woodrow Wilson, a star in whatever sport he felt like trying.

Some folks think he was a nut.

Wingler laughs at it all.

“I feel like I’m the only athlete who could get so much out of two hours and twenty minutes,” Wingler said. “No matter what else I did, that (’54) state championship game is the only game people remember. I played in 300 games; that is the one that sticks out.

“I played against Jerry West when he was a sophomore and I had 34 points, he had six. He kept getting better and better. People don’t remember we beat Hot Rod Hundley. We won the state tournament two years before that. I went to Kentucky and played football and basketball for Adolph Rupp.”

People remember because Wingler was on in that game. He finished with a record 44 points before fouling out.

Two things stand out about Wingler’s performance.

One, it was against Mullens.

Wingler didn’t play at Mullens that year, after an altercation in the game in Beckley.

Seems that Wingler fouled Mullens’ best player, Vernon Hurt, hard. Extra hard.

“People have been saying for years I knocked a Mullens player into the second row of the bleachers,” Wingler said. “Didn’t happen. I may have fouled him hard. But the second row of the bleachers?”

“It happened,” Lusk said, laughing. “It happened.”

So bent on revenge were Mullens fans that they vowed Wingler had better not enter city limits, or he wouldn’t be returning.

Van Meter took the threat seriously.

“They called me into the office and my uncle who was with the (state) police, said they didn’t have the manpower to protect Dwayne Wingler,” Lusk said. “Coach Van Meter said, ‘Tony, we can either leave Dwayne home or we can forfeit.’ Well, I didn’t want to forfeit, but I didn’t want to leave Dwayne home, either.”

Forfeit wasn’t going to happen, not for a Jerome Van Meter team, so Wingler stayed home and listened to the game on the radio.

And he cried, vowing his own revenge if the two would meet again.

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Hurt and Trail got their start the old-fashioned way.

Their fathers fashioned a hoop and backboard and they grew up playing on West Virginia Street, close to what is now Mountain State University.

“His dad made the backboard and my dad made the rim,” Trail said. “They didn’t ask anybody, just nailed it up on a light post and we played out there.”

“We had great neighborhood games,” Hurt said. “And we had a light, so we could play at night. It was great.”

The five — Wingler, Lusk, Southern, Trail and Hurt — along with sixth man Paul Hutchinson, didn’t exactly take the regular season by storm.

“When you have won three straight championships, you kind of have that mark on your back,” Southern said. “Of course, Dwayne was never going to back down and we weren’t going to back down, either.”

Wingler would visit a Beckley establishment daily as the tournament approached, where he got “free” milkshakes.

“They’d ask me, ‘Dwayne, are you gonna play against Mullens,’” Wingler said. “Now I’d say whatever they wanted to hear, I liked the milkshakes. So I’d say, ‘Sure, they have police protection in Morgantown.’ We had no idea.”

Wingler joked that he is sure they put something in his milkshakes leading up to that tournament.

“Because I played way, way above my means in that game.”

But play he did.

And he seemingly scored at will against the best team in the state that year.

Funny, but the bench knew what was going on, maybe because Wingler had 29 points at half-time. So he was well on the way to a tournament record, a record later broken, ironically, by Mullens and WVU standout Herbie Brooks.

“I never told you this before, but during every timeout, when you got to 36 (assistant coach) Preach (Wiseman) would grab my arm and say, ‘He’s got 36!’ and ‘He’s got 38!’” Lusk told Wingler. “I knew what he meant. Get the ball to Wingler.”

And they did.

By the time he fouled out, he had the record. And Woodrow had the state title.

A lot was made that one Mullens player, Robert Tabscott, wouldn’t shake Wingler’s hand.

Years later, the two became buddies.

Some would say that probably wouldn’t happen, either.

But it did.

Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction.

Much like the 1954 team itself.

— E-mail: demorrison@register-herald.com

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