Day of Praise

Thur, 08/31/17, "Day of Praise"

Ball season has started, to be sure football, but it's ball nonetheless, so here's one of my favorite posts of the past about one of my all-time favorite ball coaches. 

"And we know that God works through all things together for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." - Romans 8:28

"Hey, Coach! How's the team gonna be this year?"

"Aaah, Chris, we ain't got no guards."

But when our high school basketball coach, Walter "Buck" Van Huss was on the job, you knew that good things were going to happen. That year in particular, the 1980-81 season, Coach Van Huss's Kingsport Dobyns-Bennett (DB) High School team went 36-1. Their only loss was by a couple points in the state semifinals to the eventual champion, Nashville Pearl, on a night when the goal seemed the size of a pea, as shot after shot from right under the goal just wouldn't go into the bucket. 

Coach Van Huss had a few stars through the years, like Skip Brown who was an All-American at Wake Forest and Mark Elliott who starred at Vanderbilt and Bruce Tranbarger who shone at Ole Miss and Lee Garber who played on an NCAA Tournament Elite Eight team at Wake Forest. But Buck Van Huss was mostly known as a little man physically who knew how to coach kids up athletically and help them to live life large in every good and wholesome way. 

Before he came to DB in 1967, he coached for 14 seasons at little Hampton High School and won a state championship in 1960 when all the high schools, no matter their size, were playing for one trophy. Books have been written as to how coach made the boys practice in Army boots so that they felt lighter on their feet in the games. When Coach Van Huss was on the job, good things were on the way, even if he had unconventional ways of bringing them about. 

Coach was a great guy, and I remember him taking time to chat when he was in season and I was in football or baseball off-season workouts. We talked about the race riots that shut down the high school in the late '60's in his first years at DB and about his efforts to use basketball as a way of bringing unity to a school and community and nation that were torn apart by the color of people's skin. 

When Coach died on Saturday, July 2, 1990 during open heart surgery, we all were shocked. But the little big man was celebrated in newspapers around the country from The Chicago Tribune to The Orlando Sentinel, as they recognized his record of 1,021-313 which, at the time, was only six victories shy of setting a national record for most victories by a high school basketball coach. 

But the greatest gift of Coach Van Huss to all of us who knew him for the 71 years God gave him was not his military service in WWII or being named coach of the year twelve times or receiving the Distinguished Service Award from the National Basketball Foundation or serving on the City Council of neighboring Elizabethton where he resided or receiving the Distinguished Community Service Award from the "Kingsport Times-News" or even those 1,021 wins. 

Coach's greatest gift to us was that if you knew he was on the job, then good things were going to happen, which was a big reminder, from a little man, that the same holds true for God: since God is always on the job, then we can always look for good things to happen. 

"And we know that God works through all things together for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." - Romans 8:28

Praise God!