Basketball coaches lost one of their own this week, at least it felt that way.
Gene Hackman, one of the consummate actors of the 20th Century, played dozens of other unforgettable roles, but no character he created has endured like high school basketball coach Norman Dale in the 1986 film, “Hoosiers.”
“I could feel his empathy,” said Hall of Famer Jim Calhoun, a movie enthusiast. “I thought it was one of the greatest movies I’ve ever seen. I’ll tell you one thing, he was believable to me. I could feel it.”
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Hackman, 95, was found dead in his New Mexico home this week along with his wife, Betsy Arakawa, and one of their dogs, the causes still to be determined. In Hoosiers, he brought to life the new coach at Hickory High, a small, fictional school in rural, basketball-crazed 1950s Indiana, winning over skeptical parents, players and administrators with his methods, to ultimately capture the state championship for the tiny school.
Calhoun said he has watched Hoosiers three or four times. The story, the characters, and especially Hackman’s portrayal, still ring true nearly 40 years after the movie was released. Long before he came to UConn, Calhoun arrived at Dedham High in Massachusetts in 1970, an outsider in a town and school known for hockey, and led the team to an 18-0 record and a Bay State Conference championship. Sound familiar?
“I’d say, ‘We can do this, it doesn’t have to be a football-hockey town,'” Calhoun said. “So I truly empathized with what (Hackman’s character) was trying to do, and I saw myself in Hoosiers. A lot of times we see things on a movie screen and we can’t judge because we didn’t do that. Well, I did that. Everybody who played their role was exceptionally believable. I really related to that movie.”
What high school coach hasn’t had to deal with demanding parents? With second-guessing? With having to make a move that might cost games in order to make a point to players?
“I can’t imagine any other actor in that role,” said John Reiser, who has led Manchester High to a successful season and the top seed in the state Division II tournament. “Gene Hackman was just perfect for it. One thing about coaches, the inner angst a lot of us have. His whole reason for being in Indiana, he portrayed that so well. Sometimes the anger came out.
“A football coach, Tom Dunn (at Rockville) told me a long time ago, ‘If you want to coach, you’ve got to realize people aren’t going to like you.’ Then you see that movie, and what he was up against in that community, he was trying to teach lessons and people didn’t like it. They didn’t like his style, and so much of that rings true in coaching.”
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Reiser, who has been coaching more than 40 years, was reminded he once had a volatile relationship with a player at Rocky Hill, and many years later, the player came to Manchester and asked to speak to his team. “He wanted to apologize and send that message to my team,” Reiser said. “Out of the blue, he said, ‘I was a jerk back then and I want you to understand there’s a reason coaches do the things they do.'”
In the movie, Dale, with only seven players, kicks a star off the Hickory team, telling him “don’t come back until you learn to keep your mouth shut and listen.” Though the term may not have been in fashion in the 1950s, or in the 1980s, he was building, wait for it, a culture at Hickory, of discipline, unselfishness — “pass four times before shooting” — respect for hard coaching.
Before winning two titles at UConn, Dan Hurley was a young history teacher and coach at St. Benedict’s Prep in New Jersey, where he kicked a future NBA player, Tristan Thompson, off the team after a heated exchange.
“I thought (Hoosiers) was pretty authentic,” Hurley said. “You could see the pressure he felt to win and the stress he put himself under as a coach, that suffering aspect, you could certainly see it in his personality. Suffering is a big part of this position, either the pregame nerves or the postgame failure. So yeah, I thought it didn’t look like a basketball movie about a team and a coach that was like totally unrealistic.”
Since joining the new Big East in 2020, UConn’s teams make annual trips to play Butler at Hinkle Fieldhouse, were Hoosier’s climactic scenes were filmed.
“We were just in his place,” UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma said, “I was trying to see the spot where (Hickory player) Jimmy Chitwood made the winning jump shot.”
Hurley asks for a tape measure whenever his teams go to Hinkle, but fewer of the young players get the reference. When Hickory got to the building, Hackman’s Norman Dale, in a signature scene, measured the court and the height of the rim to drive home to his players that it was the same game they would be playing, no matter the size of the arena or crowds.
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“The measuring of the baskets, I loved that,” Calhoun said. “Because I’ve said that before, when we’d go in buildings holding 80 or 90,000, I’d say the rims are still 10 feet high, foul line 15 feet. … I’ve stolen from a guy who didn’t know basketball.”
Coach Dale’s pregame talk, before Hickory went out to play South Bend Central, is a staple of scoreboards in nearly every arena, every sport. Put all your effort into being the best you can be, “and at the end of the game, I don’t care what the scoreboard says, we’re going to be winners.”
“… I think that hit home with a lot of coaches,” Reiser said. “You develop these bonds. When you see them giving you everything they have and they’re buying in, it makes you feel so fulfilled. You can’t always control the outcome.”
Hackman, who won Oscars for two other roles, also played a football coach in 2000’s “The Replacements.” News of his death has been received as if a significant sports figure had passed, and that seems right. Great coaches are, to some degree, great actors. For an actor, Hackman got right to the very heart of coaching.
“It’s certainly a story that will live on forever for any basketball player and any basketball coach,” Auriemma said. “He played that role in a way that I’m familiar with that role. A lot of coaches could relate to him playing that role that way.”
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High honor for Jennifer Rizzotti
Former UConn star, UHart coach and current president of the CT Sun, Jennifer Rizzotti received quite an honor this week. USA Today named her Connecticut’s Woman of the Year, joining 61 women from across the country, not just sports related, “inspiring the next generation. They are breaking barriers and pushing for change. They are making our communities better.”
Rizzotti has led the Sun’s on-court and business success the last couple of years, and coached USA Basketball’s 3×3 Olympic team in Paris. Former Sun player Jonquel Jones, now with the WNBA champion Liberty, was one of the national winners.
Sunday short takes
*If you’re an old, local hoops junkie, you’ll want to pick up “Floor Burns,” by Mike Whaley, a book that traces the history of NAIA basketball in New England, starting with chapters on Connecticut legends like Bill Detrick, Frank “Porky” Vieira and Burt Kahn.
*UConn softball is 9-6 after a win over Bowling Green on Friday. Lexi Hastings, the Big East Player of the Year, is hitting .382, Kaiea Higa is hitting .424 in 10 games, Grace Jenkins has five homers and 20 RBI in 15 games and freshman Cat Petteys is hitting .419.
*Fun baseball fact: On May 3, 1947, Larry Doby slugged three homers for the Newark Eagles in a Negro League exhibition game against the New York Black Yankees. Monte Irvin, also a future Hall of Famer, slugged two homers in Newark’s 24-0 win at Mitchell Field in Stamford, which later became a drive-in theater and is now an auto dealership. Doby debuted with Cleveland, becoming the first African-American to play in the American League a few weeks later.
*UConn’s Donovan Clingan, starting for Portland these days, played 28 minutes at Brooklyn Friday, getting 12 points, eight rebounds in the Blazers’ 121-102 win over the Nets. Former Husky Tyrese Martin played 25 minutes for Brooklyn, five points, four rebounds.
*The NFL prospects site grades UConn’s Chase Lundt, an offensive lineman at the Combine this week, at 6.0, which in interpreted as “traits or talent to be above-average backup.”
*If the No.1 team overall in NetRanking, the UConn women, are not one of four No.1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament, doesn’t that mean the NetRanking is irrelevant?
*Of all the silly things people argue about on social media, the silliest is attempting to somehow qualify, disparage or diminish past championships. Hey, once it’s won, it’s done.
Last word
That time of year again. The Mayberry-Mount Pilot Hurricanes had their “Whalers Night,” this week and beat Buffalo, 5-2, wearing Hartford Whalers sweaters and gear. “Identity theft is no joke,” read an X post from The Yard Goats, stoking the outrage.
So here is my annual reminder: While other long-gone franchises are long forgotten, your Hartford Whalers live on. And as long as the name, the colors and The Brass Bonanza are in the hockey public’s eyes and ears, interest persists and you never know what can happen in the future. So embrace it for what it is: the Hurricanes admission that after 28 years, Whalers merch, like the popcorn zamboni, is more popular than their own.