How late legends Kobe Bryant and Morgan Wootten left their mark on the Beach Ball Classic
The Beach Ball Classic in Myrtle Beach lost two of its most recognizable alumni over the past week.
Morgan Wootten helped establish the tournament as the country’s preeminent holiday high school basketball event, and that reputation later helped attract Kobe Bryant and his Pennsylvania high school team in 1995.
Wootten, the legendary 46-year coach of DeMatha Catholic High in Hyattsville, Maryland, died at the age of 88 last Tuesday, and Bryant, the iconic five-time NBA champion with the Los Angeles Lakers, died at the age of 41 in a helicopter crash on Sunday.
“Two iconic figures for basketball gone within the same couple weeks,” said Beach Ball co-founder and former Socastee High coach Dan D’Antoni. “They’ll be remembered and there will be others to step up and carry on what they were doing.
“It makes you just really appreciate that you’re living and the people who are your friends, and make sure that you value those moments. They’re short really in the larger picture of things.”
Wootten’s legacy
D’Antoni had been to Wootten’s basketball clinic in Washington, D.C., for about 12 straight years, and Wootten helped him recruit Christ the King of New York and St. John’s of Washington, D.C., for the inaugural event in 1981.
“I asked him to come but he said he didn’t know if the tournament was ready for him yet but that he would help me get it started,” said D’Antoni, the head men’s basketball coach at his alma mater Marshall University since 2014.
Archbishop Molloy of New York and Florida schools Miami Senior and St. Thomas Aquinas were among the teams added over the next two years.
When D’Antoni convinced Wootten that the tournament was worthy of his team’s participation in 1984, it was instantaneously established as a national event.
“Morgan was instrumental in the success of the Beach Ball. The first year he came down just stamped the credibility of it,” D’Antoni said.
DeMatha has played in the Beach Ball 11 times. Wootten won titles in 1984, 1985 and 1998, and the Stags won another title in 2005, four seasons after he retired with an all-time record of 1,274-192. Both John Wooden of UCLA and Red Auerbach of the Boston Celtics called Wootten the best basketball coach at any level.
Wootten, who for 31 consecutive years achieved full college scholarships for every one of his graduating players, became a supporter of Myrtle Beach.
He formed a longtime friendship with Beach Ball executive director and former Myrtle Beach Mayor John Rhodes, appointing him to the McDonald’s High School All-America Game Selection Committee in 1985. Rhodes visited Wootten in the hospital within two weeks of his death.
“Morgan fell in love with Myrtle Beach,” Rhodes said. “He not only came and brought DeMatha to play basketball, but he came with his guys twice a year and stayed a week and played golf in the spring and the fall. He was all about supporting the Beach Ball Classic and also about promoting Myrtle Beach. It was really something special.”
Wootten’s son and former player and assistant coach Joe Wootten is now the head coach of Bishop O’Connell in Virginia and is scheduled to take his team to the Beach Ball every other year, including this December.
“I hope we’ll be able to do something special to recognize Coach Wootten and what he meant to the Beach Ball,” Rhodes said.
D’Antoni said he texted Joe to convey that his father was a great inspiration of his and he wished his family well.
“He’s bigger than the Beach Ball, too. For high school basketball he’s in the elite group of coaches,” D’Antoni said. “He did a lot for a lot of young men and for basketball in general through his clinics and everything else he did. That’s what he meant to me.”
Kobe’s appearance
Bryant was the undisputed No. 1 high school player when he participated in the Beach Ball as a senior at Lower Merion before becoming the 13th pick in the 1996 NBA Draft.
His team played in an eight-team bracket that was secondary to the championship bracket because tournament organizers didn’t deem his team strong enough to compete for the primary title.
“That just shows you the poor judgment we had, right?” D’Antoni joked. “Trying to predict things doesn’t always work. . . . We had some real good teams coming in, and he maybe wasn’t surrounded as much with the talent around him, but he certainly was a show in himself.”
Bryant is still prominent in the 39-year tournament’s record book.
He was named his bracket’s Most Outstanding Player after scoring 117 points in three games, which is the second-highest three-game total in tournament history behind Mike Bibby’s 118, also achieved in 1995.
He scored 43 points in wins over Lexington (S.C.) and Catholic Central (Ohio), which featured future NBA player Jason Collier, who died of a heart attack in 2005, and added 31 in a loss to Jenks (Oklahoma). The 43-point efforts are tied for the 10th-most in a single tournament game.
Bryant and Lester Earl of Glen Oaks (Louisiana), who played collegiately at LSU and Kansas, tied for the Beach Ball dunk contest title. In a one-dunk playoff for the crown, Earl leaped over a basketball rack for a dunk and Bryant responded by jumping over three people.
“Everybody knew he was the No. 1 player in the country and he was going to be somebody really special,” Rhodes said. “. . . He put on a great show like all great players do. When you get players like that it’s a privilege to have them in Myrtle Beach playing in our tournament.
“Kobe walked around and spoke to people and signed autographs, and that’s where people will tell you they know Kobe Bryant personally.”
D’Antoni later got to see Bryant’s Mamba Mentality up close in two years as a Lakers assistant under his brother Mike D’Antoni in 2012-14, though Bryant tore his Achilles late in the 2012-13 season and played in just six games in 2013-14. “He trained hard to be good and he kept himself in physical condition and worked at his craft,” D’Antoni said.
Another Beach Ball alumnus, Myrtle Beach native Ramon Sessions, who played alongside Bryant for a portion of one of his 11 seasons in the NBA, was still in shock of the news Tuesday.
“It still feels so unreal right now that I am just at a loss for words, but what I can say is it was truly an honor to have the opportunity to play with him during my career,” said Sessions, who now serves as the New Orleans Pelicans’ director of team development and player engagement. “My heart goes out to the Bryant family and the other families who lost loved ones in this tragic accident.”
Another loss
Another influential former basketball coach and administrator with strong ties to Myrtle Beach – Gene Corrigan – also died over the past week.
The former ACC Commissioner and NCAA president died Saturday at the age of 91. He was the Virginia athletic director when Rhodes began hosting the ACC spring basketball and football meetings in 1972 at Ocean Dunes Resort, where he was the general manager.
Corrigan served as ACC commissioner from 1987 to 1996 and continued to bring the conference meeting to Myrtle Beach until he retired.
“The Good Lord now has a commissioner to run the events, they’ve got a great coach in Morgan Wootten, and got one heck of a player in Kobe Bryant,” Rhodes said.
Staff writer David Wetzel contributed to this report.
This story was originally published January 28, 2020 at 8:44 AM.
