Stitched Together by Bob Thompson

Author:Bob Thompson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2019-12-16T16:00:00+00:00

Rupp

Growing up in Kentucky, I was like every other kid not from Louisville; it was my dream to play basketball for the University of Kentucky. Every afternoon after school and every weekend, I’d pedal my bicycle the half mile up to Ragland Elementary School to practice my dribbling and jump shots at the two goals in the asphalt parking lot. Saturdays and Sundays, I could expect enough other boys to choose up into teams, but weekday afternoons I often had the court to myself. During my practice drills I was always aware of cars coming down Ogden Landing Road. I could hear them cross the wooden bridge over Newton Creek and then slow for Turner’s Hill, the sharp uphill curve coming out of the creek valley just before you reached the school. I would time my jump shot to coincide with the car coming around the curve, believing my dreams depended on whether it went in or not. I was convinced that one of these days Adolph Rupp would be in that car, prowling the back roads of the Commonwealth for future talent. At the top of the hill he would see my picture-perfect jump shot swish through the net and pull into the school parking lot. He’d ask me my name and what grade I was in before offering me a scholarship to wear the blue and white jerseys of Cliff Hagan, Wah Wah Jones, Cotton Nash, Pat Riley, Louie Dampier, and Frank Ramsey.

I was the point guard of my class on the Ragland Bulldogs teams up through the seventh grade, but school consolidation had disastrous ramifications for my basketball career. In its wisdom, the board of education moved the seventh and eighth grades from Ragland up to Heath High School, where I was an unknown. A different coach, a different system, and an established team with more wannabe players than slots on the team meant less coaching development time. I was lost in the shuffle and my playing time was relegated to the end of hopeless or blowout games. I didn’t care for the coach’s demeanor or methodology and it wasn’t long before I left the team. It broke my heart.

In rural Kentucky, basketball has for decades been the one common thread uniting generations. On winter nights, my father and I would sit by the radio in the back of the country grocery store, hanging on Cawood Ledford’s every word as he relayed the progress of Rupp’s Runts. As a high school sophomore it took months for me to get over the national championship game loss to Texas Western in 1966.

After two years of pre-engineering studies at Murray State University, I transferred to the University of Kentucky the semester after Dan Issel graduated. With student tickets I watched Kevin Grevey at Memorial Coliseum and, after a summer wandering around Europe, came back to a job with the university.

My first project as a young engineer was to complete construction of the new football stadium in time for the first game in the fall of 1973.

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