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Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2009 > June > 18
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Coles: Mark Anderson and the negative effects of LeBron & Kobe
Charlie Coles — who will receive the Ohio High School Athletic Association Ethics and Integrity Award Friday night in Columbus — was talking both affectionately and sadly about Mark Anderson, his prized recruit who hadn’t panned out.
You could tell it pained the Miami University coach that Anderson — the Sinclair All American basketball player and Dunbar High product — had clanked one off the rim academically and wouldn’t be coming to Oxford to play for the RedHawks this fall.
“We had talked a lot on the phone and I don’t know if there’s ever been anyone I enjoyed talking to like that more than Mark,” Coles said quietly. “He is a truly nice kid, one of those kids you say, Let’s take a chance with him.’
“And when things worked out like they did, something happened that never has happened to me before in all my years of coaching. Mark called me up and thanked me and said he was sorry it didn’t work out. No player has ever done that.
“I felt bad and he felt bad and I really do wish the best for him.”
Coles thinks some hangers on may have gotten in Mark’s ear and kept talking to him about playing at the next level — the NBA — rather than stressing the opportunity that college basketball offered provided he meet the classroom requirements.
“In some ways, what guys like LeBron, Kobe, Dwight Howard and Kevin Garnett have done is pretty amazing,” Coles said of the four NBA stars who jumped straight from high school to the pros. “But in a lot of ways it’s a bad thing and it hurt a lot of kids.
“Guys like LeBron and Kobe and the rest don’t come along very often, but a lot of kids see what they did and see themselves doing the same thing and they can’t. That may have happened to Mark.”
I think Coles is right. When I talked to Mark after one of his big games this year, he ended up talking more about going to the NBA than going to Miami. He is a good kid but I don’t think he had the realistic future in his crosshairs. I’m sure part of it is the Daequan Cook factor, too He sees what his old Dunbar teammate is doing in the NBA and he wants some of the same.
As for the award Coles receives at the OHSAA banquet Friday night, it’s given annually to an Ohioan who has displayed outstanding ethical behavior and integrity in performing his or her duties and who is a role model to others.
Among those who previously have won the award are: John Glenn Jr., Archie Griffin, Jim Tressel, Wayne Embry, Bill Hosket and Jo Ann Davidson, the first woman Speaker of the House in Ohio.
TweetCOLUMN: Charlie Coles and the Love Record
First, he had to figure out which gal was in his arms.
Charlie Coles was talking about the night he met Dolores “Dee Dee” Jackson and her sister Darla at a dance in Oxford in the early 1960s.
“I danced with her and next, it turns out, I danced with her sister,” the Miami University basketball coach was saying. “I thought there was just one of them ‘cause they looked alike. So the next dance I resume my conversation (with Dee Dee) and she didn’t have a clue what I was talking about…I thought she was playing a joke.”
He figured it out and soon the girl in his arms was also in his heart. Because of it, Charlie and Dee Dee — who’ll be married 45 years in October — will be part of a world-record attempt on the Miami University campus, Saturday, June 20.
As part of the school’s bicentennial celebration, the Alumni Association is hoping to land a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most couples renewing their wedding vows at one time. The mark was set last year in Pittsburgh with 624.
What is known around the Oxford campus as Miami Mergers (one Miami grad marrying another) and Miami Acquisitions (a grad married to a non-Miamian) have been invited to meet at the Upham Hall Arch for Saturday’s 4:15 p.m. ceremony.
According to campus legend, if you kiss your date at midnight beneath the glowing lantern that hangs in the archway, you will wed.
While Charlie said he and Dee Dee didn’t do that — “I don’t know where our first kiss was,” he chuckled — their family has fully embraced the Miami marriage tradition.
Their two children — Chris and Mary — are both taking part Saturday, as is Darla and her husband. Yet, of all the couples involved, few have a more colorful story than Charlie and Dee Dee.
He was the high scoring guard on the Miami basketball team when they wed his senior season. She was a local girl and Miami product who was part of a singing group — the Fontones — who were one of the area’s hottest “girl” groups of the Do Wop era.
“When we married, Coach (Dick) Shrider wasn’t happy,” Charlie laughed. “Thank God for Coach (Darrell) Hedrick. He saved me.”
Charlie and Dee Dee wed on a week night at a Cincinnati-area Baptist church where her uncle was the minister. She wore the bridesmaid dress she’d worn for Darla’s wedding the year before. Fellow Miami player Johnny Swain was Charlie’s best man.
“We didn’t have a dime between us,” Dee Dee once said. “One of the coaches asked me if I was pregnant and I said, no, I was in love.”
That love was some of the glue that held them together through the address changes in Charlie’s coaching career and their major health issues from Dee Dee’s bouts with cancer to Charlie’s well-documented heart problems.
“We made it because we understood each other,” Charlie said as he began to chuckle. “I’ve always said, I could go out any time I wanted. I just had to follow three rules:
“I couldn’t dress up. I couldn’t take any money and… I had to take the kids along.”
The kids will be there with him Saturday. So will the two gals who started all this — the one he danced with…and the one he married.
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