By Dave Boling, Spokesman-Review, June 22, 2024
Hooptown USA is not a recognized
geographical area.
The closest official name reported
by the U.S. Census Bureau is Hooktown, Kentucky, and given the fixation on
basketball in that region, there might be similarities. And there’s a Hooper,
Colorado, but with a population of 81, it’s barely a Hoop hamlet.
To be clear, Hooptown USA has no
city limits or zoning restrictions, being a vague sphere of collective passion
for basketball.
So, it doesn’t need a mythical
mayor. But how about some recognition of a founder, the pioneer who first
proved that basketball was a valuable resource that could be mined in the area?
Any fair debate on that topic would
include Terry Kelly.
Spokane and surrounding communities
were largely ignored by college recruiters until Kelly began drawing attention
as a 1976 first-team all-stater at Gonzaga Prep who led the state in scoring
with more than 26 points a game.
Kelly signed with coach George
Raveling at Washington State and was captain of the 1980 team, the first group
of Cougars to make it to the NCAA Tournament in 39 years.
“Terry opened things up in Spokane,”
the 86-year-old Raveling said by phone from his home in Los Angeles. “A lot of
times in life we need an example of something before we become true believers.
Terry was the validation that, yes, there are kids in Spokane who can play in
the big time.”
Kelly’s ability to play at the
Pacific-8/10 Conference level was more than a validation to recruiters, it also
inspired a generation of young players who suddenly had a paradigm to emulate.
Spokane author Jess Walter, a friend
of Kelly’s and a lifelong citizen of what would become Hooptown, recalled the
influence Kelly had on the courts and playgrounds across the area: “Growing up
in Spokane, we all tried to shoot that perfect Terry Kelly jump shot.”
After his playing days, Kelly was a
member of the founding board of Hoopfest, the world’s largest 3-on-3 outdoor
tournament. For these reasons, Kelly will be inducted this week into the
Hooptown USA Hall of Fame. As further evidence of Kelly’s multigenerational
influence, his son, Parker, a former Eastern Washington player, is a five-time
Elite Division Hoopfest champion.
Terry Kelly, now 66 and the general
counsel for Washington State University Foundation, was a child prodigy. In the
eighth grade at Our Lady of Fatima Elementary, Kelly scored a miraculous 51 of
his team’s 56 points in a game with 6-minute quarters.
He went on to lead the Gonzaga Prep
Bullpups to third place in the State AAA Tournament.
“When I was at Gonzaga Prep, nobody
cared about basketball; it was a football school,” Kelly said. “But by my
senior year, everybody cared about basketball.”
Kelly was offered a ride at Gonzaga,
but he liked Raveling, and the challenge of playing against powerhouses like
UCLA lured him to Pullman.
“The people of the Palouse, I
remember it so vividly, how much they appreciated that we were winning,” Kelly
said. “They loved the idea that they had a Spokane guy playing a prominent role
on that team.”
With Donald Collins as the 1980
Pac-10 Player of the Year, Raveling’s Cougars were filling Beasley Coliseum
with newly energized fans. And on a weekend in late January, the Cougs swept
the L.A. schools (77-57 over USC, and 80-64 over UCLA).
The win over the Bruins snapped a
streak of 27 consecutive losses to them, and lifted the Cougars to their first
national ranking since 1950.
Yes, Collins scored 31 in that win,
but Kelly also hit 6 of 9 shots for 19 points.
Finishing 22-6, the Cougars were
rewarded with a No. 5 NCAA seed and appeared heavily favored against
10th-seeded Penn. They owned a 10-point lead in the second half, but Collins
fouled out late and the Quakers rallied for the upset.
Kelly was team captain and started
80 straight games, but said he still recalls a late shot that he missed in that
Penn game.
“We had an extremely disappointing
ending in the loss … that’s been difficult to look past,” Kelly said. “But
people never forgot what we were able to accomplish.”
If the as-yet unrecognized region of
Hooptown needed the perfect paradigm for subsequent hoopers, it was the
multidimensional Kelly.
“Terry was the essence of the
student-athlete,” Raveling said. “I’ve coached a lot of athletes, but I’ve only
coached one or two who embodied all the characteristics of a student-athlete,
which encompasses the classroom, the community, the games, their behavior. He
might be my favorite student-athlete ever.”
Raveling, a hall of fame coach and
two-time U.S. Olympic staff assistant, coached or influenced players around the
world – even after coaching, serving as director of international basketball
for Nike.
In those capacities, he’s been close
to many of the great players in basketball history. But when he was announced
as a winner of the Lapchick Character Award in 2013, Raveling selected Kelly to
introduce him at the award ceremony.
The coach and player, bonded by a
powerful mutual respect, have stayed in touch through the decades.
“There was nobody like him,”
Raveling said. “And that’s phenomenal to say because I’ve coached guys like
Michael Jordan on down, and ended up being life-long friends with Michael to
this day, but there are people in your life where there’s nobody else in your
relationship circle like them … and that was Terry Kelly.”
Kelly objected to those who claimed
Raveling was successful more as a recruiter than basketball tactician.
“He was what a first-class person is
all about; his work ethic, his passion and enthusiasm he brought to whatever he
was doing,” Kelly said of Raveling. “He made it so much fun.”
The legacy Kelly passed on to
Hooptown successors was sometimes, actually, physically passed along.
Throughout his playing career at
WSU, Kelly used to return to work the Gonzaga Prep basketball camp in the
summers. The first year, a somewhat frail but feisty freshman approached Kelly
with an unprecedented request. He wanted to take on Kelly in a 1-on-1 game.
Kelly acceded. Each summer thereafter, the young player challenged him again.
“By the senior year, he was making
me work,” Kelly said.
The aspirational – audacious – young
guard was John Stockton.
“He was a late bloomer, but his
improvement was significant,” Kelly said. “Nobody had ever done that with me,
but you could see that he was measuring where he needed to be.”
Kelly has heard Stockton cite him as
an early influence, “which means a great deal, to have a player of his stature
saying that.”
Kelly was initially skeptical about
the idea of the Hoopfest event, which has taken over the summer streets of
Spokane with as many as 6,000 teams entered.
“I said, ‘I don’t know how much
Spokane will support this, but I’m all in because I love basketball and I think
it would be great.’ And then I was on the board for 26 years,” he said.
Kelly excelled in everything, with a
near-perfect GPA and an honors law degree; a successful legal career, and a low
golf handicap.
Yet, when mentioning Kelly to half a
dozen potential sources, the first thing they all had to say was something
along these lines: “What a great guy, such a nice man.”
Mark Rypien, MVP of Super Bowl XXVI
, recalled listening to games and watching Kelly at Prep. “He would get a step
or two over halfcourt and start shooting jump shots,” Rypien said. “Seeing him
play was something special.”
Now long-time friends and golf
buddies, Rypien called Kelly, “an amazing guy, and more importantly, a good
human. He’s got a great moral compass, and is a treasure for Spokane and our
community.”
Kelly’s character surely boosted his
professional career.
“I think that’s a lot of folks just
being kind,” Kelly said when told of the praise he’d drawn from sources. “I
think clients recognized that I was honest and authentic with them, that I
would go to bat for them, and they could sense that as a strength.”
He wondered if having to cope with
athletic successes and failures along the way was crucial in shaping his
personality. “I think I remember the losses and misses more than anything else,
but that builds a compassion and empathy that I wouldn’t have.”
Maybe the Spokane area would have
become the USA’s nominal Hooptown without Kelly’s pioneering influence, but
from the perspective of college basketball recruiters, he unquestionably put it
on the map.
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