by Ray Sanchez 06.08.14
Getting an award with the name of Don Haskins on it is a super honor. Having it presented to you by Nolan Richardson – well, that finishes sending you into orbit.
It happened to three lucky people at the awards banquet of the 27th annual Nolan Richardson Charity Golf Tournament last week.
Haskins and Richardson, as anyone who ever read a sports page knows, are El Paso’s greatest basketball coaches. Both won NCAA championships and both have received basketball’s highest honor. Don was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006. Nolan will be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in August.
So you can imagine what a thrill it was walking up to shake Richardson’s hand and receiving a plaque from him.
RICHARDSON has always been quick to give credit for his success to those who helped him on his way to the top and those who are helping him still. At this year’s banquet, he read off a long list of sponsors for his tournament and the folks who make it possible. They have helped him raise millions of dollars for charity and scholarships and for the Yvonne Richardson Foundation, which also helps many charities, organizations and individuals. Yvonne is his late daughter, who died of leukemia at the age of 15.
Richardson gives out three special awards at the banquet each year.
This year’s recipients were Mary Haskins, who got the Woman of the Year award, Hector Chavez Sr., who received the Humanitarian Man of the Year honor, and your friendly sports columnist, who got the Coach Don Haskins Bear Award for “exemplary virtues (and service) to his fellow man, community and family.”
RICHARDSON noted that coach Haskins said the following about his wife when he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame:
“I owe so much to my wife Mary. She’s always been so supportive, never complained. In fact, she was the one who encouraged me to go into coaching. She put it to me, ‘What else can you really do?’”
Mary was happy to come to El Paso after her husband coached in such little communities as Hedley, Benjamin and Dumas. She worked for Sun Travel for 30 years, raised four boys, continues to support UTEP and is a member of several committees.
HECTOR CHAVEZ Sr., a former Bowie High student and former owner of Hector’s Pancake College, has been one of UTEP’s greatest contributors and continues to lend a helping hand to various organizations.
Needless to say, Chavez has been one of Richardson’s biggest fans and backers throughout his career.
AS FOR MY Bear award, what can I say? I consider myself lucky to have followed and written and recorded Richardson’s amazing rise to fame from the time he was a little tyke.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw him in 1950. He was nine years old and I had just started working as a sports writer at the El Paso Herald-Post. One of my first assignments was to cover Little League Baseball. Segregation was still very much alive then but Little League had been opened to everyone.
Richardson, being black, stood out because of his color. When he stepped up to the plate, I thought, “What a cute little kid.”
He stood out even more when he hit a long, long homerun over the fence at Houston Park. I wrote about it in The Herald-Post the next day. It was the first of many stories I was to write about that “cute little kid” as he went on to become a star athlete at Bowie High School and Texas Western College and one of the greatest college basketball coaches of all time.
I consider myself lucky to have had that privilege.