I woke up this morning to read that Frank Layden was receiving the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Basketball Coaches. You can read about it here: https://www.nba.com/article/2019/06/02/frank-layden-2019-lifetime-achievement-award-recipient. It brought up some memories, and I thought I’d put them into words. So here’s my Frank Layden story. …
As anybody who knows me already knows, I loved basketball while growing up. I was already pretty much at my full height by the time I started 9th grade, so I ended up playing center and forward on our JV team (we had a really short team!).
Sophomore year was the only year that I played hoops that I actually started. I was usually going against guys that were 3-4 inches taller. I learned to block out and play positional defense, but I still ended up fouling out about half the time. I can still tell you my career JV highs were 8 points and 11 rebounds (in different games).
At the end of the school year, around this time in June, they did an athletic banquet for the first time, and Frank Layden — then Niagara coach — was invited as guest speaker.
This was like a visit from another world to us. Nobody I’d ever heard of came to little Cattaraugus, at least as far as the 16-year-old me knew, and here was FRANK LAYDEN. He gave a funny and self-deprecating speech.
When it came time for the awards, they only gave out one for JV boys basketball, the Tom Ayrhart Award.
We all expected it to go to one of the good players, but then the coach started talking about the player who hitch-hiked the five miles to practices and game and hitch-hiked home again (because my dad worked second shift and my mom didn’t drive), but never missed a practice or a game. They were talking about the kid who always boxed out and didn’t back down from the tall guys.
Then they were calling my name? And people were standing in an ovation? What the heck was happening there. Everything blurred together.
Afterward, I was standing in the hall outside of the gym where we held the banquet, holding my trophy, when Frank Layden walked out of the gym, stopped for a moment and shook my hand and said, “Congratulations, son, that was quite an honor,” and then headed out to his car.
It wasn’t anything big, but that night Frank Layden helped me feel like I was on top of the world. I mean, I knew basketball and I knew who Frank Layden was. Obviously, it was a moment that has stuck with me to this day.
So thanks, Frank. And congratulations, sir, that’s quite an honor.
My parents weren’t there that night. Dad would have been working and I would have just told them I’d be home a bit later from practice that night. I think somebody offered me a ride home that night.