Year graduated
1958
Major accomplishments
Had the most points (86) over the final four games of the 1958 tournament; Mr. Basketball; Honorable mention All-America in 1962 and ‘63 at the University of Miami; Won the national AAU tournament in 1964 and ‘67, the U.S. Olympic Trials in ‘64, and the World Cup in 1966 in Rome; Indiana Basketball Hall of Famer
Long before the Lawrence North Wildcats had Greg Oden, a national phenomenon, there was Mike McCoy, the first 7-footer in Indiana high school basketball history to lead a team to the state championship.
“When they wrote the little bio for my induction into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame in 1993, it said, ‘Mike McCoy, Indiana’s first intimidating big man,’” said the ‘58 Mr. Basketball. “I kinda liked that.”
After South defeated Elkhart, 76-44, to win the Fort Wayne semistate in ‘58, the Elkhart coach was asked what went wrong. He replied, “My boys had McCoy-itis.” The lopsided victory sent the Archers to Butler Fieldhouse (now Hinkle Fieldhouse) in Indianapolis for the state finals against Crawfordsville, Muncie Central, and Springs Valley.
Although South had beat 10 opponents on the way to the state championship by an average of 19.3 points, they had trouble with Springs Valley in the morning round. Nevertheless, they won, 55-42. Crawfordsville beat Muncie Central, 53-45, in the other morning game.
“Springs Valley was 28-0,” recalled McCoy, who still meets with many of the starters on his former Archers the first Monday of every month at the Acme bar in Fort Wayne. “They had five unbelievably tough kids. I’m talkin scrappy. We ended up beating them 13 points, but early in the first quarter there was a fellow guarding me who would pinch the back of my legs and hang onto my pants. I got a pass, pivoted, and caught him flush in the nose with my left elbow. He didn’t bother me the rest of the game.”
McCoy has a picture showing four Springs Valley players pointing at him as he finished a jump shot, believing that McCoy threw an elbow on purpose. Did McCoy throw the elbow on purpose? “Yes, of course; he was bothering me, but I never got called for the foul,” he said. “I think it changed the tempo of the game.”
During the Silver Anniversary celebration of that ‘58 state finals in 1983, McCoy was watching film of the South/Springs Valley game with a group of former players. Just as the action showed him beginning his game-turning pivot, he turned to a fellow Indiana All-Star, Edgar Searcy of Indianapolis Crispus Attucks, and said, “That guy was bothering the hell out of me. I had to give him an elbow in the nose to get him off my back. I don’t remember his name.”
A fellow standing next to McCoy said, “That was me.” It was Bob McCracken, another Indiana All-Star.
The Athenians’ morning victory over the Bearcats was a warning for the Archers. “They kicked Muncie Central’s butt,” said McCoy. “We couldn’t believe it. We thought, ‘Where did this team come from?’”
South led by a scant margin at halftime, prompting coach Don Reichert to give his team “a good talking-to.” The Archers turned their 1-3-1 zone into high gear in the second half, and wound up winning by one of the most lopsided margins in tournament history.
“Don was death on fundamentals—blocking out and good defense,” said McCoy, who had over 50 rebounds and a ton of blocked shots in the tournament. “We didn’t run and shoot, we worked the ball. Years later, when I thought about it, I realized that for the personnel Don had, what a great defense our 1-3-1 zone was. You had Rich Miller chasing out front, Tom Bolyard, Carl Stavreti, and me across the center, and Dan Howe running the baseline.”
Few Indiana players had to clear more hurdles on their way to stardom than McCoy. If it hadn’t been for Reichert, McCoy might have faded into athletic obscurity.
“When I was inducted into the hall of fame, the last thing I did in my speech was to thank several people, and thank Don Reichert,” he said. “I said something to the effect, ‘Don taught a lot of kids a lot of things about basketball, but most of all he taught a lot of kids how to live their lives, and he did it by example. Don Reichert was probably one of the straightest, most honest, most inspiring people I’ve ever met. He was tough as hell out on the floor and in the locker room, but he was right down the middle.”
McCoy’s only sibling, older brother Gene, was about 6-foot-9 and 360 pounds when he played football one year at South. He became self-conscious about his size and quit school, going to work for an uncle at McCoy Boat Works. “Gene later went back and finished school after he got married,” said McCoy. “But he wasn’t prepared for the talk, jokes, this, that, and the other thing regarding his size.”
McCoy was far more fortunate in being accepted as a tall basketball player. “I went to St. Pete’s Catholic grade school. When I graduated from St. Pete’s in 1954,1 was 6-foot-3. Bill Hicks stopped by the house a couple of times to try and get me to go to Central Catholic High School.
“But because my brother was already at South, I decided to go there. When I started in September, I was 6-foot-9. I grew six inches in three months. Needless to say I spent a lot of time in bed, because the strain was just unbelievable. When I showed a little bit of promise as a freshman, I was accepted by all the kids from the public schools, who probably felt we were going to be together for the next four years and that I was going to be a little bit different from the rest of the kids. That made the transition easier.”
In the seventh grade at St. Peter’s, McCoy was cut from the basketball team. He was told by the coach he would never amount to anything in basketball, and that he should try another sport. He told himself he was going to come back and try the next year, “Which I did,” said McCoy. “I had a different coach, and it just sort of went from there.”
McCoy broke a foot and missed his sophomore season. “I could have quit school if it had not been for Don Reichert,” he said. “I was on crutches, and he came and made sure I got to school. I was really discouraged, but I hung in there.”
McCoy missed the first half of his junior season because of grades. South was 6-foot-6 when he returned to the lineup. “We never lost another game until South Bend Central, which went 30-0 and won the state championship, beat us,” said McCoy.
Earning the Mr. Basketball tag for the Indiana All-Stars surprised McCoy, who thought the honor might go to Terry Dischinger Terre Haute or Charlie Hall of Searcy. “Although I led our team in scoring my junior and senior years, I only averaged about 18 points a game. When I learned I was going to be named Mr. Basketball, I was overwhelmed. It was quite an honor, but it wasn’t as big of an honor as winning the state championship.”
On McCoy’s way to the University of Miami during the second half of the 1958-59 college basketball season, he nearly froze to death in Evanston, Illinois, site of Northwestern University.
“The appeal of Northwestern was Chicago,” said McCoy. “I didn’t realize it was going to be so cold up there.”
During Christmas break, McCoy returned to Fort Wayne and spent time with the Stavreti brothers, Chris and Carl. Chris, who graduated from South in 1957, had been offered a scholarship to Miami by coach Bruce Hale. McCoy asked Chris how he liked it in Miami and the reply was, “The campus is beautiful and the weather is out of this world.” To which McCoy replied, “If you don’t mind, I’ll probably go back with you. I didn’t realize what a plus that was gonna be.
“When I got of high school I weighed 200 pounds. But by the time I got to my sophomore year at Miami I was going about 250. I did a lot of weight work and I was very strong. I loved the run-and-shoot offense and man-to-man defense Hale used. We had unbelievably good times, and we had good basketball teams. When I got to my senior year, we had Rick Barry and Carl [Stavreti], and we had one helluva good team.”
McCoy was honorable mention All-America in 1962 and ‘63, and then was drafted in the top 25 by the Detroit Pistons. In the meantime, he was invited to play for the Marion Kay Spices team of Brownstown, Indiana, in the national AAU tournament in Denver. Shortly thereafter he was invited to Akron, Ohio, to talk with Hank Vaughn, coach of the Goodyears in the National Industrial Basketball League. McCoy learned he could make around $10,000 a year playing basketball and working in management for the company. That was the amount he would have received from the Pistons had he decided to play in the NBA, so he joined the Goodyears.
In his four NIBL seasons, the Goodyears won the national AAU tournament in 1964 and ‘67, the Olympics Trials in ‘64, and the World Cup in 1966 in Rome. “Let me tell you what kind of a team we had,” said McCoy. “After winning the 1964 national AAU tournament, we were selected to represent the AAU in the Olympic Trials in St. John’s Arena in New York. We played UCLA, John Wooden’s first national championship team that was undefeated, and we beat ‘em by 23 points. I wasn’t that much of a force, but Larry Brown, Dick Davies, and Pete McCaffrey were selected from our team for the Olympic squad that won a gold medal in Tokyo.”
McCoy remained with Goodyear for 21 years, then went into sales and marketing in chemical supplies in Detroit, working there until he moved back to Fort Wayne in 1997 with his second wife, Helen, who is 5 feet tall. McCoy had no children by his first wife, but Helen has two. “Hopefully I helped do something to raise them,” he said. “They turned out great.” The couple shares four grandchildren.
McCoy is happy to be back in his hometown. He says his wife feels like being in Fort Wayne is “going back to the Fifties. She was born and raised in New York City, then lived in Connecticut, so for her it’s a little bit of a cultural shock out here. We constantly run into people who come up and ask about my sport. Her answer to that is, ‘Don’t these people ever get on with their lives? How can they remember details of something that happened 50 years ago?’ I try to tell her that’s Indiana basketball.”