Editor’s note: This is the first half of a six-part series profiling the 2007 Hall of Fame inductees. They will be inducted Feb. 10.
A man holds a wide broom and sweeps a basketball floor inside a 1960s-style gym built in the fashion of a shoebox, the cloudless blue outside peeking in through skylights. Red and gold banners – five decades’ worth of district and state championships – line the walls behind the baselines.
“This is the part no one sees,” he says, emitting a chuckle over the dull drone of the light fixtures.
The bell rings and another day is in the books at Brother Martin High School. The faint sounds of carousing schoolboys whooping grow louder and closer, until the drone surrounding the sweeper and Conlin Gymnasium is overcome by the rhythmic thudding of basketballs and squeaking sneakers parading atop the parquet.
In walks Steve “Deuce” Martin, donning a red and gold Crusaders pullover with a notebook cradled under his arm and against his chest. Gazing, he takes thoughtful inventory of the man in a charcoal gray fleece pullover and mesh shorts sweeping the floor.
“Oh, he’s a real nice guy. Goofy. Helpful. Always thinking about others. When I came back from the hurricane, he helped me out and offered me a place to stay with him so I could come back to school and play.”
To play the sport Deuce loves for the colors Deuce loves. That’s what the sweeper’s famous for, what he always knew he’d do – give what’s necessary so that young people could progress, because it’s what makes him “believe in the world, in people.”
The broom-holder is Deuce’s basketball coach – Wolfpack Hall of Fame inductee Scott Thompson, A ’96. His program is hours away from a high-stakes Catholic League matchup against St. Augustine High School and Thompson’s readying the hardwood for the pre-game shootaround.
By all accounts, Thompson was a dogged defender with a scoring touch, an integral part of the 1995 Southwest regional champion Wolfpack, the first winning team since the university reinstated athletics in 1991. By all accounts, he’s an even better coach and teacher.
But by the strictest accounts, in a city fabric woven by generations-old Catholic prep school rivalries, Thompson’s a mortal sinner.
Once a star for Brother Martin’s arch-nemesis Jesuit High School, he’s four days away from coaching against the royal blue and white colors of his alma mater. A Big Easy sports lesson: That’s like Derek Jeter managing the Red Sox.
But Thompson doesn’t care. He’s exactly where he’s supposed to be, living out his calling.
“I want to win,” Thompson said, before downplaying the affair. “But it’s just like any other game – I want to win all of them in the Catholic league.”
Deuce is of a different mind. “It’s going to be big. Real big for the school. But even bigger for him. He likes to get the job done.”
COLLEGE DAYS
It was late February 1995. The place was The Den, in front of a raucous capacity crowd of 1,824 ‘Pack backers. It was a sunny Hall of Fame weekend and being inducted was the 1945 Wolfpack, the only basketball club in New Orleans to have ever won a national championship.
And in front of such distinguished guests, Thompson probably played the best game of his collegiate career.
With a 91-77 win over Ambassador College, men’s basketball had collected its first winning season in the new era of Wolfpack athletics.
And Thompson, amassing a game-high 17 points, had not only outgunned Loyola’s all-time leading scorer (Hall of Famer Brian Lumar) by two and an All-American by four (1995 All-American Ryan Dicharry), but he had supplied the firepower for an athletic feat critics of the program deemed impossible.
“We are over one of the humps that we’ve been wanting to get over. No one thought we could ever have a winning season,” then-coach Jerry Hernandez told The Maroon.
But Thompson, forever downplaying the significance of his personal accolades, hardly remembers the particulars of the day.
It’s just not what sticks out when he thinks “Loyola.”
“You don’t remember the points, you remember the people you went through the battles with, who you worked with to get better whether it was practice, a game or your classes,” Thompson said.
There was traipsing around typical Uptown venues of revelry, but mostly a lot “of time in the Rec Plex” with Dicharry, Lumar and everyone else involved with the hoops program.
“I just remember a lot of lifting and shooting. Maybe that was part of the success: We were always looking to improve our games and ourselves.”
When he was behind the desks working on his history major’s courseload, it wasn’t the classes he took that linger in his memories – it’s instructors like The Rev. Robert Gerlich, S.J., David Moore and the late Professor Peter Cangelosi, whom Thompson said was a “throwback, guys that just aren’t around anymore.”
“They were all great Catholic educators that had an impact on my outlook on things.
“(Gerlich’s) intellect was amazing, and the knowledge he had and the way he presented it. He always understood there were broader things because he was so broad himself,” Thompson said.
Teaching world history at Brother Martin, Thompson is perennially trying to get his students to understand the relevance of history in their lives now. “I try to draw on all their influences,” he said.
Gerlich said, “When (Thompson) spoke, he gave himself away as being from N’awlins. What you don’t get is how intelligent he is. When he decides he’s going to do something, he does it. He was a determined student – when you gave a deadline, he made the deadline. He was probably the most faithful of students in that respect.”
After post-secondary education graduate school at Loyola, Thompson received and heeded advice from coach Hernandez. “He told me, ‘The best thing you can do is go back and coach and teach the next young kids.’ I always knew that’s what I was going to do, that I was one of those lucky people.”
At first, the road took him to Jesuit on Carrolton Avenue and Banks Street, where he taught history and coached basketball. But then an assistant position on Elysian Fields Avenue, where Brother Martin is, freed up.
“I wasn’t limiting myself to Jesuit. I would’ve loved that, but I was looking for a good opportunity and this one (at Brother Martin) availed itself.”
And Thompson, on his way to head coach, stayed faithful to his trademark “getting the job done” outlook -even when it crossed paths with Jesuit, alma mater dear.
DEEPER MEANINGS
When it was all said and done, an exasperated Brother Martin student lingering outside the locker room exhaled, “That was a game and a half.”
He was almost literally correct – after two overtimes, Brother Martin played Jesuit for a game and a quarter.
“It was just two teams that refused to quit,” was all Thompson mustered afterward.
For most of the game, he stayed composed on the sidelines while the atmosphere in the stands quaked everything from the floor to the rafters. He paced coolly, shouting directions to his players, assessing the action while squatting on the balls of his feet and bouncing up to substitute players or call timeouts.
But then a hustle play from Brother Martin’s Ed McPherson brought him alive. Trailing 43-38, McPherson lunged after his own missed shot by the baseline. He wrestled it out of a Jesuit rebounder’s grasp, spun around and nestled a jumper into the basket’s twine.
“That’s right! Come on,” Thompson screamed primally, detonating a choppy sea of crimson and gold humanity behind him into seismic cheers. It got even louder after taking the lead 44-43.
Thompson flailed his arms around like an orchestra director, emitting spit amidst directions to his players. The crowd chanted, “‘Saders! ‘Saders! ‘Saders!” to the drumline’s double-tap cadence.
He dried his palms on his black slacks, smoothed his crimson tie and adjusted his white dress shirt. He wiped his now-crimson face with a towel a milder shade of crimson – madly scribbling on the dry-erase board like a painter gone insane during the ensuing timeout, he was a defensive stop away from getting the job done.
The scene and its protagonist were the precise counter-studies to the serene floorsweeper in the dormant, vacant gymnasium just four days prior.
But it was still tied at 46 come the end of regulation, tied at 51 at the end of one overtime, and then it was Jesuit up 59-58 with five seconds to go, after Deuce Martin pinballed in a mile-long three-pointer off the glass, cueing the band to play “Hit me with your best shot” and the on-edge audience to provide the accompanying lyrics.
The Crusaders, however, couldn’t steal the inbounds pass, and Thompson fell shy one basket from upending the colors he once starred for.
And then the teacher in Thompson, forever hunting for the lesson, came out. “I hope they come back from the adversity and keep battling hard. Things are never handed to you – if everything was just success, success, success, it wouldn’t mean anything. You get knocked down, you got to get back up,” he said.
Because there’s a job to be done – Thompson gets Jesuit again Feb. 16.
Ramon Antonio Vargas can be reached at [email protected]
Brother Martin coach Scott Thompson reacts to a decisive, late-game shot during a match against his alma mater Jesuit High School, Tuesday night. Thompson, a former Loyola basketball standout, is being inducted into the athletic Hall of Fame. (Steve Kashishian)
