White, Harris Headline CPASS Event


Major Harris	Pat White

The West Virginia University College of Physical Activity and Sport Sciences is presenting an all-day event on Friday, April 24, commemorating the May 17, 1954, decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, Brown v. Board of Education, which declared separate but equal public schools unconstitutional.

That decision eventually opened the door for athletes of all races to attend colleges or universities of their choosing.

At WVU, our path to becoming a multicultural campus began in 1961 when Morgantown’s Phil Edwards broke the color barrier as a member of the Mountaineer track & field team with Edwards eventually winning a Southern Conference championship in the triple jump.

A year later, in the fall of 1962, the Mountaineer football team recruited the first two African-American players to play in the Southern Conference – fullback Dick Leftridge and guard Roger Alford.

Three years after that, in 1965, the West Virginia University men’s basketball team enhanced WVU’s diversified campus by adding Ron “Fritz” Williams, Jimmy Lewis, Ed Harvard and Norman Holmes to its roster.

Soon, all Mountaineer sports were integrated - including a growing women’s athletic program - when Dunbar High’s Cheryl Nabors joined the women’s track team in 1976. That opened the door for outstanding female athletes such as Shirley Robinson (women’s tennis), J.D. Drummonds (women’s basketball) and Cathy Parson (women’s basketball) to bring their exploits to West Virginia University for Mountaineer fans to enjoy.

CPASS is planning an all-day discussion on this landmark decision and its impact on West Virginia University at the Erickson Alumni Center on Friday. Beginning at 9 a.m., the event kicks off with a large panel of WVU’s Pioneering African-American men’s athletes and continues at 10 a.m. with Pioneering African-American quarterbacks, featuring Major Harris, Pat White, Rasheed Marshall and Darren Studstill.

At 11 a.m., there is a panel discussion with Pioneering African-American women featuring Yvette Spratling (Clark), Cathy Parson, Cheryl Nabors (Phillips) and Shirley Robinson.

At 1:30 p.m., the discussion continues with a Tribute to African-American coaches with Ron Brown (men’s basketball assistant coach), Garrett Ford (football assistant coach) and Marlon LeBlanc (men’s soccer coach) presiding.

The afternoon concludes at 2:30 p.m. with a media presentation on the impact of integration at WVU, with Warren Baker, former Wheeling Intelligencer sports editor Doug Huff and me fielding questions.

It should be a very interesting (and informative) afternoon, that’s for sure, with the public welcome to attend.

Briefly …

- Sticking on the theme of pioneering African-American athletes at West Virginia University, here is a small sampling of some of our great pioneers:

First African-American male athlete – Phil Edwards, men’s track, 1961

First African-American female athlete – Cheryl Nabors, women’s track, 1976

First African-American head coach – Marlon LeBlanc, men’s soccer, 2006

First African-American men’s assistant coach – Garrett Ford, football, 1970

First African-American men’s basketball graduate assistant coach – Jackie Joe Robinson, 1974

First African-American men’s basketball assistant coach – Ron Brown, 1986

First African-American women’s basketball assistant coach – Regina Woods, 1993

First African-American Olympic sports assistant coach – Nate Carr, 1985

First African-American athletic administrator – Garrett Ford, 1977

First African-American football players – Dick Leftridge and Roger Alford, 1962

First African-American men’s basketball players – Jim Lewis, Ron Williams, Ed Harvard and Norman Holmes, 1964

First African-American starting quarterback – Ben Williams, 1973

First all African-American starting five in men’s basketball – Levi Phillips, Eartha Faust, Warren Baker, Jerome Anderson and Larry Carr, 1974

First all African-American starting five in women’s basketball – Ashley Powell, Britney Davis-White, LaQuita Owens, Chakia Cole and Olayinka Sanni, 2006

It’s pretty inspiring when you consider the obstacles that they had to overcome to make things so much easier for those coming after them. West Virginia University is a much better place because of them.

- The forecast for Saturday’s Gold-Blue Spring Game is calling for late afternoon showers and temperatures in the high 50s. Weather has always been a wild card for this event and is one of the reasons we’ve seen a decline in attendance dating back to 2011 when an estimated 22,000 attended Dana Holgorsen’s first spring game that year.

Since then, spring game attendance estimates have ranged right around 10K, which is what is expected for Saturday.

For those of you coming to Morgantown, be sure to check out our Spring Game Parking Guidelines and also our Spring Game Information, released earlier this week.

For those of you who can’t be here in person, the game will be televised live on West Virginia Media stations throughout the state with radio coverage being handled by the Mountaineer Sports Network from IMG, including online through leanStream, the mobile app WVU GameDay and satellite radio (Sirius 93/XM 199).

- By the way, I would encourage those of you coming to Morgantown for Saturday’s spring game to stop by the new Monongalia County Ballpark to take in West Virginia’s key Big 12 series against Kansas. First pitch on Saturday is scheduled for 4 p.m., which gives you plenty of time to get across town to the University Town Centre to see most of the action.

It is well worth the effort.


	This tweet resulted in an appearance on SportsCenter for the West Virginia University women's basketball program.

- And finally, in the last few months West Virginia University athletics has really benefitted from the power of social media.

When Make-A-Wish set up Nicholas Wince’s day with the Mountaineer men’s basketball team back in February the Athletic Communications Office was able to immediately distribute a video of Nicholas’s visit to Morgantown via YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to thousands of fans.

The photo of Nicholas signing his letter with the Mountaineers was re-tweeted 781 times and favorite 673 times. The Facebook video of his meeting with Coach Bob Huggins was viewed more than 65,000 times, reaching more than 149,000 people. The video of him signing reached more than 605,000 people and was shared 2,600 times.

“We try to utilize social media to promote our teams and initiatives on a daily basis,” assistant athletic director of sports marketing Nathaniel Zinn said. “It's a powerful tool and a great way to connect with our fan base, and it's been a unique way to show behind-the-scenes content to our fans that also sometimes reaches a national level.”

One of those shares reached ESPN, which eventually produced a feature that ran on SportsCenter.

Something similar happened with women’s basketball when coach Mike Carey’s supreme act of sportsmanship late in a WNIT victory over Villanova enabled Wildcat senior Emily Leer to score her 1,000^th career point.

Following a timeout and with the game in hand, Carey instructed his players to foul Leer to send her to the free throw line where she was able to reach the milestone.

The video of that act of sportsmanship was viewed 793,315 times and reached 1.8 million people on Facebook. It was also liked more than 16,000 times and had nearly 4,000 shares.

The publicity generated from that enabled the story to be picked up by espnW, SportsCenter, Sports Illustrated, USA Today and other media outlets.

“I have worked on three national, viral stories,” said Russell Luna, associate sports information director in charge of women’s basketball, “but nothing like this. The media propelled the other two stories I was involved with and this was the first ‘organic’ social media post that went viral. I never sent it to any media outlet ahead of time; it was all because of shares and comments.”

Baseball sports information director Grant Dovey also had great success using social media to get a tremendous play Taylor Munden made at Kansas State as the No. 1 “Play of the Day” on SportsCenter.

Dovey’s initial tweet of the video had 30,590 impressions and 2,239 engagements, one of those, of course, reaching ESPN’s research staff. Within a matter of hours, ESPN captured the video and had it ready for that evening’s late telecast.

That’s three great examples of how West Virginia University is utilizing this new form of communication to its advantage.

And that is a far cry from the days when SID Eddie Barrett used to beg Sports Illustrated’s Jeremiah Tax to travel to Morgantown to profile West Virginia University’s great Jerry West (he wouldn’t come), or Shelly Poe sending out postcards of Major Harris’ Saturday afternoon exploits on Monday morning in the hope that it would arrive in the mailbox of influential Heisman Trophy voters before the following week’s game.

Public relations works a little bit faster these days, that’s for sure.

Have a great weekend!

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