Woody Halverson never thought he would end up coaching basketball when he returned to Cheyenne after spending a few years working as a recreation director in California.
He didn’t take as much of a shine to the town or job as he thought he would, so he jumped at the chance to return to his hometown and work at the Cheyenne Family YMCA.
A chance encounter with Bill Quinlan at a city league basketball game changed the direction of Halverson’s life.
Quinlan – a retired Air Force officer – was in the gym that night because students from the basketball course he taught at Laramie County Community College were playing in the city league. Quinlan had been considering establishing a formal LCCC basketball team that would compete against other colleges in the area, and he thought Halverson was the right man to lead the effort.
Halverson took the LCCC basketball program from a club outfit of primarily part-time students to the National Junior College Athletic Association tournament. Between 1971 and 1992, his teams won more than 300 games and five sub-region titles to help Halverson land a spot in inaugural class of the Golden Eagle Athletics Hall of Fame.
The early LCCC rosters were littered with airmen from F.E. Warren Air Force Base, who only needed to be enrolled in as few as three credit hours to play for the Eagles. LCCC didn’t have an on-campus gym when the basketball program started in 1971, so practices were held at Carey Junior High.
The Eagles competed in the Mountain Plains League, which featured a mixture of two- and four-year schools up and down the Front Range. Teams from Wyoming’s other community colleges were added to the schedule after a few years.
Eventually, LCCC wore out its welcome and found competition hard to come by.
“We started getting pretty successful and some of the teams wouldn’t schedule us anymore,” Halverson said. “They suggested we join the NJCAA.”
Making the leap from the club ranks to the highest level of two-year college athletics required a bigger commitment from the school. LCCC had to consider whether to offer scholarships. Players also were going to have to be full-time students earning passing marks in at least 12 credit hours.
That commitment increased after a few years.
“We wanted to keep as many Wyoming and Cheyenne kids here as we could, but a lot of them wanted to leave home or go somewhere bigger,” Halverson said. “There just were not enough players that could come in and compete, so we had to start going out of town and out of state.”
A group of loyal supporters established a booster club that raised money so Halverson could make recruiting trips and bring prospects in for visits.
“Getting the visits was huge because we would go places like Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and ask parents to send their kids out to Wyoming to play basketball,” he said. “We had people who thought cowboys and Indians were still feuding out here.”
The affable Halverson was able to convince many players to leave the inner city and matriculate at a two-year school on the southern outskirts of Cheyenne.
Living in the capital city wasn’t always easy for the players. They were accustomed to seeing black faces just about everywhere they went, but were a decided minority in their new home.
“There was a lot of culture shock,” said James Dailey, who played for the Eagles from 1986-88.
“But once people there saw that we were good kids, we kept our noses clean and we were trying to better ourselves, they were more than happy to help us get whatever we needed.”
The Air Force base helped ease the transition, Lovelace “Getty” Redmond III said.
“There were a lot of black servicemen reaching out to us, so we had a lot of chances to interact with people who looked like us,” said Redmond, who grew up in Milwaukee and played at LCCC from 1986-88.
Halverson’s easygoing nature and self-deprecating sense of humor endeared him to his players, according to Rodney Tapp.
“I couldn’t imagine coach taking a class on diversity,” Tapp said with a laugh. “That’s just not who he was. There is no magic script to being successful in race relations other than to try to treat people with respect and to treat people the way you want to be treated.
“That’s what (Halverson) did. We always felt positive energy from him. He had a way of affirming you as a person.”
Redmond describes Halverson as a father figure to several players who came from single-parent homes. Dailey describes him as a friend.
“Woody was a hell of a coach, but he is an even better man,” said Dailey, who grew up in Oakland, California. “He was able to befriend us and also be our coach. That’s something you have to have when you have guys 2,000 miles away from home.
“There might be difficult things that happen in their lives that have nothing to do with basketball, and you have to have a pliable personality and know when to be a coach, a mentor, a friend and any other role guys need.”
Halverson wasn’t a philosopher, a master-motivator or a screamer. His straight-forward style of communication helped him bring the best out of his teams. He used humor to defuse tense situations.
“There were times where guys had their own agendas and were complaining about their roles or their playing time,” Dailey said. “He said, ‘Listen, that’s not what this team is about. Everybody isn’t going to get 10 shots. We’re going to have the shooters shoot, and the other guys are going to do what they’re best at.’”
Even though Halverson had a system that required players to fill specific roles, he also gave players latitude on the court, LCCC hall-of-famer Ron Tate said.
“If you saw something differently on the court, he trusted you enough to make the call and roll with it,” said Tate, who suited up for the Eagles from 1985-87. “He trusted enough to make certain decisions, and that made playing for him so easy.”
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