Coach Russell Williamson squads some of the best of era
BY KYLE LOVERN
FOR THE CITIZEN
INEZ — One of the most successful high school basketball teams of the early years of Kentucky High School basketball was the Inez High School Indians of Martin County.
In 10 remarkable seasons, from 1932 to 1941, Coach Russell Williamson and his teams won 298 games.
This included two seasons with 40 wins each.
During that time span, from 1932 to 1939, Inez won eight District 57 titles and seven 15th Region championships. Those were in 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1939, 1940 and 1941.
Inez appeared in five Sweet 16 Final Fours — in 1935, 1936, 1937, 1940 and 1941.
Inez, with only 50 boys in the school, beat St. Xavier, with close to 1,200 students, to win the Kentucky High School state championship in 1941, the first in the school’s history.
Not only were the Indians up against numbers, but their gym had also burned mid-January and they had to practice and play the remainder of the season 10 miles away in Warfield.
Coach Williamson’s edition of the 1940-41 Indians was led by seniors Alex Harmon, Bob Cooper, Charlie Kirk, Billy Taylor and Lester West.
West led the Indians in scoring and was said to be a hard-nosed player. The 5-foot-10 hoopster was known for his all-around ability in ball-handling, passing and scoring. Despite dislocating his shoulder in an early January game at Louisville Male, the injury did not slow him down. West kept playing the rest of the season and was named to the Sweet 16 All-Tournament team.
Teammates Alex Harmon and Joe Kirk also made the all-tourney team in Lexington that season.
West had made the all-tournament team during his junior campaign as well.
West went on to play collegiate basketball at Murray State Teachers College (now Murray State University). He left Murray State and answered his country’s call by enlisting in the Army after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, which led to the United States entering World War II.
West became a member of the Army Air Corps and was killed in the South Pacific with others because of a plane crash in enemy territory.
Taylor moved to nearby Matewan, W.Va., where he was the funeral director for Chamber Funeral Home for more than 40 years.
Inez was one of the smallest schools in the Sweet 16 in 1941. The small country school had been to the big dance but had never returned home with the big trophy.
The Sweet 16 was played at Alumni Gym during that era.
Inez beat Williamsburg in the first round of the state tourney 37-21.
The Indians defeated another eastern Kentucky school in the quarterfinals, Hazard 31-24.
The semifinals proved to be a tougher contest, with the Indians narrowly beating Hardin 29-28.
In the championship game, Inez defeated St. Xavier 35-27. In that game, the scoring saw Harmon lead the way with 10, Taylor had seven, Cooper scored eight, West had six and Kirk scored five.
This was an era where teams did not score a lot of points. Teams would typically score only in the 40s or even 30s but still win the games.
“I don’t think I have ever seen finer teams in the state tournament, well-coached and clean,” Williamson said in the Kentucky High School Athlete in April 1941. “The sportsmanship was wonderful. We are getting so many fine letters and telegrams from all over the country that it gives one renewed faith in the athletics of our country.”
Williamson also noted that work was progressing nicely on the new Inez gym.
“We hope to have it ready by the time the basketball season opens,” he said. “We will probably have more boys out for basketball next year than ever before.”
Coach Williamson, who served as principal at Inez High School, stepped down as coach in 1948 due to a rule change that prohibited principals from being head coaches. However, he still helped the squad behind the scenes, attending practices and traveling with the team.
Williamson helped Coach Claude Mills and the Indians when they won their second state title in 1954.
The bypass around Inez is named in honor of Williamson, who also worked in the banking industry in Martin County and served several years as a Kentucky High School Athletic Association president and board member.
Williamson became known as one of the best coaches in the Bluegrass State. His record was unprecedented during that era. He put Inez High School on the map, made eastern Kentucky proud and showed that smaller schools could compete with the larger city schools.
“When Inez emerged as the champion from some 600 schools, there were a lot of happy people,” Williamson told the Kentucky High School Athlete. “We had won on our seventh trip, despite the fact that our coach had never played the game, or that we had sent some fine teams to represent us before. . . . It certainly is the ‘American Way’ when a small team has equal opportunities in this great sport with the teams from the large cities.”
Williamson was inducted into the Kentucky High School Basketball Hall of Fame in 2017.
(This is part 2 of a two-part series of the Inez High School state basketball state championships and history.)