The Graves County Boys: A Tale of Kentucky Basketball, Perseverance, and the Unlikely Championship of the Cuba Cubs

17. Preparing to Win

17 Preparing to Win it’s not enough to dream about winning; you have to prepare yourselves to win. you have to work hard to make it happen! —Coach Jack story all coaches have their own methods of motivating their players. They have favorite words they emphasize, and Coach story’s was determination. he applied it to every human endeavor, believing that nobody ever achieves anything worthwhile unless he is determined to do so and has prepared himself for the challenge. he warned the boys, “nobody’s going to give you anything. don’t be thinking they are. it’s not enough to dream about winning, you have to prepare yourselves to win. you will have to work hard. you see, what some call ‘good luck’ is nothing but the result of hard work.” he loved seeing in them a strong spirit of competition, and he did all he could to encourage that spirit. he indelibly impressed the idea in their minds that while it is nice to win the regional, it is absolutely divine to win the state basketball tournament. he described all the wonderful things that happened to a team after it had won Preparing to Win 127 the championship. Before they left him that afternoon, the boys were sold on the idea that yes, they would bring that honor home to Cuba in 1952 when they were seniors. From that day on, they shared Jack story’s dream. although they knew Coach story was passionate about basketball , they did not realize he was obsessed with the idea of coaching a championship team. at night after his wife and children had gone to sleep, he would sit at his kitchen table going over and over the stats. he would think about the next day’s practice sessions or the last game his team had played and try to figure out why mistakes were made. he read all the books and magazines about basketball that he could lay his hands on and pored over the sports pages in the daily newspapers. Whenever he had the time to do so, he scouted games, spotted players, learned new techniques, and always kept shot charts. When he could not go to watch a team that he was interested in, he would send someone to go for him and keep charts. one of the Cubs’ classmates, donald Poyner, sometimes did this job for him. on many cold nights, Mary lee would wrap their small children up warmly, and they would all go with Jack in the old Plymouth to some basketball game as far as thirty or forty miles away. she never complained; it would not have changed anything anyway. she knew early on that if she wanted to stay married to him, she would have to live with basketball too. devoted to him and their children, she conformed to his schedule and wishes. he taught her and later the children how to keep records for him, and they did so for years. he acquired basketball films from college coaches’ libraries and watched them over and over. he closely followed the progress of his colleagues in other high schools and of his idols—rupp and diddle—who were then earning their immortality coaching basketball. Malleable and eager to learn and to please, the eighth-grade 128 The Graves County Boys boys provided Jack story with all the raw material he needed for a championship team. his determination to mold them into athletes soon became evident to all the teachers. every day after lunch, he talked to the boys for a while and then put them to work learning the fundamentals of the game. as long as the weather permitted, they practiced outside while the varsity used the gym. he demanded that each player have a thorough knowledge of the basic rules and plays of the game. he would say that it was good to be able to do some fancy passing and dribbling but only if you thoroughly knew the fundamentals. you cannot win a game with showboating. his mantra was Practice! Practice! Practice! score! score! score! even as a toddler donald Poyner was seeing eye to eye with his dad, e. B. Poyner, who went on to become Cuba’s official basketball ticket agent at the Cubs’ home games. donald became class president and valedictorian. he tutored a number of the players in their schoolwork. (Photo courtesy of donald Poyner...