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- Upper School
Eleventh Dr. Pepper Classic Bigger and Better Than Ever
McCallie junior forward Ryan Wingard didn’t reach his Apison home until after 11 Friday night following the Blue Tornado’s 80-40 loss to national power La Lumiere in the 11th annual Dr. Pepper Classic.
He was up again by 7:15 Saturday morning to make his way back to campus to be an instructor at the Pinnacle Financial Partners Kids Clinic, which brought close to 100 boys and girls ages seven to 12 for a free basketball clinic where Wingard and several teammates were instructors.
“It’s fun to teach the next generation of kids,” he said as the clinic was wrapping up a little after 10 a.m. “It’s impressive their attention to detail. They really want to learn.”
Wingard’s day didn’t end there, however. The Blue Tornado wrapped up the Dr. Pepper with a 59-39 win over Tyner in a game that didn’t begin until around 8:30 Saturday night. Despite a very long day, Wingard led the team in scoring with 15 points.
As the Dr. Pepper Classic has evolved through the years, adding more teams, including a girls game featuring Girls Preparatory School each year, the free kids clinic remains one of its best features, one that welcomes the community as a whole and reaches out to kids and parents alike.
“It’s great that it’s free,” said Khadesha Gordon, who brought her 8-year-old daughter Syx Frost, a student at Highland Park Montessori School, to the clinic. “She loves basketball but she doesn’t play on a team yet. So this gives her some exposure to coaching, learning new skills.”
Jay Watts, the former GPS athletic director, brought his 12-year-old daughter Colby to the clinic, “Because she’s fallen in love with basketball.”
Then there were the Lambs, who brought their sons Finley (8) and Cooper (10) to the clinic. Both boys are students at Brainerd Baptist. Cooper, who plays center on his school team, said he liked, “The five-on-five drills and working with both your left hand and right hand on ball-handling drills. It’s very structured and fun.”
The whole weekend was fun, beginning with an inspirational message from one of the best basketball players ever at McCallie, Reed Rawlings ‘96. A legacy whose father, Dr. Buddy Rawlings ‘69, was good enough to later star at Ole Miss, Reed wound up at Samford University in Birmingham, where he was named the Trans America Athletic Conference (TAAC) player of the year as a junior in 1999 while leading the Bulldogs to the first of two straight NCAA Tournament bids. He later played professional basketball in both the NBA and Europe for nine total seasons.
But his message to a standing-room-only crowd of McCallie students and teams participating in the Dr. Pepper Classic wasn’t so much about basketball as life, and adjusting to the challenges life throws at you, such as when Rawlings was told several years ago that he had a rare form of cancer that would take his life in less than a month.
“His sister was the donor of two different bone marrow transplants,” said Dr. Rawlings. “Reed’s been cancer-free for almost three years. It’s something of a miracle.”
As Reed, who now lives north of Atlanta with his wife Jessica and four children, recalled the moment he was told he had cancer he said, “The doctor said I should have been dead months ago. But I was spared. As you go through life, who are your brothers, meaning who are your friends, your mentors? And what will endure in your life? What will last?”
At the close of Rawlings’ powerful talk, it was time for the ever-popular Dunk Contest, which was sponsored by Oracle Wealth Management this year. As good as all the participants were, Oak Hill Academy’s junior point guard Zyon McGlone was literally head and shoulders above the competition.
Asked about his vertical jump, McGlone smiled and said, “Forty-five to 47 inches.”
Amazingly, he said that was the first dunk contest he’d ever won. For perspective, consider this: When Darrell Griffith was posterizing much of the NBA in the 1980s and earning the nickname Dr. Dunkenstein, his vertical was 42 inches.
The highlight of Friday evening’s games, which were also sponsored by Nike and its Elite Youth Basketball League (EYBL) program, was easily the nightcap between Florida’s Montverde Academy and Spire Academy, a first-year program out of Ohio coached by former Montverde coach Kevin Boyle.
Though Spire entered the game ranked No. 1 nationally in some polls, Montverde prevailed 66-52 in a game the Floridians seemed to have the emotional edge in from the start.
“This is a special moment,” said Montverde’s Dhani Miller, who’s taking his four-star talents to Kent State next season. “I think we all felt a little disrespected” (when Boyle left Montverde for Spire after last season).
La Lumiere coach Pat Holmes has brought his team to the Dr. Pepper before and after Friday night’s rout of McCallie, he sounded like he’d love to come back, though it has nothing to do with the game’s outcome.
“We love this event,” he said. “It’s first class in every way. And McCallie’s a lot like us. A high academics school, good values. It’s always fun to come here.”
Despite the loss, this is what McCallie coach Kenneth White hopes to hear from those programs who play in the Dr. Pepper.
“Losing to La Lumiere was a learning experience,” said White. “I told our guys, ‘That’s what high major guys look like.’ It’s elite basketball. But every coach I’ve talked to has nothing but good things to say about the event. It goes to show we’ve got a good thing going here and we want to continue that tradition.”
There were five games played on Saturday and McCallie fittingly won the final one against Tyner. And in keeping with Oak Hill’s individual excellence, guard LJ Smith won Saturday evening’s Weigel’s Three-Point Contest.
But to return to the Saturday morning kid’s clinic, Davis and Shenise Wallace brought their third-grade son Davey to get instruction on his burgeoning basketball skills.
So what did young Davey like best about the morning?
“I got to see all my friends and play basketball,” he said with a wide smile.
As White said, McCallie clearly has a good thing going with the Dr. Pepper Classic weekend, which has become a tradition that should long continue.
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