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April 22, 2004
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April 22, 2004 |
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Coach Scott taught players about life on and off court
An hour before Bryon Scott Stubblefield died last Wednesday, he purchased 47 trophies with the names of every fifth- and sixth-grade basketball player engraved on each base. Several weeks before that, he held a ceremony for his sixth-grade boys team and presented awards to his wife, Vicky, for videotaping every game, and to his sons, Jerrico, for steadfast team support, Jerimiha, for outstanding defense, and Otis, for incomparable equipment management. It was as if he knew, at just 32 and already a husband, father, coach and mentor, to let those he loved know it as though each moment could be the last. Stubblefield collapsed and died while playing basketball in the Yellow Springs High School gym on April 14. On Monday night at the Stubblefield residence on North Stafford Street, a dozen youth played in the yard, ate around the kitchen table and talked on the porch of things related and unrelated to the man they knew as a father, or something close to it. Vicky Stubblefield laughed and shook her head in wonder at the powerful presence her husband had. Evita Gilbert Johnson smiled serenely as she recalled the commitment to youth service her son had. Michael Gilbert expressed wonder at the wisdom and maturity his nephew had. It seemed that they, too, as a family and a community, had learned to live their lives for each other, with little to regret. Stubblefield grew up between Yellow Springs and Battle Creek, Mich., knowing from an early age what he wanted in life. He admired his grandfather Dr. Sylvester Gilbert, who died when Stubblefield was in grade school. But Bryon Stubblefield had already decided to be just like him. Throughout his childhood, with the guidance of his mother, grandmother, uncles and neighbors, he was committed to hard work, community service and “doing the right thing,” Johnson said. When he was 18 he joined the Marines and served in the Philippines, where he met his wife. The couple returned to Yellow Springs to raise a family while Stubblefield, always with service in mind, worked two jobs, as a counselor at the Osterling Juvenile Detention Center in Springfield and the Greene County Juvenile Detention Center. Vicky recounted how he also managed at the same time to graduate summa cum laude at Wilberforce University and then get his law degree from the University of Dayton School of Law in 2000. In addition to his responsibilities with family, work and school, Stubblefield found time to coach fifth- and sixth-grade basketball for the six years his sons played. He was as dedicated to his team as he was to everything he did, his family and friends say. As a coach, Stubblefield was a “no-nonsense kind of guy,” parent and coach Bobby Curley said. He pushed each student to do better, and he could be hard on his players because he could see potential in each of them, Curley said. Curley’s son Alexis Onfroy-Curley was on Stubblefield’s sixth-grade team this year and felt at times his coach’s hard criticism, he said. “But I got a lot better, and I knew it was for my own good,” Alexis said. “He not only taught us about basketball, but he compared never giving up to life [in order to reach] success.” Vicky said Alexis’s letter to her husband was one of the most meaningful they received. Coach Stubblefield “pushed me to my full potential,” Alexis wrote. “I would be nowhere near where I am now if it had not been for him. I will always remember him as the greatest coach I ever had.” Other players on the team felt equally confident in their coach, especially after their 12–0 championship season last year and a second-place finish this year in the Kenton Trace Conference. Coach Stubbles, Coach Stubbs, Coach Scott, as they called him, taught them serious things using funny examples. When showing the team what not to do in a game, Stubblefield would throw a goofy shot and make the basket, Ian Wimberly recalled, giggling. Then when showing them the proper way to take the shot, he would miss on purpose. The kids got it, they laughed, and they remembered. Stubblefield taught his team discipline, telling the players they needed to arrive at practice on time and get good grades in order to play, they said. Inspired by their coach’s efforts to find gym space in town every evening for practice and drive them to college basketball games, they said, they tried to emulate by committing themselves to being better players and better people. “He was a good coach and a really good friend,” David Ingham said. “He was kind of like a dad.” Many boys on the team said they would keep playing because of their coach. “He was the most devoted basketball coach I’ve ever seen, and he’d want us to keep going even harder,” Colby Silvert said. Stubblefield found his match in Vicky, who works at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and cares for the community’s youth with the same whole heartedness as her husband. Expecting to have 5 to 10 youth come to her house for dinner most nights, Vicky prepares two meals, one Filipino and one American, to appeal to everyone’s tastes, and thinks nothing of spending $1,000 a month on groceries to feed the neighborhood. Friends of the Stubblefield’s sons, Jerrico, 16, and Jerimiha, 12, and their adopted nephew, Otis Rutley, 12, sometimes hang out at their house all weekend, and parents often call there looking for their kids, Vicky said. “It makes us feel good because parents trust us,” she said. “I’m not going to change that.” Stubblefield always had a mature and giving nature, his family and friends say. Yellow Springs High School Principal John Gudgel taught and coached Stubblefield for many years and, he said, always knew him as a “well-grounded and meticulous” person who understood what he needed to do to be a “dedicated family man and a giver to the community,” Gudgel said. Local resident and coach Terry Lawson, who is 44, thinks of Stubblefield as his mentor. Lawson said Stubblefield’s reflective insight helped him see his own son’s strengths and weaknesses and become a more guiding parent. “It’s hard as a parent to see your own kid,” Lawson said. “Bryon was just 26 at the time, but he was mature beyond his years.” Though Stubblefield spent a lot of time helping and guiding youth outside his family, his sons understood their father wanted to help others in the way he helped them. “He pushed me a lot, and he was hard on my friends too because he knew their potential too,” Jerrico said of his father. “I’ll miss my dad’s voice yelling at us at the games.” With most of her family still in the Philippines, Vicky relies on support from Stubblefield’s uncle, Michael Gilbert, who is helping arrange a funeral service, which will be held Thursday, April 22, at 1 p.m., at Greater Grace Temple, 380 West Leffel Lane in Springfield. The family has also created the Bryon Scott Stubblefield Basketball Scholarship fund at US Bank to which friends can donate in lieu of flowers. It’s what Stubblefield would have wanted, Vicky said. “I know how he thinks,” she said. “Instead of flowers, better to use the money for others.”
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