Nobody is perfect.
Not even Ray Crowe, though he came about as close as possible during his legendary high school basketball coaching career. In seven years, from 1950 to ’57, Crowe coached Crispus Attucks to a 179-20 record, including a state-record 45-game winning streak and state championships in 1955 and ’56.
The presence of a player named Oscar Robertson certainly helped the 1950s Flying Tigers capture the imagination of the city – and state – on their way to become the first African-American school in the country to win an open state title. But it was the steady, unflappable Crowe who steered the Tigers, serving as a coach, teacher and mentor.
“You are talking about kids, young guys who can let their emotions get ahead of us,” said Bill Hampton, one of five living members of the first state championship team of 1955. “Ray Crowe would sit there with his legs crossed. You know he had to be boiling inside at times from the things he would see and hear. You hear the term ‘father figure’ a lot. He truly was a father figure to a lot of us who were raised by one parent. You could always go to him.”
Without Crowe, it is quite possible the story of Attucks’ basketball plays out much differently. He stepped aside as coach in 1957 after leading the Tigers to four state finals appearances, coaching standout players such as “The Big O,” Hallie Bryant, Willie Gardner, Willie Merriweather, Albert Maxey, Ed Searcy, Bill Brown, Bob Jewell and Bailey Robertson. Crowe stayed on as athletic director at the school for 11 more years, helping pave the way for a modern gymnasium, where the court is now named after him.
Chris Hawkins walked to his chair last Tuesday night on that very court tied with Crowe for most wins in Attucks’ history at 179. The Tigers lost that night – 84-62 to Liberty Christian – and again on Saturday afternoon at home on a heartbreaking buzzer beater by Gary 21st Century’s Terrence Hayes Jr., 67-65, to delay the celebration.
Hawkins, 42, finally did broke the record when Attucks won 71-69 at Guerin Catholic on Wednesday night. But the way Hawkins sees it, Crowe will always be the standard. In his 10 years as the coach at Attucks, Hawkins has been able to interact with men like Hampton, Robertson and Merriweather who played during that golden age of basketball.
“Ray Crowe the man, the coach, the individual has done a lot for the community,” Hawkins said. “When he was here, he was able to get the players to come together and play the right way and then build them up to be great men.”
Like Crowe, Hawkins has players who look up to him. One of them, one of his first players, showed up on Tuesday hoping to see Hawkins break the record. The 32-year-old man, now a teacher, hopes to follow in his footsteps as a high school coach.
“He’s a big mentor for me,” said Ron “Buss” Patterson, who played on Hawkins’ AAU teams during his high school career at Broad Ripple before going on to play in college at Syracuse and IU Indy. “I look up to him. He always had my back on everything and had advice for me. He taught me how to be a real basketball player. The ins and outs of the game, seeing the game in different ways. I get my coaching style from Hawk.”
‘Competitive and fiery’
Hawkins was not happy with his team at halftime. A 34-30 deficit to Liberty Christian hardly seemed unsurmountable. But the concerns he had prior to the game, one of which was a long layoff since the team’s last game – an 83-65 win at Evansville Bosse on Dec. 20 – seemed to be coming to fruition.
Kendrick Martin, Liberty Christian’s junior standout, was finding his groove on the way to a 35-point night.
“You’re not playing to the ability you can be,” Hawkins told the team at halftime. “It’s all about toughness. They are the tougher group right now.”
Liberty Christian, certainly a state title contender in Class A with a 6-3 record and all three losses coming to 4A programs, put the game away with a 12-0 run late in the third quarter. It was a frustrating fourth quarter and long walk back to the locker room in the basement of the school when it was over.
“It’s a learning experience,” Hawkins said. “They came in ready to go from the start. You could tell they were ready to play. I felt like we had some kids back down from the intensity of the game. You’ll have games like this during the season. I’d rather have it happen now than in City or in sectionals. We’ll get it figured out. But it’s gut-check time for a couple of our kids.”
Attucks graduated a lot of talent from last year’s team that finished 22-7 and played for a Class 3A state championship, losing to South Bend St. Joseph. The Tigers were 5-3 after the loss to Liberty Christian, led by senior guard DeZhon Hall, who was one of the few bright spots on Tuesday.
Matt Thompson, who has coached with Hawkins since he arrived at Attucks in 2016-17, said after the game he expected to get a text later from Hawkins about the game and his thoughts moving forward.
“He’s really very competitive and fiery,” Thompson said. “But he knows how to keep the main thing the main thing. I think that’s what makes him a players’ coach and a good leader of young men, too. There’s a time and place for everything and he has a good understanding of that. We’re still in the teaching profession. You are going to have teachable moments and we’ll be better because of it. It’s an opportunity to build and take something from it.”
‘He showed us what it meant to represent Crispus Attucks’
Willie Merriweather was a senior on the 1955 Attucks’ team that won the first state championship in the school’s history. Al Spurlock, Crowe’s assistant and an industrial education teacher at the school from 1942-66, first took notice of Merriweather’s potential on the reserve team.
“I was still growing,” said Merriweather, who would reach 6-foot-5. “I was becoming somewhat of the enforcer on defense.”
Once Merriweather moved to the varsity team and into Crowe’s homeroom, he quickly learned of the coach’s discipline and rules that would help mold the rest of his life. Merriweather, after his college career at Purdue (where he earned All-American honors), followed in Crowe’s footsteps as a teacher and coach in the Detroit area for four decades, counting “The Iceman,” George Gervin, among his former players.
“(Crowe) kept things pretty strict,” Merriweather said. “If you were caught smoking, caught drinking, you were off the team. He knew if you were in school or not. He kept track of our grades. One thing about me: I was a strict disciplinarian. (Crowe) molded most our lives. He was somewhat like a father to me and most of us looked up to him that way. He had a big influence on showing me what it meant to win and how you react once you won.”
Crowe, who died in 2003 at age 88, was a star athlete himself at Whiteland, where he was twice the leading scorer and team captain, and went on to Indiana Central (now the University of Indianapolis) to play basketball, baseball and run track. Later in life, he would serve four terms in the Indiana House of Representatives, work as assistant director with the Indiana Department of Education and as the director for the Indianapolis Department of Parks and Recreation.
Merriweather’s own father died when he was 15, just as he was starting high school. He remembers his father painting a yellow stripe down the side of his green 1949 Oldsmobile in honor of the Attucks’ colors. The early ‘50s represented a remarkable time of pride for the school, which was only admitted to the Indiana High School Athletic Association in 1943.
Crowe, the oldest of 10 children to Morten and Tommie Ann Crowe, grew up on a farm in Johnson County. His younger brother, George, was the state’s first Mr. Basketball in 1939 before going on to play baseball in the major leagues, earning All-Star honors with the Cincinnati Reds in 1958.
But the Crowe family name was – and probably always will be – most closely associated with Ray’s time at Attucks. In his first season as head coach in 1950-51, Attucks reached the state finals, kicking off a historic seven-year run.
“It’s important that legacy does not die,” Hampton said. “I still have my ring to this day from 70 years ago. It was the leadership of Ray Crowe that showed us what it means to go make your mark and show who you are. He showed us what it meant to represent Crispus Attucks.”
The Attucks Way
Hawkins, a Southport graduate, admits he did not fully know what it meant to represent Crispus Attucks before he was hired in 2016. Under the previous coach, Phil Washington, the Tigers again became a viable basketball program, winning back-to-back sectional championships in 2014 and ’15 after reopening as a high school just a few years earlier.
He quickly learned.
In his first season, Hawkins led Attucks to the 3A state championship. Oscar Robertson was there, sitting in the front row and waving a yellow and green towel, then handing out the state championship medals on the podium. For Hawkins, a 33-year-old first-time coach, it was a dream start to his coaching career – and a moment that tied the program’s legendary past to its present.
“(Crowe’s teams) always believed no one is bigger than the team,” Hawkins said. “That was the biggest thing for us: we are a collective unit, and we can do this together. That was especially the circumstances for them at that point in time. When they got on that bus, it was about staying together and doing it their way – the Attucks way. We talked about that a lot that championship year.”
Hawkins often talks about “Uncle Ray” still being with the Tigers, wherever they go. When Whiteland honored Crowe with a historical marker in March of 2024, Hawkins was there with about 30 others, including Attucks’ alumni and Crowe’s extended family.
“Crowe’s emphasis on good sportsmanship and fast-paced, aggressive play helped Attucks become the first all-Black team to win the state championship and challenge pervasive racism,” the marker reads, in part.
The school has incorporated its history with commemorative Converse shoes in 2021, along with a green banner in the gym to honor the 2017 championship team identical to the three titles from the 1950s that are identical to those from decades ago.
“We always want to keep that history,” Hawkins said. “We never want to let the past go. You want to learn from what happened before. I never try to shy away from asking (former players), ‘What do you see?’ And then go from there and try to incorporate that. It will be nice with the new gym to honor the past and the new era of Crispus Attucks basketball.”
How long will Hawkins coach? He has thoughts of coaching at the college level, or dropping the coaching from his dual role as coach and athletic director at Attucks. He has young kids and wants to be more available than the job sometimes allows.
But Hawkins also wants to “leave it better than I found it.” The continuity of staying a decade at one school, particularly within Indianapolis Public Schools, is rare.
“I don’t want there to be a time when there are no IPS schools flourishing,” he said. “If you talk to people now, it’s not just Attucks but Tech is coming along, Washington is coming along, Shortridge is coming along. I want us all to develop our talent in the district and keep this thing going.”
Nearly 70 years after Crowe coached his final game at Attucks, his legacy lives on. Hawkins will make sure of it.
“It’s an honor for me to be able to coach here,” Hawkins said. “I don’t take it lightly.”
Call Star reporter Kyle Neddenriep at (317) 444-6649.Get IndyStar’s high school coverage sent directly to your inbox with the High School Sports newsletter. And be sure to subscribe to our new IndyStarTV: Preps YouTube channel.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IHSAA basketball: Chris Hawkins breaks Ray Crowe’s coaching wins record
