MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — While communities are gearing up for Saturday’s state title games in the WVSSAC Boy’s Basketball State Tournament, one man is telling the story of an improbable quest to the West Virginia State Championship 80 years ago.
In 1945, Normantown High School, a small school in Gilmer County, pulled off possibly the biggest upset of the 20th century in the Mountain State, as they won the all-class state championship, despite having no more than 200 enrolled in the entire school.
Normatown, just as Hickory High School in the movie “Hoosiers,” capped off an improbable run to the top by knocking off multiple schools with much larger student bodies and far more resources.
Betty Jean Cross, whose maiden name was Whitesel, was one of the school’s two cheerleaders in 1945. Her son Matthew says his mother told him stories about the 1945 Normantown Vikings all throughout his upbringing, and it’s a story that needs passed on.
“She said the community came together and there were a whole bunch of people from all over the state following it, cheering for the Vikings because they were the underdogs. They weren’t expected to win,” Cross said.
The Vikings were originally led by head coach Frank Martino, but the reins of the team were handed off to Eugene Williams when Martino was drafted to serve, as World War II was still in operation. Cross says Williams didn’t have much technical experience, as he was just in his second year of coaching, but he allowed the players to make their own in-game adjustments.
According to Cross, the war affected the way the team and supporters got to tournament games. During this time, teams at Normantown High didn’t have assigned transportation, and players had to get to the games themselves, and a gasoline shortage due to the war didn’t help matters.
“They were rationing gasoline with stamps because of the war efforts,” Cross said. “A lot of town folk pitched in their stamps to get the team to the away games. It was a real community effort.”
Normantown was led by top scorers Glennard Vannoy, who stood at 6’5, and Earl “Tex” Gainer. Though Gainer possessed good size and played a tough brand of basketball, his shoes gave out during one of the regular season games of the 1945 season.
“His shoes were wearing out and there wasn’t any rubber,” Cross said. “He couldn’t buy sneakers because they were rationing for the war, so one of the referees, during the middle of the season, noticed that and loaned him a spare pair for the rest of the season.”
The Vikings clinched the 1945 state tournament with a pair of one-point victories in regional play.
Normantown was deemed the least likely to win the tournament, which was held at the old WVU Field House in Morgantown. Despite the odds, the Vikings won their quarterfinal matchup against Bluefield, setting them up for the final day of the high school basketball season. In 1945, the semi-final and championship games were played on the same day.
On the afternoon of March 24, 1945, Normantown punched its ticket to the state title game with a 37-35 win over the hometown Morgantown High School. The victory set up a matchup with Logan later in the day, who was thought to be the top team in the state.
The Vikings capped off the improbable run with one final thrilling upset victory, defeating Logan 50-49 to win the school’s first state championship.
Normantown garnered hundreds of new fans over the course of the postseason run, as each game was viewed as a “David versus Goliath” scenario.
Cross says the best thing about the 1945 Normantown boys were the way they went about their business.
“They had painted on their gymnasium their motto ‘sportsmanship always.’ The coach said they were gentlemen, every one of them,” Cross said.
Normantown High School was shut down in 1968, and West Virginia moved to a version of class systems for boys’ basketball four years later in 1949. Though few remain that watched Normantown win the 1945 title, the story of the Vikings’ ability to come together and shock the state still lives on eight decades later.
“It was just a magical chemistry that really came together, and they made it happen,” Cross said.