LOGAN, W.Va. — Willie Akers meant so many things to so many West Virginians.
Akers was a childhood hero to some, a mentor to others, and a legend to so many in his life as a West Virginia University basketball standout and celebrated Logan High School coach. That much and more is clear from the memories poured out following his death on Tuesday.
“I think a lot of folks came to Logan to watch, as we say and is true, the legend Willie Akers and his Runnin’ Wildcats because you knew you were going to get a great game and it wasn’t going to be over until it was over,” Fred Persinger, the voice of West Virginia high school sports, said.
The legacy Akers left in Logan goes far beyond his four state championships or his 402 wins. He touched the lives of young men on and off the basketball court, using the game as a tool to teach discipline and respect.
“You never talked back. You knew how to act out in public. When they took us for a pregame meal at a restaurant or whatever, he taught us how to sit there and how to order. It was more than just basketball. It was like life lessons that we learned through him,” Mike Stone, a Logan standout who played for Akers on state title teams in 1977 and 1978, said.
The respect Akers garnered from his players echoed well past his retirement from coaching and created a lifelong circle of devoted friends. Willie Akers knew no strangers in Logan, and every Wildcat lived to uphold the standard he set.
“It’s like they would go to the king’s house. The respect that his ex-players have had for him has always been unreal. He just demanded that respect, and he set that standard—that Runnin’ Wildcat system—and I hope we still show flashes of that today,” current Logan boys’ basketball coach Mark Hatcher said.
Logan stands as one of the state’s most successful basketball programs, but Akers’ vision took a winning program and turned it into a juggernaut. Winning state championships in three different decades, it’s easy to find his fingerprints on every level of the program.
“He organized it and got it going on the right page from four or five years old and up. The middle school and junior high coaches were on the same page. The buddy league coaches were on the same page. The system was taught from the beginning when you started basketball to the end,” Hatcher said.
Just as Akers drew recognition as a coach and a mentor, many hail his talents as a storyteller. Stone described his coach’s seemingly endless memory and how his steady hand set the tone for the Wildcats’ record-setting performance in the 1977 Class AAA state championship.
“He came in and he got worried and he thought ‘Man, I think they’re scared or something,’ so he started telling stories about when he was in college to try to loosen us up and things that had happened and stuff. I remember him saying, ‘Boy, I didn’t know if they were going to be prepared or not,’ and then we went out and scored 111 points that still stands today,” he said.
In his decades on the bench and the decades since, Akers remained devoted to Logan, serving as a county commissioner later in life and remaining a fixture at sporting events. Counting the likes of Jerry West and Rod Thorn as friends, Hatcher believes if Akers wanted to coach at the top of the game, all he had to do was make a call.
The same West Virginia boy that grew up blazing the nets for the Mullens Rebels never left the home he made in the coalfields.
“Those guys all knew Willie. He was in that club. He had opportunities back in the day to leave Logan High and go to different levels. I’m pretty sure Jerry asked him numerous times, and Coach Akers was just a Logan guy. That’s just what he wanted to do. He wanted to be here and stay here,” Hatcher said.
Whether discussing Willie Akers the player, Willie Akers the coach, or Willie Akers the legend, conversations seem to always end on one topic—Willie Akers the man.
“He always had time, and I think that’s the one thing about Willie that sticks out in my mind. No matter what was going on, no matter how big the game—whether it was a state championship game that he was preparing the Wildcats for or whatever it was—if I called, he had time,” Persinger said.
Willie Akers experienced in 89 years what some could only dream of doing in two or three centuries of life. His legacy is sure to survive much, much longer than even that.