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Mason Reddick fondly remembers his senior year of 1974. Mostly, he remembers being the MVP for the North Rowan High basketball team.
It was a good Cavs team, one that would tie for third in the rugged North Piedmont Conference and finish 17-8 overall. Jim Baker, the future Catawba coach, ran the show for his dad, Walt, and Randy Hutchins, one of the top scorers in school history, was good for 20 points every night. Greg Oglesby, Richard Hailey and Romeo White could all play. So could Reddick. He averaged 14.6 ppg that year.
“And I scored 26 against North Stanly one game my junior year,” says Reddick. “The story in the Salisbury Post the next day called me the left-handed gun. You know, like the Paul Newman movie.”
The “left-handed gun” played a bit over the next few years at Barber-Scotia College in Concord and at Pfeiffer. He earned his degree on time, but gradually the cheering faded away. And when it did, Reddick, like thousands of high school heroes before him, felt lost.
“I did some things wrong,” said Reddick. “You could say I’ve been there and done that in my life.”
But Reddick found the light and vowed to devote the rest of his life to seeing that the future left-handed guns of the world stayed on the straight and narrow. Blessed with a good job and a good family, he wanted to give back.
He found his niche as an AAU basketball coach. There are good things and bad to say about AAU and certainly there are good and bad coaches. Reddick, though, is one of the good ones, because his message goes far beyond jump shots. He has a plan for life and he shares it with his players. He doesn’t deny their dreams — dreams are fine — but he also harps about the cold, cruel numbers, the harsh realities that talented young athletes don’t like to hear.
“AAU ball is not about making the NBA,” says Reddick. “The statistics say one kid in 10,000 ever draws an NBA paycheck. Basketball isn’t the end, it’s the means to an education. Use AAU and high school athletics to get a college scholarship. Get a degree and get a good job. A good job lets a man be a man and the head of a family. And then he can see that his children are educated.”
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Reddick’s AAU team is the Salisbury-Rowan Hornets. At the core of the squad are North Rowan seniors Bryan McCullough, Dre Byrd, Chris Phillips and his son, Marcus Reddick. It is a group that Mason has coached over long, hot summers since they were 9.
“Those kids went undefeated when they got up to middle school — in seventh and eighth grade,” he says proudly.
And, of course, they’ve helped North Rowan High return to hoops prominence since they arrived on the varsity scene a few years back.
The faces around the AAUcore of four have changed over time. Recent North grad Mario Sturdivant played with his buddies for years. This summer, East Rowan’s Taylor Weber lent a hand, as did 6-foot-8 West Rowan grad Brandon White. Others like William Byrne, Adam Hefner and Donnell Moody flocked to Reddick from surrounding counties.
Assistant coaches Kevin McCullough, Jeff Coffey, Reddick’s high school teammate Romeo White and Reddick’s son, Josh, have done their part to help out. And please don’t overlook team mom and wife, Doretha Reddick, Mason pleads.
“She does more work than I do,” he says.
On the court, Reddick’s teams have been ultra-successful.
The Hornets finished sixth in the National Invitation Tournament when they played 15-&-under ball. As 16s, they finished second in the state and made the nationals in Detroit.
“They were only the second team from Rowan ever to make that level,” says Reddick proudly.
This year, competing in the 17-&-under ranks, Reddick’s team finished fourth in the state and then, after being eliminated in pool play in the Junior Nationals in Orlando, took second in a massive 100-team Classic consolation bracket. The Hornets were finally beaten, ironically, by in-state rival Raleigh Heat for the title.
The 6-7 McCullough reeled off point totals of 26, 24, 32, 26 and 21 in the tournament and was 12th in scoring. He claimed second-team All-America honors, led the team in 3-pointers and had college scouts and recruiting guru Bob Gibbons, who phones Mason Reddick on a regular basis, salivating.
“Some scouts called Bryan the best-kept secret in North Carolina,” says Reddick. “Bryan showed ‘em everything. He ran the floor. He made sky-hooks. He keeps improving because he’s the hardest worker on the team.”
Hot-shooting Marcus Reddick ( a chip off the left-handed gun’s block) was also typically in double figures, while Byrd and Phillips regularly dished out a half-dozen assists apiece.
“Byrd and Phillips showed great hustle, leadership and skill,” said Reddick. “Guards have to play like college guards at this level. They can’t score in the paint against the 6-foot-10s. Their job was to get the ball to the big men and they came through.
“I was proud of our kids. Some of the teams in Orlando had players flying in from all over the country. We just chugged on down in our van and played with what we had. And we qualified for next year’s tournament.”
No question, it was a big-time atmosphere in Orlando. Reddick said every ACC team scouted the tourney except Duke.
“I shook hands with Matt Doherty and Herb Sendek,” said Mason Reddick. “We were even on TVfor one game. I was shaking like a leaf on a tree.”
But it wasn’t all fun and games. Representatives from the NCAA were on hand to talk to the players between games and they echoed the things that Reddick has been preaching for years.
“It was sad,” said Reddick. “We’re in a seminar with 300 kids and the man from the NCAA Clearinghouse goes over everything that a kid has to do in order to be eligible to play college ball. And then he asks how many in that room, right then, are eligible. He whispers to me that his guess is 64 out of the 300. He was high. Fifty-eight hands went up.”
And that’s exactly the sort of thing Reddick works every day to combat. He says if he can help one kid make it to college who wouldn’t otherwise — just one — then his hours have been well spent.
“There were hundreds of scouts and coaches in Orlando,” Reddick said. “There were Division IIs and IIIs all over the place looking to fill rosters. If a kid is a good enough player to be in Orlando, he’s good enough to be on a college team, but most just aren’t eligible. College coaches would come up to me and they wouldn’t ask who my best player was, they’d just ask me who was qualified.”
The solution?
“There’s no easy one,” says Reddick. “Best advice I have for kids is to do things early. Get in touch with your guidance counselor early on. Find out exactly what you need for D-I, D-II or D-III. Don’t wait until you’re a junior or senior to take all those tough core courses. Those are the ones you’ve got to have for college. Take the SAT as early as you can. Even if you don’t do well, you’ll find out where you stand.”
The battle is hard, but hardly hopeless, says Reddick.
“The NCAA gives each of the kids books that have all the information they need about qualifying,” he said. “Last year, when we got back to Rowan County, I saw my players left those books on the van. But this year — this year, they took them home.”
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