Recordpub.com - Recalling former Flashes basketball standout Hal Estis

Hal Estis during his playing days with the Kent State Golden Flashes.

Kent State’s extended basketball family is mourning the loss of former Golden Flashes guard Hal Estis, who died at his home in Aurora on Saturday after a battle with cancer.

Estis was one of basketball’s great storytellers.

He grew up playing on blacktop courts in Harlem and the Bronx and played college ball at North Carolina State before joining Bill Bertka’s teams at Kent State in 1960-61.

In the 1980s, he was along for the wild ride at Cleveland State as an assistant coach under Kevin Mackey.

Estis picked up story after story during his basketball travels, and I could listen to him tell them for hours. Unfortunately, I usually only had hours when he could talk for days.

Estis was a family friend who worked with my father teaching Cleveland’s toughest juvenile delinquents at the Harry L. Eastman School in Hudson. He was also my first basketball coach and was largely responsible for my finding a love for the game as a child.

He would often spend his lunch breaks teaching me different drills in the Eastman gym. I remember when the 76ers were playing the Lakers in the 1980 NBA Finals, I was 9-years old and was fascinated by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s skyhook.

I asked Hal to teach me the shot, and he refused.

“Dave, you’ll never even be 6-feet tall,” he said. “Why the heck would you want to learn that shot. You’ll never need it. Let’s work on your ball-handling instead.”

That was Hal.

He always said what he believed, even if it wasn’t always what you wanted to hear. And I appreciated it, as did many others.

“It was one of the great things about Hal,” said former KSU player Doug Sims. “He was one of the most knowledgeable basketball people I ever met. And he was also one of the few people that I ever met who did not have a filter. If he had an opinion, he was going to give it to you. I have no doubt that he helped so many of his players and so many of the troubled youth he taught simply because they always knew they were going to get the truth from him. It wasn’t always politically correct, but he had his opinion, and that was it. I really enjoyed that about him.”

KSU coach Geno Ford played at Ohio University with Chad Estis, Hal’s son, during the mid 1990s, “and I got to know Hal then because he would go to all of the games,” Ford said. “I’ll never forget at the MAC Tournament my freshman year, there was this guy who was screaming his lungs out at Chad and me before the game as we were walking onto the court.

Hal Estis

“The guy was going crazy. I looked up and it was Hal. He was trying to make sure Chad and I were ready for what was going to be the biggest game of our careers. He was trying to motivate Chad from the stands, and it worked. I think we ended up beating Miami by 30. Chad and I still talk about that and laugh. I really loved being around Hal. He was just a super person and such a good man. I never knew anyone who didn’t love being around him.”

I had not seen Hal until I reconnected with him a few years ago while covering the Record-Courier Portage County Open tennis tournament. In his 60s and 70s, Estis won a string of doubles championships. After his matches, we would sit on a bench at Kent Roosevelt, and I would listen to him tell his favorite basketball stories about his days recruiting for Kevin Mackey or about Jimmy Valvano and Jack Molinas and college basketball’s past.

He also loved to talk about his family — his wife Phyllis, his sons Ryan and Chad and his daughter Brooke.

I know they are hurting right now, and I hope it helps for them to know so many of us outside of their family are better for having known Hal Estis.

•••

Contact David Carducci at dcarducci@recordpub.com