"Big Jim" comes home to take on B-ball

Oberlin graduate lands job as head basketball coach

Sometimes things just fall into place, and finding yourself in a job you've wanted for a long time might just be one of those times. James "Satch" Sullinger feels this way about his new job - coaching basketball at Oberlin College.

With coaching experience of over fifteen years at about five different schools, it's not that Sullinger never loved the places that he has been at, but it took some time for the schools to grow on him.

"When first arriving at other schools I had to learn to love the gym," said Sullinger. "But at Philips gym, it is different. "This is where I played. This is where I grew up. This is where I met my wife," he said. He has a lot more of himself invested in Oberlin than just a job. It is a landmark in his life, and an important one.

Sullinger didn't always want to be a coach. He wanted to work with delinquent kids. But then plans changed - first, by his old Oberlin basketball coach Pat Penn, and then by Oberlin. Penn holds the best overall record of any basketball coach that has ever coached at Oberlin.

When Penn was in the midst of his high school coaching career, Sullinger was in the midst of his playing career. Penn lead his team to the State Championship two years in row. In a different year and on a different team, Sullinger won the 1965 State Championships. Sullinger recalls one game in 1966 where the two squared up against each other.

Sullinger and his South High team matched up against the coach who was the role model coach, the coach with the golden reputation and winning records to back it up. The game was close; so close, that two free throws in the last quarter of the game would spell out the final verdict.

It was all up to a junior by the name of James Sullinger from the visiting team who stood at the free throw line. The home crowd was rallying, loud, and was trying to distract the shooter. The visiting bench was silent. Swoosh. One down, one more to go. Young Sullinger cranked up for another shot, and swoosh, he hit it again. South High had slapped a victory in Penn's face, on their home court. "And I never let Penn forget it, either," said Sullinger with a wide grin.

Sullinger had planned to attend Capitol University in Columbus, where he grew up. When Penn had heard that "Big Jim", as Sullinger was called, was going to college and playing basketball some more, he was interested. He invited Sullinger to come to Oberlin and play for him.

At age twenty-six, Sullinger arrived on the Oberlin campus ready to play basketball and to study sociology and anthropology, which would lead to later work with delinquent kids. But then he played for Penn. "I saw what he was doing with my life," said Sullinger, who still talks to his old coach on a regular basis.

Sullinger decided he wanted to be a coach. He watched his coach, and absorbed whatever he could. As soon as he graduated in 1978 with a degree in education, he worked side by side with Penn as the men's assistant basketball coach.

Sullinger's first head coaching job was at East High in Columbus, and he has been in the business ever since. He has found a niche as a builder. He built a brand new middle school program of 10-12 year olds into champion caliber performers in four years. By the end of his tenure at the middle school, the boys and girls teams had each won two middle school championships.

When Sullinger arrived as the new coach of Beachcroff High School in Columbus in 1987, the team had won four games in six years. Sullinger worked his stuff again to bring the team to a City Championship, three years after the appointment.

Yet he says that his greatest accomplishment to date as a coach, as a mentor, is the fact that all nine seniors on one of his Beachcroff teams are still in college.

A star Beachcroff forward, Mitch Hanking, was benched in his teams's divisional championship game. He was named Central Ohio Player of the Year in his junior year, above current Dallas Maverick Samaki Walker. He was named to the first team All-State. So why did coach decide to bench him? Because he had missed practice the day before.

In a later reunion with Sullinger, Hanking spoke his old coach. "If you didn't suspend me from the game I don't know what would have happened to me as a basketball player," said the current starting power forward for Ball State. Sullinger still has a newspaper photograph of Hanking, number 35, in a defensive stance during a game hanging in his office.

He keeps in the same folder other articles, such as the New York Times coverage of an incident that forced Sullinger to quit his job at Franklin University in 1986, soon after appointment. The acting administrator of the school had displayed a less than adequate support for athletics. Appalled, Sullinger walked into his boss's office to protest.

"You cannot ask these young men to commit to nothing," he had told him. "If you are not committed to this program, I suggest we disband it." The two came to agreement on that point only, to discontinue the basketball program at Franklin University. Sullinger expects his players to commit. Be a student, study hard, fine. That's the way it should be. He likes the academically dense Oberlin environment, and he understands it.

But the two hours of practice are set aside for something else. "They're here to be students first," Sullinger said. "But for the two hours of practice I demand 100 percent. The team's job is to trust me."

Sullinger says he does not talk about winning with his new team. He talks about attitude. "Create an environment that's fair, and winning will take care of itself," he said.

And so this is what he seems to want most - to be to his players what Penn was to him. He said of his job, "It's no different from parents raising you."