Skip Prosser Remembered

Wake Forest students and fans celebrated Skip Prosser's greatest basketball victories by flinging rolls of toiler paper around every tree in the quad. Tuesday they celebrated his life in the same way, creating a veritable white forest in the center of the Winston-Salem campus. I can tell you from personal experience, it is a pretty overwhelming scene. Who would have thought reams of tissue could honor a coach in such a powerful way?

Prosser's funeral Tuesday at the Holy Family Catholic Church in Clemmons drew more than a thousand people-an additional 1,500 watched on closed circuit television on the Wake Forest campus. College coaches, including all of Prosser's ACC colleagues, attended the services.

Afterward, several coaches paused to reflect on what Prosser meant to their profession. FSU's Leonard Hamilton remembered a coach who was unique, adding the large turnout of coaches showed how Prosser was regarded in the ACC. Georgia Tech's Paul Hewitt found himself thinking of past visits to Winston-Salem. "Before games we would sit together on the bench and talk for 45 minutes," Hewitt said. The Georgia Tech coach says he always looked forward to those conversations. Former ACC coach Bobby Cremins, now at College of Charleston, admitted he has found it very difficult to think about recruiting these past few days. Cremins was one of many coaches who spent time with Prosser last Wednesday night at an AAU Tournament in Orlando, less than  24 hours before the coach's fatal heart attack back in Winston-Salem.

There was much to admire about Prosser. He won championships at all three of his college coaching stops-Loyola Maryland, Xavier, and Wake Forest. He stressed academics. 83% of his players at Xavier graduated. And at Wake Forest, every senior that played for him left with a college degree.

Prosser also found time to take part in charity work, such as "Coaches Against Cancer" and Operation Hardwood. Last Wednesday night Prosser spoke at length with Hewitt about his most recent venture in Operation Hardwood, coaching basketball for U.S. troops in Kuwait. "He was telling me about his last game," Hewitt recalled after the funeral Tuesday night. "Some guy named Moose hit a three pointer with ten seconds left to win the championship."

Thanks to Moose, Prosser went out a winner in the very last game he ever coached. His friends and admirers say he was already a winner in life.