PROUD ALUMNUS: Championship-winning coach credits Gaston College for changing the lives of him and his family

Gastonia's Leonard Hamilton is likely the most famous alumnus of Gaston College.

He's also one of the most proud of his school, an opinion he shared when he talked about how his life was forever altered for the better by his playing basketball at Gaston College in the 1960s during his induction speech into the National Junior College Athletic Association Hall of Fame on June 8.

"I was a youngster who had no direction or idea how to get to where I wanted to go," Hamilton said. "Me going to college changed the whole culture of my family and my life. And I'm forever grateful for the opportunity I received from Gaston College."

Hamilton, now the winningest coach in the history of Florida State men's basketball and the fifth all-time winningest coach in Atlantic Coast Conference history, has been a college head coach for 33 years.

He began his coaching career as an assistant at Austin Peay State University and at the University of Kentucky. He became a head coach at Oklahoma State in 1986 (with former Gaston College athletic director David "Dickey" Nutt on his coaching staff) and later was head coach at the University of Miami, for the NBA's Washington Wizards and at Florida State.

Entering the 2023-24 season, Hamilton has a 645-538 overall head coaching record that includes 426-265 at Florida State.

When Hamilton came to Gaston College, he had just been a part of the last All-African-American graduating class at Highland High School in 1966. At Gaston College, he and Highland Tech teammate Larry Thompson were the first African-American athletes in school history for new head coach Pete Brooks.

And Hamilton thrived on the court along with white teammate Jim Turpin of Gastonia's Hunter Huss High School. The high-scoring duo helped Gaston College to a 16-2 record in the 1966-67 season and a 19-15 record in the 1967-68 season with the school's first-ever national postseason appearance.

Turpin, who died in 1999, would become the school's first 1,000-point career scorer - he finished with 1,074 points - before playing on UNC Charlotte's first basketball championship team and later coaching junior high and high school basketball in the Gaston County School system.

Hamilton scored 971 points in his two-year career, highlighted by a single-game, school-record 54-point effort during his senior season.

"I was about 10 days from enlisting in the Army," Hamilton said of his mindset in the fall of 1966. "But coach Brooks was persistent. I think he came looking for me about 10 times before I finally talked to him. And it's the best decision I ever made and one that wasn't necessarily common for people in my community.
"You know, I was a pretty confident kid back then and I'm not sure I would've come home from Vietnam if I had taken that confidence over there with me."

Former Gastonia mayor Earl Groves, then a member of the Gaston College Board of Trustees, and Brooks helped Hamilton get a scholarship to Tennessee-Martin. There, Hamilton was a two-year standout before starting his coaching career.

During that career, Hamilton has been named UPI National Coach of the Year (1995), Big East Coach of the Year (1995, 1999), ACC Coach of the Year (2009, 2012, 2020) and won the prestigious Ben Jobe Award (2021). That made him the only coach to be named coach of the year in both the Big East and ACC and in 2012 became the first African-American coach in ACC history to win the league tournament in 2012.

"It all goes back to what got from the junior college in my hometown," Hamilton said. "I'm always going to support the mission junior college because of the opportunity I was given. I'm forever grateful."

Hamilton was inducted along with NCAA championship-winning basketball coach and Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer Nolan Richardson, U.S. Olympic track star Brittney Reese, multi-time major league baseball All-Star and Baseball Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett and multi-level, multi-time championship-winning soccer coach Bruce Arena.

Also honored were the Difference Maker Award winner (Brian Rozzelle) and the NJCAA's four annual individual student-athlete awards – the Champion Award (Colby McDivitt of Prairie State, Ill.), the Betty Jo Graber Female Student-Athlete of the Year (Gina Miller of Indian River State, Fla., the David Rowlands Male Student-Athlete of the Year (Jackson Filer of Iowa Western), and the Lea Plarski Award for sportsmanship, leadership, community service, academic excellence, and athletic ability (Michelle Thao of Surry Community College).