By MIKE BEACOM
of The Gazette
Tony Bennett may have made his name in the city of Green Bay, but panelists didn't forget the hopes he once raised for the avid basketball fans of the Stevens Point School District.
Many ballots included the one-time National Basketball Association player, who spent nine years in the area while his father, Dick, served as head coach for the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point men's basketball program.
Dick left his post at UW-Stevens Point for the top job at UW-Green Bay the year Tony would have first set foot in Stevens Point Area Senior High School. The move was the right choice for the Bennett family, but many Panther fans still cannot help asking, "what if the 1988 senior class had included Bennett?"
Said one panelist (tongue-in-cheek), "His dad's move to UW-Green Bay cost SPASH a state title."
As a member of a P.J. Jacobs ninth grade team that went undefeated through the regular season and approximately 15 post-season tournament games, Bennett led the squad in scoring. Jim Lind, head coach of the team, remembers Bennett having a strong push to succeed even at that age.
"He had a great work ethic," said Lind. "His attitude was infectious on other kids."
Lind had brought Bennett up to play with his ninth grade unit as an eighth-grader. Lind consulted Dick and the two agreed that by Christmas time, they'd re-evaluate the decision. By mid-December, Tony was his team's leading scorer and best ball-handler and the two coaches agreed there was nothing to discuss.
Besides Bennett, some of the team included Ben Johnson, Erich Bacher, Paul Bullis and eighth-grader Pete Clark.
Johnson (later Bennett's roommate at UW-Green Bay and currently an assistant coach there), had first met Bennett in seventh grade, shortly after his family had relocated to Stevens Point from Prairie du Chien. Lind informed Johnson that if he was serious about playing the game of basketball, he'd best make friends with Tony.
"(Bennett) had the ability to get other kids involved in the off-season," said Lind.
Bennett first started honing the skills that would land him a spot on the Charlotte Hornets roster with his classmates on the old tile floor of Stevens Point's YMCA.
Years away from driving a vehicle, the group could challenge some of the area's top pick-up players.
"We felt good when we could come close to beating the old legends of the YMCA," said Bennett, who also recalls that their battles with the men, most of whom were twice their age, often caused a few tempers to flare.
Tony's sister Kathi also helped drive him to excel his game to the next level. Kathi, now head women's basketball coach at Indiana University, used to wake Tony up before 6 a.m. so that she had someone to rebound during her shooting regimen. Then Tony would take his turn.
"Obviously, being a coach's kid and being around the game, my sister and I used to shoot hour after hour," said Bennett.
Watching his sister and her teammates win the 1980 state basketball title for SPASH and seeing how the entire town became affected by it, also gave Tony and his teammates added incentive to work hard toward their goal of bringing the city a boy's championship.
But when Tony relocated to Green Bay in the fall of 1985, the opportunity for him to be a part of that dream for Stevens Point dissolved.
"It was hard for me to leave at that point," said Bennett.
It would not, however, be the last time Bennett would see his teammates.
During the 1988 Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association Division One quarterfinals, Bennett's Green Bay Preble team met up with Johnson, Bacher, Bullis and Clark among others.
SPASH's Steve Schell sunk the first 3-point shot in tournament play in that game and the Panthers outlasted Preble in the fourth quarter to win 45-39. But SPASH did not have enough in the semi-finals to outlast eventual tournament champion Onalaska.
Bennett led the game in scoring with 17 points and was later named 1988's Mr. Basketball in Wisconsin.
Bennett joined his father that fall as a member of the UW-Green Bay Phoenix. There, Tony became nationally known.
The school played the roll of everyone's favorite Cinderella in National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) tournament action while Tony served as its court leader.
Bennett became the NCAA's most accurate career 3-point shooter at UW-Green Bay and his 49.7 per cent from behind the arc still holds the record today.
His range came from years of boasting and bragging about how far he could nail a jumper from on the playground.
"I used to always take pride in how far I could bomb from outside," said Bennett. "I could always shoot from a long distance."
He was twice selected the Mid-Continent Conference's Player-of-the-Year (leaving college as the conference leader in points and assists) and as a senior was named the Francis Pomeroy Naismith Award Winner, given to the nation's best player under six feet.
His accolades grabbed the attention of the NBA's Hornets, a young franchise at the time, which acquired his services with the 35th pick in the 1992 draft.
Bennett's dreams of one day playing in the same league with his idols John Stockton, Mark Price and former UW-SP standout Terry Porter, had come true.
But NBA reality set in.
"As a young kid, you dream of making it to the NBA. That's your dream and then when you get there, it's not as glamorous as you build it up in your mind," said Bennett. "There's a lot of travel and a lot of things that are physically and mentally grueling."
One thing Bennett fondly remembers of his three years in Charlotte was a game he played against Porter, then of the Portland Trailblazers, at which his dad attended.
Bennett still treasures the picture taken of the three at that game.
He was also a part of the Charlotte squad that supplied Hornets fans with perhaps the team's most treasured moment-an Alonzo Mourning quarterfinal series-winning jumper against the Boston Celtics in 1993.
A foot injury during the 1994-95 season ended his stint in the NBA after only playing 152 career games.
Bennett played professionally in New Zealand for another three years for a Burger King franchise called the Kings.
"We got paid in Whoppers," said Bennett. "That's the joke we told everyone."
It was also in New Zealand that Bennett discovered a local talent that he later convinced his father to recruit for the University of Wisconsin named Kirk Penney.
Bennett returned to America and in 2000 served as manager for his father's Badgers team that reached the NCAA's Final Four. He currently serves the team as an assistant coach to Bo Ryan.