Basketball, tennis star Kendall guided GW boys through troubling times

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There was a time when Ben Kendall had one of the most difficult jobs in Danville.

Kendall coached the George Washington High boys basketball team for the bulk of the 1960s, during the downfall of racial segregation, and was charged with integrating black players onto a previously all-white, recent state runner-up squad in a city known nationwide as the “Last Capital of the Confederacy.”

“The schools merged and there were riots in town and it was a scary time. It was so touchy that I don’t know how to put it. Everybody was afraid,” Kendall said Saturday afternoon. “Winning and losing was one thing, but you were worried about fans in the stands. … On the basketball courts we had some problems…

“I just kept the kids that I felt would help the team.”

Kendall, 77, starred in basketball in college and tennis later in life, but it’s what he did in between that made the biggest difference and meant the most to this city. Kendall, Jon Nunnally and Ronnie Belton will be inducted into the Danville Register & Bee Sports Hall of Fame at 5:30 p.m. Monday at the Stratford Conference Center. Tickets are $20 per person and include a social hour, a catered dinner and the induction ceremony.

The Indiana native, one of the all-time leading scorers in Elon University men’s basketball history, also went on to win 16 Virginia state senior tennis tournament championships, plus the Mid-Atlantic regional title once, after first picking up a racket when he was asked to coach the GW tennis team in addition to boys basketball.

Originally drafted out of high school to play baseball for the Boston Braves, Kendall was set on continuing his education, and attended Elon College at first under an athletic scholarship paid for by the university and the ball club. The initial plan was to leave school in time to join the Braves for spring training, but the onset of the Korean War changed those plans.

“If I would have dropped out I would have been drafted,” Kendall said, “so I stayed and the school ended up picking up my (full) scholarship.”

Kendall excelled on the basketball court far more than on the baseball diamond, scoring 1,653 points in a four-year playing career that was eventually interrupted by a 10-month stint in Korea with the Army after the fighting stopped. He was inducted into the Elon Sports Hall of Fame in 1976.

Kendall attended graduate school at East Carolina and landed in Danville as a physical education instructor and basketball coach.

He led the GW boys basketball team to the state championship game in 1965, when the team, then known as the Cardinals, fell to Woodrow Wilson. He also guided GW to the state semifinals in 1964, when his squad lost to eventual champ Newport News.

The GW administration asked Kendall to coach tennis, as well, despite having no experience, and he decided that if he was going to teach tennis he was going to play it, too.

“I got to playing with the kids,” Kendall said, “and I didn’t really get going (competitively) till I got to be a senior (citizen). Then I started playing tournaments.”

Kendall won the state senior clay court tournament 12 times and added four hard court championships, too, most of which were in Roanoke, which allowed him to drive there and come home the same day.

He regularly declined to compete above the state level because of financial concerns, though he did win the Mid-Atlantic tournament championship one year.

“And all I won was a little candy dish,” he said. “Oh, it’s really nice. But it cost me $800. I had to stay (in a hotel at the tournament site) in Arlington for five nights.”

Kendall stopped playing tennis competitively a couple of years ago because of knee problems, but has started playing golf.

He doesn’t anticipate similar success in that sport.

“I kind of doubt it,” he said, “the way I cheat.”