Guy Strong
Guy Strong graduated from Irvine High School in 1948. At Irvine, in addition to being an honor student, he played basketball, football and baseball for the Golden Eagles under the guidance of Coach Joe Ohr. He was captain of the basketball team in 1946-47, a team that finished at 23-10, captain of the baseball team in 1947-48 and was named to the Kentucky All-State Basketball Team (2nd Team) after the 1947-48 season. This team finished 29-3 and won their Region that year. They later lost to Louisville Male in the first round of the State Tournament (36-35).
Strong was the quarterback for the Irvine High School Football Team and a pitcher for the baseball team.
After he graduated from Irvine High School, Guy enrolled at the University of Kentucky as a student and played basketball on a scholarship for the legendary Adolph Rupp from 1948-1951. Guy also played baseball while at UK. While there he was the school’s leading pitcher and was a leading pinch hitter. He was a baseball teammate of two others you may have heard of-Babe Parilli and C.M. Newton. He was a member of two SEC Championship Basketball Teams and one NCAA Championship Team (1950-51).
Strong left college to fight in the Korean War. After the war he enrolled at Eastern Kentucky State College (now EKU) and played basketball for another legendary coach, Paul McBrayer. He was a member of the OVC Championship Basketball Team in 1954-55. He also played baseball while at Eastern.
Guy Strong has coached basketball and football at numerous schools including: Madison High School, Louisville Male High School, Virginia Tech University, Kentucky Wesleyan College where his team won a National Championship in Div.ll in the 1965-66 season, Eastern Kentucky University, Oklahoma State University and George Rogers Clark High School. He has served as assistant principal and principal at George Rogers Clark High School. He retired in the early 2000’s.
Honors and awards that Strong has received are numerous and prestigious. The more notable include: The National Basketball Coaches Association Coach of the Year, 1996; the Distinguished Alumni Award, EKU, 1975; the EKU Hall of Distinguished Alumni in 1993; and the Kentucky High School Athletic Hall of Fame. He also coached a National Championship team at Kentucky Wesleyan that paved the way for other national championships at that school. Strong also won the OVC title as coach at Eastern Kentucky University in 1992. That led to an NCAA Tourney appearance where they fell by 83-81 in the first round to Florida State, who would go on to be runner-up that year.
So he played and learned under a really good high school coach in Ohr, for two of the great college coaches, Rupp & Mc Brayer, all the while making mental notes and then turned into one of the all time greatest coaches himself.
From “The Commentator,” the official publication of Irvine High School, comes this quote about Strong and his starting five at Irvine High: “Irvine’s biggest moment in the athletic sun came in 1948 when guards Paul Noland and Strong, center Norman Christopher and forwards Morton Flynn and Charlie Broaddus led the Golden Eagles to our school’s only State Tournament. The thing most of us were most proud of is that all five starters were straight A students, and all got at least a master’s degree. Charlie got a doctorate in chemistry and got to be vice president in charge of research and development for Proctor & Gamble. Norman still does some work in the atomic energy business. Guy coached Kentucky Wesleyan to its first of many national basketball championships. Morton taught chemistry in the California college system. Paul was a government official in New Mexico.”
Mike Fields wrote this in an article for the KHSAA:” Strong has had nine (yes, 9!) holes-in-one in golf; or that among his high school classmates was longtime newspaperman Earl Cox, who remained a lifelong friend; or that Strong twice played fast-pitch softball against the world-famous Eddie Feigner (better known as “The King and his Court”), or that he played basketball in the Army and was a teammate of Ted Owens, who went on to become a highly successful coach at Kansas.”
Guy Strong lives today in Winchester.
