Got To Do Some Coachin'

(Old Momma gives a last hug to Young Nolan and then steps back. Young Nolan picks up his box. Darkness.)

ACT II
Rose

(Spotlight on Rose Davila. She is a small woman, ever smiling. She speaks with a slight Hispanic accent.)

ROSE: Nolan didn't know me at all in high school. He was good friends with my older brother, Ma�uel. But he didn't know that Manuel even had a little sister. And, of course, everybody at Bowie High knew Nolan Richardson. Everybody.

(Lights dim on Rose. Spotlight up on Nolan, wearing Texas Western sweats.)

NOLAN: In 1960, I came back from junior college in Arizona to get married. Married a girl named Helen, a school sweetheart. We had a baby and then another—three before I got out of college. In Arizona, I'd been a J.C. All-America first baseman, and later on the Houston Astros even offered me a $9,000 bonus. But they wanted to send me to Class C ball, and I had a family by then. I enrolled at Texas Western—you know it now as Texas-El Paso, UTEP. They didn't even have a baseball team then, so I played basketball. Averaged nearly 20 a game as a sophomore. I figured I was gonna set a lot of scoring records before I was through.

(A burly white man, carrying suitcases, enters.)

NOLAN: Give ya a hand?

HASKINS: Thanks. My wife and I are moving into the dormitory. Say, I'm lookin' for Richardson. Know him?

NOLAN: I'm Nolan Richardson.