This week on the WUKY SportsPage Keith Elkins catches up with basketball great, J.R. VanHoose who in 1996 led the Paintsville Tigers to the state championship. He talks about that and many more experiences in the sport he loves.
J.R. VanHoose made history in basketball, and now he’s helping to preserve it through his work with the Mountain Sports Hall of Fame, inspired in part by his friendship with the late basketball legend “King” Kelly Coleman. VanHoose, a former Paintsville High School star who played in four boys’ state tournaments and helped lead the Tigers to the 1996 state championship, was Kentucky’s Mr. Basketball in 1998 and a Parade All-American. He scored more than 3,000 points and pulled down more than 2,000 rebounds in his high school career. Recruited by many of the nation’s best-known programs, he went on to play college basketball at Marshall University, and at the time he finished his career, he was in Marshall’s all-time top five in scoring and second in rebounding. He is a member of the Kentucky High School Basketball Hall of Fame, the KHSAA Hall of Fame, and the Marshall University Athletic Hall of Fame. Now a teacher and coach at Johnson Central High School, he has helped lead the renovation of the Mountain Sports Hall of Fame, which honors sports figures and teams from eastern Kentucky. The Mountain Sports Hall of Fame is located in the Wayland High School gym in Floyd County, where Coleman scored many of record-setting 4,000-plus points from 1953-56. VanHoose became friends with Coleman, and they remained close.
