Famed college and professional basketball coach John McLendon didn't hesitate when asked who was the greatest player he ever coached.
McLendon coached three consecutive National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics national champions and won more than 600 games, but his mind rolled all the way back to 1940 when he was beginning his career as the coach of North Carolina College, now N.C. Central.
"When I am asked to name the greatest player I have coached, my mind is deluged by a thousand memories," McLendon said before his death in 1999. "I have seen many great athletes. I am reluctant to name just one, but I know all my colleagues will agree that [Reginald] 'Hawk' Ennis of Smithfield is the greatest basketball player we have witnessed in our time."
A half century later, Reginald Ennis is remembered more as a high school coach and administrator than as a player.
That Ennis played college basketball was due to the vision of Dr. C.W. Furlong, a black physician in Johnston County. Furlong had seen Ennis playing at the all-black Johnston County Training School in Smithfield for coach Howard Brutus Wilson, who would later precede Clarence "Big House" Gaines as coach at Winston-Salem State.
Furlong arranged a trip to Durham and presented Ennis to McLendon.
"Coach, I have brought you the best high school basketball player in the state," Furlong reportedly said during that first meeting with McLendon.
Ennis started all four years at North Carolina College, was captain and the team's most valuable player for three years, and was selected to the all-CIAA team three times.
McLendon, who had learned from Dr. James Naismith at the University of Kansas, was the perfect coach for Ennis. McLendon couldn't play at Kansas because he was black, but Naismith, the inventor of basketball, allowed him to attend Jayhawks practices where he learned how to adapt to basketball's changing, faster pace.
Ennis, who was a lanky 6 feet 2 with a gymnastics background, fit in the new style perfectly.
He was a great shooter and extremely quick. He had long arms and was a great full-court pressure defender. Soon McLendon began calling him Hawk because of his quickness and his court vision.
Ennis was drafted after he graduated from college, but not by the National Basketball Association, which wouldn't draft its first black player until 1950 (McLendon's Harold Hunter was one of three black players drafted that year). Ennis went into the U.S. Army during World War II and later served in the U.S. Air Force in Korea.
In between, he earned his master's degree at New York University.
Ennis spent the bulk of his adult life as an educator.
"He was a drill sergeant in the Army, and he was the toughest man I ever knew," said Harvey Heartley, who played for Ennis at Johnston County Training School.
"He believed that you had to run to play basketball and you had to be in shape to run. There was a stage at one end of the gym, and he'd stand up there and fold his arms and stare at you. He looked like he was 14-feet tall. He'd run you to death."
Ennis taught and coached at Johnston County Training School, later named Johnston Central High, for 22 years. He later coached at Smithfield High and Smithfield-Selma High and was an assistant principal at several Johnston County schools.
He had opportunities in college coaching at N.C. Central and Fayetteville State but preferred to coach in high school.
"He knew he came too early to make millions of dollars playing basketball like some of the players do now," said Carolyn Ennis, his widow. "But he knew he was living at the perfect time to help boys become young men."
Ennis died in 1994 at 74. His legacy was part teacher, part coach, part star player. For many who knew him, he would always be Hawk Ennis.
So when it came time for the Johnston Community School in Smithfield to choose a nickname, there was but one choice: Hawks.
