By BUD JONES

Sports Editor
Stephenville Empire-Tribune

If he were a smoker, he'd be a three-pack-a-day guy. If he were a mountain climber, he would have climbed Mount Everest -- twice.

But Lonn Reisman is neither of those things. Instead, he is the guru of Tarleton Texan basketball shouting his mantra of "motion high" from the sidelines of the Texans' games.

Now, after three near misses, the guru is closer to the mountaintop of NCAA Division II basketball than he has ever been as the Texans compete in their first-ever Elite Eight tournament this week in Grand Forks, N.D.

To say that Reisman is somewhat intense would be to say that Albert Einstein was somewhat brilliant.

Reisman is pure intensity as he paces the sidelines shouting directions to his players and tips to officials.

"I think my intensity comes from the way I played the game," Reisman said. "I played the game with a passion and with an urgency that I was going to give my best every night. I want my players to know that I want the best from them. I want their best effort, night in and night out."

Reisman's basketball career began in Cuba, N.Y., a town of about 1,400 people, where he spent the first 14 years of his life.

"It was a nice community," Reisman said. "It was very sports-oriented and that's where I learned the game of basketball.

"I had a tremendous coach by the name of Ralph Harback. When you were in 5th-7th grades, he had this program he called "Saturday Basketball." He would take all his varsity high school players and they would coach the (younger players). That's where you learned all the fundamentals. He wouldn't let you play the first month, you just worked on fundamentals."

So enamored was Reisman with the game, that he went to almost any length to play.

"I found my first basketball goal in a junk heap," he said. "It was sitting down in a creek and I took it home and nailed it to the garage. I remember shooting with gloves, head-mask, everything. I remember it being 15 below zero and shoveling the snow off the driveway to play basketball."

But harsh winters were soon to be a thing of the past as Reisman's family departed New York for the warmer clime of North Carolina, a hotbed of basketball activity. It was the perfect place for Reisman, who was about to enter high school.

"I remember my (New York) coach telling me it was going to be hard to go into that environment and be the player that I was in New York," Reisman said. "He was right. I went there and the talent level in North Carolina was incredible. We moved when I was heading into ninth grade, and that was tough. But I remember that basketball helped me fit into my new community."

Reisman certainly fit in on the team as well. He took over the starting point guard position at Lumberton High School as a freshman and helped his team to two big seasons.

But another change was in the wind for Reisman.

"My JV coach came in one day," Reisman remembers. "He was leaving for Florida Air Academy and said he had four scholarships and offered me one. He took the four best players from Lumberton with him when he left and that caused some friction in the community."

Thrust into another new situation in another new community, Reisman was forced to cope -- this time without his parents at his side.

"I'd never been away from home and was homesick for a while," he said. "I went in as a private. I didn't know ranks, we had inspections in our rooms every day, we had to march everyday. I'm thinking, 'I'm here to play basketball!'"

But it was a time of unmatched personal growth for the young man.

"I learned a lot of discipline at that time," he said. "I learned a lot about doing the things you have to do to take care of yourself everyday. Study halls, academics, grooming yourself, taking care of your clothes, cleaning your room every day for inspection.

"As I started to blossom into the Academy athletically, I became some type of a leader. All of the sudden after my first year there, I was already a captain. I was moving very fast up in rank, up the line."

Graduation brought Reisman the opportunity to go to junior college at Coffeyville, Kan., and then to transfer to Pittsburg State in his third year.

In addition to basketball, Reisman was studying premed to become a doctor. In a lab one day, Reisman said he had a revelation.

"I was sitting in the genetics lab one day in December counting Drosophila flies and I just knew I wasn't happy," he said. "I didn't tell my parents yet because I was getting ready to take the MCAT and getting ready to graduate that summer. I decided to walk over to the arena at Pittsburg State and talked to the chairman of the Physical Education Department."

That conversation put another bend in the road of Reisman's life. He got his teaching degree and, after a brief stint as an assistant at Arkansas State under Marvin Adams, went to coach high school basketball in Truman, Ark.

"I was the youngest (at age 24) head coach of a 3A school at that time," said Reisman. "While I was at Arkansas State, I met another assistant by the name of Jack Hedden, who has probably been the most instrumental coach in my life. He taught me everything that I know."

Hedden would eventually take the head-coaching job at Southeastern Oklahoma and invited Reisman to be his assistant. "That's really where my career got going," he said.

Six years at SEO led to a head-coaching job at Conners Junior College and eventually to Tarleton State.

"I had Ron Newsome (at Tarleton) and Ron had been at Southeastern as a football coach when I was there," said Reisman. "He was the assistant AD at Tarleton when Dr. Joe Gillespie was the athletic director. We talked on the phone and they invited me to come down. I didn't think I would leave Conners, but Stephenville was a beautiful community and the university was gorgeous. I was shocked when they told me that from 1961 to 1988, they had had one winning season in those 27 years.

But I was very impressed with (then President) Dr. Barry Thompson. He challenged me in the interview and I really liked that.

"I asked myself, 'Lonn, you think you're pretty good, but just how good are you. Where else are you going to get a chance to prove what you can do.'"

The decision to leave was not an easy one though because Reisman knew what kind of team he had recruited at Conners. That team, in fact, went on to win the national championship the year Reisman left.

Since his arrival at Tarleton 17 years ago, Reisman has had an incredible run of successful teams including four straight NCAA Division II South-Central region appearances.

"We established this program back in 1988 as a family. You can't believe how many (former players) were back at the (South-Central) regional and brought their families with them," Reisman said. "We've kept this family together. It's their program still. We tell them we don't recruit them for a year or two years, we recruit them for a lifetime."

One former player back for the regionals was Jason Hooten who roamed the TSU sidelines as Reisman's assistant after his playing days were through.

"Jason played here for four years and then stayed as an assistant for 12 more years," said Reisman.

As close as Reisman's relationship with Hooten is though, it pales in comparison to that of his current assistant, Lonn's son, Chris Reisman.

"Chris is going to make a great head coach one day," Lonn said. "To have his experience over there beside me and know how I'm thinking is invaluable. To have Rodney (McConnell) come back (to be an assistant) after playing here for two years is great. He's a great asset to the program."

The bond between father and son was shown as the celebration erupted after Tarleton's South-Central tournament win. With all the things going on around them, father and son shared a mid-court embrace.

"I love all my children and to be able to share something like that with your son who you watched grow up, and you know how much heart and soul he put into it, I can't even explain how meaningful it was," said Reisman.

But success on the basketball court is only part of how Reisman sees himself.

"Even though they call me coach, I think I'm more of a teacher," he said. "That gym floor is my lab. People ask why the basketball court is closed all the time when we're practicing and nobody can come in and watch. Well, I don't want any distractions. If you're the chemistry or mathematics teacher on campus, your door is closed while class is in session. That's your teaching environment."

Whether it's teaching the fundamentals of the game or the intricacies of his beloved motion offense, Reisman says he hopes memories of him are centered on those things that were taught off the court.

"I want to be remembered as the guy that made his kids go to class, that made his kids work hard to achieve success academically," he said. "A guy that pushed his kids to be successful in the game of life. A guy that made sure his players knew there was more than just the game of basketball out there. There are priorities and those are your family, your academics, doing what's right, becoming the best citizen you can become off and on the floor."

And he says those words with the same intensity as his basketball mantra of "motion high."