Read the Full Story and More in Los Arcos, Spring/Summer 2012 Vol. 17. No. 4

Yes, he did play in three NAIA postseason tournaments as a Bronc, winning one national championship. And yes, he is one of the most successful coaches in Texas high school basket- ball history, with nearly 1,000 wins. And so yes, he is definitely one of the greatest all-around achievers to ever come through the University's athletic program.
 
But there once was a time when Walter Yates (BS '65) wasn't a sure bet to become a champion and leader of men at all.
 
Interviewed extensively as part of my upcoming history of Pan American basketball book, “Bronc Ball,” due out in 2013, Yates shared the story of how as a Houston junior high kid he was about to quit the basketball team and school. Having grown up in the 1950s without a father in the notoriously rough and underprivileged Fifth Ward, Yates was about to check it in and go do who knew what. If he had followed through, he knows his career trajectory might have been vastly different, and he probably would not have gone on to become a fine forward with Pan American College or compile 973 lifetime coaching victories.
 
“I was having a pretty rough time, so I decided to quit school in junior high,” said Yates, now retired and living in his hometown. “The coach at O.E. Smith was Frankie Brazos, a great man, everyone respected him. He told me that if I thought I was going to quit school, I would have to fight him first. Well, looking at him, I could tell he was serious, so I went back. From that point on, I decided that I wanted to coach, and I wanted to be like Coach Brazos.”
 
Yates first told that story to The Houston Chronicle in 1993, and that is somewhat ironic, because when he was coming up in Texas, the newspapers of the time seldom mentioned any- thing about the black schools that, of course, were still denied an even playing field with the white ones. It was as if they didn't exist.
 
Though he was a super frontcourt star at legendary Wheatley High, one of the greatest powerhouses in state high school history, he never got any attention from the media. At his school, the kids were lucky to make it through four years of education, such that there was.
 
“They called it separate but equal but there was really nothing equal in high school,” said Yates, who eventually followed older Wheatley alums Walter Sampson and Howard Montgomery to Edinburg to play for Coach Sam Williams. “It isn't equal when you're using old, ratty text- books in old school buildings. But there was nothing we could do about it but keep working, and try and get somewhere in life anyway.”
 
Strong guidance and basketball talent allowed Yates, by then 6-foot-7, to escape the smothering hopelessness of the ghetto, and he leapt at the chance. Recruited by traditionally black universities such as Grambling and Texas Southern, he took a chance on Pan American after deciding to “do something different. We didn't even know where Edinburg was at first,” he said. Doing his bit was Montgomery, later to become the first Bronc ever drafted by the NBA (Warriors, 1962), who convinced Yates to come south by sending news clippings of his Bronc achievements in the Valley.
 
“People talk a lot about Glory Road and UTEP, how Don Haskins integrated college basketball in the mid-1960s, and that's a great story,” Yates said. “But the truth is, Coach Williams was bringing in black players long before that. We could have had five black starters. I think we ended up with three, sometimes four.”
 
The program had first integrated back in 1957, and when Williams came aboard shortly thereafter, Pan American became a haven in the South for kids who could not join teams in the Southwest Conference, SEC, or any number of other whites-only leagues. And besides being a monumental move from a civil rights standpoint, this helped turn the Broncs into a big winner. Yates, his cousin Mitchell Edwards, and future NBA star Lucious Jackson were at the fore of the club's rise to prominence. The first group of Sampson, Montgomery, and Detroit's Ellis Appling started it off, as from 1957-65, PAC was an early trailblazer.
 
In Yates' last three seasons, the program won 79 games and lost just 17, advancing to the NAIA Tournament three times in a row, winning the whole ball of wax in 1962-63. Yates still chuckles when recalling the diverse makeup of the unit Williams put together.
 
“We had a nice mix of people and we all fit well together eventually,” he said. “We had blacks, Hispanics, a Jewish guy from New York, and an Irish guy from New York too. A real international team! Sometimes folks would come to see us play and figured that this was some kind of team specially created to push integration.”
 
When his playing days were over, Yates found himself a tad shy of completing all the work needed for a degree in education. Traveling with the hoops team so often had made it difficult to keep current. He had just about decided to go back to Houston without a diploma until Williams stepped in with a solution: finish his credits while coaching the newly created Bronc freshman team for 1965-66, to be known as the Ponies. Perfect!
 
“Coach Williams talked to me like I was his own son,” Yates recalls. “And he was always that type of person, the guy was really interested in us as people. It meant a lot to me that he was concerned about me finishing my schooling, and I took the lessons he taught me to heart after I started coaching. It's what I'd wanted to do anyway.”
 
A successful stint as a newbie coach under his belt, Yates then secured a ringing endorsement from
Bronc athletic luminary Lou Hassell, who helped the youngster land the head coaching job at Jeff Davis High School in Houston. That was 1967 and the rest is history, Texas basketball history.
 
Yates was to get close to the 1,000-win mark in a fabulous career that lasted until 2002, when he finally decided to retire, giving some other young bucks the chance to make their bones in the business, as he had. His long and successful tenure at three Houston schools enabled him to become an expert at giving back, mentoring troubled kids, and teaching them to work hard to overcome their difficulties. He'd gotten the same help, way back when, as every step of the way his talent and determination had been leavened with doses of sage advice and courageous leadership from dedicated men who cared.
 
“I guess I was meant to come down to Pan American, to play for Coach Williams,” he mused. “It has all worked out so well for me, I am truly blessed. A lot of people had an impact on me being successful, and I always wanted to help young folks do the same sort of things. I think I have.”