Aurora has long had a love affair with its high school basketball teams — now over a century long for the boys’ teams at East and West Aurora high schools.
There have been star players and colorful coaches whose legacies live on whenever fans young and old gather to relive exciting hoops memories.
The IHSA website lists retired coaches Gordie Kerkman of West Aurora and Don Davidson of Aurora Christian as the longest tenured boys’ basketball coaches in the City of Lights. Kerkman led the program for 39 years, and Davidson was the head man for 31.
A milestone was reached in 2017 at East Aurora High School, however, as Wendell Jeffries became the longest tenured coach at the school, finishing his 16th and final year. Citywide, he is the third longest serving boys’ basketball coach since record-keeping began in 1910.
And among all the successful mentors at Aurora’s public high schools, he is among those who grew up in the community and who graduated from the school whose program he would eventually lead.
Although Jeffries was born in Mississippi as one of 15 children, he moved to Aurora with his mom and many of his siblings when he was 9.
He recalled that for the first year in Aurora, the family crammed into a two-bedroom house, and then moved to the Southwind Apartments near Montgomery Road. He attended two East Aurora District 131 elementary schools from fourth to sixth grade.
“I was just a kid having fun playing sports, and didn’t have a clue about what I wanted to do,” Jeffries remembered. “We were poor, but I just didn’t know it. We were so enriched with people from the community and the kids we grew up with.”
Continuing as a student and athlete at Waldo Middle School, he began to experience the “tradition” that many parents and older siblings had helped to create.
“A difference now is that many kids might not have that tradition to follow,” he said.
After playing three sports in middle school, he continued to East Aurora High School and became an all-conference football and baseball player, and a captain in basketball.
“My main influence in football was Coach Schindel, my ninth- and 10th-grade coach — a very big influence,” Jeffries said. “Mr. Thorsen, my counselor, made sure I took typing when I didn’t think I needed it, some of the best advice I ever got.
“Coach Pensyl was my sophomore basketball coach and was supportive of me when I played varsity. That’s when I first thought about becoming a coach. He encouraged my being a leader.”
Jeffries’ thoughts of becoming a teacher and coach grew as he came home for the holidays from his student years at Jackson State University in Mississippi.
“Coach Pensyl then said to me that ‘we need a young man like you to come back to be a role model for our students,'” Jeffries said. “I didn’t realize there were very few African-American or minority teachers at East. That’s when I first started really thinking about coming back to East Aurora to teach and coach.”
He returned to Aurora and the school in 1987, and soon was one of the busiest men in town. During the early 1990s, he was the head football coach (at age 29), sophomore basketball coach, head badminton coach and the founder and volunteer coach of the step team.
When Jeffries assumed the badminton coaching position in 1988, the program had been dormant for two years and had only limited success in earlier times. The program grew under his leadership, and produced many team and individual conference and sectional champions, and state tournament qualifiers. With the exception of three seasons (because of football commitments) during the 1990s, he continued as coach until retiring from the school in 2020.
Those who know Coach Jeffries appreciated that he was first an educator. He remembered and tried to emulate many of the teachers he admired.
“I looked at the way they taught me, and I always tried to carry their tradition on,” he said. “They dressed the part, led by example, and were very professional. I tried to carry myself in that way.
“I taught all day, and didn’t just roll the ball out in PE class. The kids asked me ‘why do we have to do these drills?’ I didn’t neglect teaching. It was always a full day’s work.”
Jeffries had 228 varsity basketball wins, the third winningest coach in East’s history, but his legacy will go beyond victories. For 33 years, he fulfilled the vision of those who encouraged and mentored him.
“I had a good relationship with students, but I was demanding, and the kids knew they should respect me,” he said. “I had high expectations of students, because I was a student here and still lived in the community. I told them that I knew what they were capable of.
“Initially, some of our male students, especially, may have rebelled a little because they might not have had a father figure at home, and it may have been hard to accept direction from a male. But in the end, I think they respected and appreciated it.”
Wendell Jeffries’ legacy as a teacher, coach and leader will live on in the halls of the school and in the community.
Tom Strong is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
