On a cold winter’s night in late February 1961, the lanky Mount Vernon High School senior snatched a basketball and shot it in a game against Fairfax County rival J.E.B. Stuart.
Then he shot it again, again and again. Thirty-two minutes later, when the final home game of his career ended, Marty Lentz had scored 74 points - still a single-game record for the metropolitan area and the state of Virginia.
In so doing, Lentz eclipsed the regional record of 63 set in 1954 by a Spingarn High player who went on to greater things. His name was Elgin Baylor.
And involuntarily, he was responsible for the worst lead on a story ever perpetrated by a sports writer who is still laboring at his trade: “Mighty Marty Lentz exhausted all adjectives last night as he scored a fantastic 74 points.”
Say what? If Marty exhausted all adjectives, why use one? I wonder why I did that.
Lentz’s other offensive numbers were remarkable, too: 27-for-51 from the field, 20-for-25 at the free throw line. He easily outscored Stuart all by himself in Mount Vernon’s 107-63 victory.
“I was at the game, but I don’t remember much about it except all the excitement,” sister Cathy Lentz Baker said last week from her home on Johns Island, S.C. She added that her brother and his friends probably celebrated his big game “by going to Hot Shoppes for a Mighty Mo and hot fudge ice cream cake - that’s what kids did in those days.”
Forty-eight years later, Lentz’s name springs to mind when old-timers discuss the greatest schoolboy players to astound and astonish local fans. For many, it was a distinct shock to learn that Lentz died of an aneurysm at age 65 last winter in Valrico, Fla.
What in the name of Dr. James Naismith ever happened to Lentz after he averaged 36.7 points that senior season? Highly recruited, he turned up at West Virginia University, where he shot out no lights in beautiful downtown Morgantown. Hampered by a severe knee injury sustained as a sophomore, he averaged just 6.2 points in three seasons and 67 games with the Mountaineers. Then he moved on to a life in the insurance business here and eventually in Florida.
“I don’t know that West Virginia was the right fit for Marty,” Baker said. “A lot of schools were after him, but our family was from there, and that might have been why he went.”
Of course, Lentz’s unexpected death was a terrible shock to his family, which includes two sons and a granddaughter.
“His health had been fine, he played golf three or four times a week and he had just undergone a physical,” Baker said. “But there was a problem with a valve, and his heart just ripped apart. The doctors think it might have been congenital.”
This has been a tough time for former Mount Vernon players. Bill Pacella, a guard who frequently fed the ball to Lentz during Marty’s senior season, died of pulmonary fibrosis last month in Greenville, N.C.
A doughty survivor, however, is Mike Skinner, 84, who coached the Majors from 1957 to 1963. As a sophomore, Lentz was primarily a rebounder who scored just 99 points for the year. Then he grew two inches between that season and the next, suddenly becoming a devastating offensive force who averaged 28.8 points as a junior.
“He was the best player I ever had,” said Skinner, who coached the Mount Vernon varsity for six seasons before moving into administration. “I always knew he had a lot of potential, but when I saw him his junior season, I just handed him the ball and said, ’Shoot, Marty!’ He was a complete player who was very tough inside and also had a great hook shot. He did things nobody else was doing in those days.”
Two caveats accompanied Lentz’s prodigious scoring feats, however. At 6-foot-6, he was a scholastic basketball giant in those days. And because schools in Virginia were still segregated, he faced no black teams or players.
Still… nearly 37 points a game as a senior and 74 on one spectacular evening? Such numbers defy denigration. And unlike many of today’s superior athletes, Baker says her brother seemed to take all the acclaim and attention in stride.
“Marty never said much at home about his basketball career, either at Mount Vernon or West Virginia,” she said. Obviously, Lentz kept his court feats in perspective, which likely helped him endure the painful transition from being a superstar in high school to a role player in college.
But while they lasted, Marty Lentz’s days in the sun shone with a brilliance never seen before or matched since in this hotbed of high school hoops.
“I still run into people who tell me they remember Marty and what he did,” Baker said.
No wonder.
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