Long Lost Mural of 1997-1998 Westhampton Beach Boys Basketball Championship Team is Found, Coach Presents It Back to Team

Not long after the 1997-1998 Westhampton Beach boys varsity basketball team had completed its perfect 28-0 season that included winning both Class B federation and state titles, Howard Levine, an art teacher in the district at the time, created a mural for the team, celebrating its historic run. The painting included drawings of some of the players from photos taken from local newspapers, including the memorable shot of head coach Rich Wrase hoisting the state championship plaque, among the backdrop of a bright orange basketball and the green grounds of the high school.

The mural sat just outside of the varsity gym for all to see until around the turn of the century, when a school expansion, including a renovation of the gym, began. It was at that time that the mural had gone missing, most likely misplaced during the construction, which sent Ron Gholson, an assistant varsity coach on that memorable 97-98 team, into investigator mode.

For the next 19 years or so, Gholson searched in just about every hallway, space, crevice and crack for the mural, and, in the summer of 2019, he finally found it. Buried near a ventilation duct in the attic of the high school, there was the painting, slightly damaged with a few slits in the canvas, but otherwise, Gholson said, in relatively good shape.

“No one knew where it was placed,” Gholson said of the painting. “So, being my investigative self, I set out to find it. I knew it had to be somewhere, and sure enough I found it.

“One of the first phone calls I made was to then athletic director Kathy Masterson,” Gholson recalled. “I said, ‘Kathy, you’re never going to believe what I just found.’ I didn’t even want to tell her over the phone, I wanted to show her. So we went up the attic and we took it down.”

Gholson enlisted the help of district art teachers Kristen Gordon and Amanda Vollers to fix the slits in the canvas and clean up the mural and return it to its previous glory. Once that was done, Gholson wanted to give it back to the team. He did so just this past Thursday, January 26.

At halftime of the boys varsity game against Rocky Point, Gholson gave the painting to those who could attend last week’s game, which included players Adam Kandell, Bronson Martin and Dale Menendez, and three coaches in Wrase and assistants Bill Hempfling and Jack Vivonetto.

“A lot of them, if not all of them, hadn’t seen the mural since 2000, that summer when it was taken down,” Gholson said. “So there have been people here that didn’t even know it existed because it had been so long. But I wanted to do this because I thought it would be a great thing to present back to that ’98 squad and the school district, but I’d also like to have it hung back up so it can inspire today’s kids.

“A lot of the time, it’s easy to forget about things when they’re not visible or not seen,” he added. “But this young group of talent that’s coming up, they’re different. They want to hear what it was like being on that team. That freshman JV class, they talk about it a lot, and they got to meet Coach Wrase, who came back recently and ran a practice with them. Hopefully, the school finds the time and the right place to put the mural back up.”

Gholson said he’s received numerous phone calls from former players and coaches about putting together the 25th anniversary and finding the mural, which he appreciated. But at the end of the day, he did it for the current players.

“They need to learn that to be as a great as that ’98 team was, it takes a lot of hard work, sacrifices, and going through all of the highs and lows of a season,” he said. “Of course, you have to have some luck, you have to have some talent and you have to be willing to be a great teammate, and then everything falls into the right place. But you have to be willing to do all of that, and I just hope that the kids get to look up at the mural and it inspires them to do great things themselves.”