VIRGINIA BEACH — Great coaches don’t just teach a sport to accumulate wins. They measure success in the development of young people who contribute to the world and excel in life.
Mario Mullen, who died this month after a brief illness, will be remembered as a player, student, educator, teammate, friend, family man and mentor. He was caring, strong and funny. He was known, most recently, as a special education teacher who coached varsity basketball at Ocean Lakes High School. He truly was great.
Mullen was only 50, but he led a full and meaningful life in sports and education. He didn’t talk the talk. He walked the walk with exemplary sportsmanship.
I last saw him in February at Bayside High School, when players from the Marlins’ championship teams celebrated coach emeritus Ron Jenkins.
Under Jenkins, Mullen was a back-to-back champion and won AAA player of the year honors. That came before a strong collegiate career at Old Dominion University that included standout play on college hoops’ biggest stage.
“Mario and I met in junior high where we won a city championship,” Ronell Williams, a lifelong friend and teammate, told me in a phone conversation following Mullen’s death. “He was in the ninth grade. I was in the eighth grade. Coach Jenkins always had us playing summer league together so he and I just clicked playing down low in the paint.”
Mullen was a top player, Williams told me, and an even better person. “He always did things the right way, was a true friend and was a positive person — someone you would love to be around,” he said.
Jenkins reminisced about how fond Bayside teachers were of Mullen.
“Whatever it took to get the job done, whether it was academics or athletics, he did it,” Jenkins said. “Because of his personality, the teachers just gravitated toward him. Whatever they could do to help him they would do because they knew how hard he worked.”
Mullen was a student of the game and a leader from a young age.
“I used to run a study hall before practice throughout my coaching career,” Jenkins told me. “Mario never missed study hall. We’d spend a few moments before practice to go over a few things. Just sit down and talk. He was something like a quiet assistant coach.”
A 6-foot-6 forward during his playing career, Mullen became the epitome of a Monarch basketball player at ODU. He helped head coach Oliver Purnell to a 57-33 record in the mid-1990s. In 1995, the Monarchs upset third-seeded Villanova in triple overtime in the NCAA Tournament.
Mullen “understood the assignment as a student-athlete, a teammate accepting the torch to continue the success of the ODU program, becoming a mentor, coach, and leader of young women and men as an administrator and coach,” said Billy Mann, the voice of the Monarchs and a former star ODU player.
“He was a warrior on the court and the ultimate teammate,” said Frank Smith, the NCAA’s associate director of enforcement-basketball development. “It was no surprise that his love of basketball led him to teach and coach our youth.”
In February, during a reception that followed Jenkins’ recognition, Mullen invited me to Ocean Lakes. God willing, I still want to watch the Dolphins.
I want to see the continued development of a basketball legacy.
The author is a writer and documentary filmmaker who grew up in Norfolk and lived in Virginia Beach for much of his life. He ran a production company, worked in college athletics and was curator at an art gallery in Virginia Beach.
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