The Night Danny Heater Scored 135 Points in a High School Basketball Game

What if your greatest athletic achievement—the kind you retell again and again at the old watering hole—was so big that it came tinged with regret? Is it worth the unease that goes with having your name forever etched in the record books? Ultimately, it was worthwhile for Danny Heater, 73, of Brecksville, West Virginia, not for the six decades of local notoriety he experienced, but because it cemented an enduring friendship between a shy high school player and his young coach.

"I've never been comfortable with the beating we put on those fellas, still feel bad about it today, but I'll always be grateful for what Coach Stalnaker did," Heater said. "He really stuck his neck out for me."

On January 26 1960, almost 30 years prior to when the three-point line was introduced into high school basketball, Heater scored 135 points in a 173-43 Burnsville High victory over Widen. He obliterated the West Virginia state record of 74-points on his way to posting a high school mark that still stands. Along the way, he set yet-to-be-broken pinnacles for points scored in a quarter (46), field goals attempted (70), field goals made (53), free throws attempted (41), and free throws made (29). He also pulled down 32 boards and, for good measure, dished out seven assists to teammates like Charlie Smith, the Bruins second-leading scorer with sixteen. Heater came into that game averaging 27 points; he would end the season at 32 a game, his average bolstered by the huge outburst on a frigid West Virginia night.

Now, before you go getting all Helen "Won't somebody please think of the children?" Lovejoy (or conversely, Cobra "mercy is for the weak" Kai) on Heater, you should know that his racking up triple digits was actually, in every way but the box score, an act of compassion.

To understand why Heater's coach Jack Stalnaker—a recent college graduate who was just a few years older than his squad—ran up the score, you have to understand Heater's background. He was born into abject poverty, in the countryside outside of Burnsville, the 500-person metropolis he moved to in eighth-grade. Yes, his daddy John was a coal miner. He didn't work in union mines either, so he never had steady employment. It was always a struggle. The Heaters were the kind of family that had to plant a big garden in the summer and hope they'd grow enough food to get through winter.

"There was a time growing up when dad became religious, almost to a fanatical point, so we had to go to church quite a bit," says Heater. "It was a couple of miles away, but we never had a car, so we walked to services. No matter the weather."

As in so many underprivileged communities, sports were a part of the daily landscape, a pastime that could theoretically, offer a way out.

"We always hung together, played marbles in the afternoon, football in the fall, basketball in winter, that was about the extent of it," says Heater's former teammate Harold Conrad, 74, a retired Ohio maintenance technician.

Upon moving into town, the walks got shorter, but the Heaters financial situation didn't improve. The apartment they lived in—on top of a small department store—burned down, and all their belongings were destroyed in the fire. Fortunately, things on the high school hardwood were much better, as Danny became a varsity starter as a freshman. Four years later, the Burnsville High Bruins were a powerhouse, constantly running a full-court man-to-man press. Stalnaker's players, all basically around the same size, were interchangeable, positions malleable in a offense that would fit right into today's NBA. The relentless attack helped the Bruins win a number of games in blowout fashion. They were 9-1 when they played Widen at home.

"We pressed every game, so that wasn't anything different," says Conrad. "And we had already beaten Widen once, but I think by maybe only ten points. That night, we just overwhelmed them."

Typically, Stalnaker would call off the dogs, sitting Heater after the first half. On January 26, the Bruins head coach wanted to make a statement that would carry across the state and beyond. If this was a romantic comedy, it would be the scene in the movie where the possibly-misguided young man goes way overboard with a grand gesture. It's exactly what Coach Stalnaker did.

"He believed if the team could get some attention, I could get a scholarship and play in college," says Heater. "Coach was frustrated that we got no publicity, not even full write-ups in the newspapers from Clarksburg or Charleston. Just a box score and a couple sentences if we were lucky."

Stalnaker hatched the plan to unleash Heater, thereby creating a scoring machine that would be so efficient, everyone would have to take notice. Shortly before tip-off, he instructed the Bruins to feed Heater on every play, even if Danny was unsettled by the attention.

"I'm shy by nature and don't like the spotlight, so I went to each player on our team and asked them if they were cool with the plan. If a single one of them said no, I wouldn't have gone along with it," says Heater. "They all said yes… And the rest is history."

The first couple of minutes, Heater actually didn't go with the flow. He wouldn't shoot until Stalnaker called a time-out and ordered him to do so. From then on, it was a bloodbath.

Often, the undermanned undersized undercooked Widen squad—the high school had just 25 boys total, and no phone to boot—couldn't even inbound the ball. In the tiny 30-by-50-foot Cracker Jack box of a basement gym, where the benches spilled onto the edge of the court, Heater went off. Whatever compunction he had about the plan disappeared as the ball fell through the net again and again and again and…

"I was on automatic, and by the fourth quarter, I was exhausted," says Heater. "I remember the people in the stands yelling out my name, shouting out '102 points!' It's like I was dreaming, out there thinking it's so weird they're calling out these point totals I could never reach."

When he was working, Danny's father was often gone from Sunday-to-Friday, so it was his mother Beulah who'd always been his biggest fan. She went to almost every game in every sport. Almost. Unfortunately, she—the woman who, after that night, would save all the newspaper articles she could find in a scrapbook after clipping out any negative sentiments about her son—missed the game of Danny's life.

"Daddy wasn't feeling well that night, it was cold out, and we'd already beaten Widen earlier that season, so Mom stayed home. Well, word gets around quick in a small town, so my sister actually came to the game at halftime. She tried to lift me up and had to basically carry me off the court. After the game, the guys and I went to get a Coke and something to eat like we always did, but my sister went home. When I walked in, Mom was all over me, thrilled at what I'd done, but also asking 'how could you not rush home and tell me you scored 135 points?'"

Heater was a very good player—a "phenomenal athlete" in Conrad's estimation—but in the next game, as the Charleston Daily Mail noted, "Burnsville High Schools 'hot' Heater cooled off." He collected 21 points but played only ten minutes after severely twisting his ankle. He was, once again, the Bruins leading scorer. Still the Stalnaker Moonshot worked, and a scout from West Virginia University showed up at the next game. It was Heater's dream school, recent home of his native idol Jerry West, but the ankle didn't co-operate. He hobbled his way to 27 points, shot the ball well, but he was slow-of-foot and never heard back from anyone in Morgantown.

Heater graduated with no offers. Then out of the blue, a retired state senator from Virginia—Heater doesn't remember if he ever knew exactly who it was—who heard his story, offered to pay his tuition and housing to attend the University of Richmond. At the start of the winter semester, Heater left rural West Virginia for urban Virginia.

A few weeks later, he was home.

"I played in a couple of games, scored a few points, but it wasn't for me. My father was laid off again, I needed to get a job, and make some money… I was really homesick is all," says Heater. "To this day, I feel like I let Coach Stalnaker down."

But he made a decision, moved home, and got on with his life. A life that, he says today, he wouldn't trade with anyone, even if for much of it, he kept one of its biggest events to himself.

"I didn't find out about Dad's scoring record until the news did a story on it in 1976, when I was already eleven," says daughter Tonnie Piccolomini, an accountant in Frederick, Maryland. "He's always been bashful about it, but it's very exciting for the rest of us. There's a highway sign outside of town with the Burnsville Rotary Club on it that also says 'Home to Danny Heater…' We get a family picture with it every year."

After a year of low-paying jobs in Burnsville, Heater moved to Washington D.C. and went to work as a messenger boy for the FBI. Heater won a title in the G-Men's 10-league team. It would have to do for the one he'd missed out on during his senior campaign when, on his still bum wheel, the Bruins were bounced in first-round of the state tournament.

(Yes, Heater will answer your ridiculous question with a laugh, "No, J. Edgar Hoover did not attend the championship game. I don't think that would have been his inclination.")

After his FBI stint, Heater went to work for the airlines, spending nearly forty years in the industry. If you went to a Delta counter at Washington National during the last couple of decades, the 135-point-legend might have been your ticket man. He loved the job, liked helping people, and the perks allowed he and Carol—his wife of 50 years—to frequently visit her home state of Colorado, and their son who lives in England. The Heater's three children have given them five grandchildren, including Tonnie's twin fourteen-year-old hoopsters.

"My girls were playing in a tournament hosted by Vicky Bullett, a West Virginia native who played in the '92 Olympics," says Tonnie. "We were looking at some memorabilia with dad, and the person said to him, 'Don't you know who she is?' I thought, 'Excuse me, don't you know who he is? His record has been standing since 1960.'

After he retired a few years ago, the Heaters returned to West Virginia. The pull of home has always been strong. Although it'll never be a night he brags about, Danny Heater learned to embrace the greatness he was born with, achieved, and had thrust upon him fifty-six years ago today.

"The grandkids love it, so that makes me happy that we get to share and enjoy the record together," he says.

Everything found a way of working itself out. Unfortunately, befitting the life of a West Virginia coal miner, his father John contracted black lung disease. However, he and Beulah family found stability in the 1960s, bought a little house, and he was kicking on into the mid-1980s.

Early on, nothing came easy to Danny Heater except perhaps, for those 135 points. Perhaps, someday, it's a record that will be broken. The spirit behind it never will.

"Every year we have a reunion on the football field. At last year's get together, Coach Stalnaker told me that the our team was always his favorite, which is so great to hear," says Heater. "I love that man and can't wait to pick up where we left off."