Gary Hall Returns to the Sidelines in VA at Storied Martinsville HS
BY ROBERT ANDERSON
He was the High School Basketball Coach of McDonald’s All-American Scottie Reynolds.
He was selected as a coach for the West team in the McDonald’s Game in 2020.
When he coached a ninth-grade squad in Northern Virginia, his team manager was an eighth-grader named Grant Hill.
Now he is the Head Coach at the school with more VHSL Boys Basketball Championships than anyone else.
And how Gary Hall found his way to Martinsville High School is a heck of a tale.
The 64-year-old Hall was officially hired as Martinsville’s new head Monday.
No, he is not related to former Bulldogs coaching legend Husky Hall. But Gary Hall does own 539 career coaching victories highlighted by a trip to the 2006 VHSL Group AAA Championship game with his alma mater, Herndon High, in Fairfax County.
And he knows the history of the Martinsville program, with its 15 VHSL State Championships.
“Being an absolute basketball junkie and understanding the respecting the history of Martinsville basketball, it’s such a privilege to be the coach at Martinsville High School,” Hall said Monday.
Martinsville will be his fifth coaching stop since leaving Herndon in 2016.
Hall’s most recent head coaching job was during the 2023-24 school year at Bishop Louis Reicher High School in Waco, Texas.
In the last decade he also has been a Head Coach at Middleburg Academy in Virginia, Nacogdoches and St. Thomas High Schools in Texas and South Mecklenburg High in Charlotte. He originally took coaching jobs in Texas to be near his two daughters and six grandchildren.
Both daughters now live in Martinsville. His daughter, Morgan, and her husband, Josh Blancas, have owned and operated a local coffee shop called “The Ground Floor” since 2021 in the small Piedmont city.
Before he was hired Monday, Hall was planning to move to Martinsville anyway.
“This is the only place I would have ever considered being a coach again,” Hall said. “I never thought I would leave Herndon High School. Herndon High School is my school. All those other places I coached, it was just a job. It was never home. Martinsville to me, is much more than a job. It reminds me so much of Herndon.
“I was completely content being a granddad, going hiking with my dog. It would take a really special opportunity to get me back on a school bus, and I believe Martinsville is that place.”
Hall said he initially expressed interest in the Martinsville job in 2022 before Louis Campbell replaced two-time State Championship Coach Jeff Adkins. However, Hall wanted to remain a teacher, but not in Virginia where he already was drawing retirement pay from Fairfax County.
Earlier this month, the Bulldogs’ boys basketball coaching job became vacant again when the school opted not to renew Campbell’s contract.
To Martinsville Athletic Director Tommy Golding, Hall might as well have dropped out of the sky and landed on the Bulldogs’ bench.
“The guy’s got charisma. He’s won everywhere he’s gone. He’s got a resume like I’ve never seen,” Golding said. “His personality, I think, will suit our kids extremely well. I think this guy will hit the ground running.”
Martinsville’s program, which last won a state title in 2016 in Class 2A, all but hit rock bottom at the end of the 2024-25 season.
The Bulldogs ended a 9-17 season with a 57-23 loss to Floyd County in the Region 2C Tournament.
Campbell took Martinsville to a Class 2 state quarterfinal in 2023-24 with a 17-10 record and finished with a three-year record of 37-40.
Golding said Martinsville’s 2024-25 team experienced some discipline problems and was beset by major injuries. The Bulldogs’ eighth-grade team lost just two games, both in overtime.
“A lot of times kids expect instant gratification and they’re not necessarily willing to work for it,” the Martinsville AD said. “We ended up playing that last game against Floyd with nothing but a JV team. We were missing four of our top five players. We never played a game all year with the starting five. All year. Not one time.
“We’ve got everybody back if they all come back.”
Adkins, who is Martinsville’s only former McDonald’s All-American as a player, coached the program to back-to-back VHSL titles in 2015-16. His final team in 2022 finished 12-10, giving Martinsville a record in the last five seasons of 69-80. Martinsville did not play any games during the VHSL’s truncated 2020-21 season that was postponed by COVID-19.
Regardless, Hall has high hopes as Martinsville leaves the Piedmont District after 51 years and joins the Three Rivers District.
“During the interview process, one of the questions was, ‘If you’re hired as the head coach … where do you see the program in three years?’ ” Hall said. “My answer was, ‘On the top rung of the ladder.’
“I’ve never gone into a season with any other goal. I’ve never been a coach that says, ‘We want to make the playoffs. We want to host a home playoff game.’ I believe I can make a difference, and that’s not coming from a place of arrogance. I feel like I can have an impact, not just with the basketball program in Martinsville but with the Martinsville community.
“There are far better coaches than me from an ‘X and O’ standpoint. The biggest piece people miss is how important relationships are. I think my skill set and what’s needed at Martinsville High School is a great match.”
Hall’s teams at Herndon won 11 Concorde District Championships. Led by Reynolds, who led Villanova University to a Final Four berth and became a First Team NCAA All-American, the 2006 Herndon team reached the VHSL Group AAA Championship game before losing 55-52 to Booker T. Washington of Norfolk.
Hall coached a Middleburg Academy team led by current Indianapolis Colts tight end Mo Alie-Cox to a VISAA Division II runner-up finish. He coached St. Thomas and South Mecklenburg to state tournament appearances. At Nacogdoches High, he took a team that won one game the previous season and finished 23-12 with a conference championship.
Last year while living in Greensboro, North Carolina he served as a virtual “assistant” to a coaching friend, Turmaine Price, at Rapoport Academy, helping with game plans and online scouting, even texting in-game adjustments. Rapoport wound up winning its first state championship.
“A couple of weeks ago, there was a package that came to my house,” Hall said. “I went to open it up and he sent me a State Championship medal.”
At Martinsville, Gary Hall will try to add a 16th Championship banner to the walls of the old gym on Cleveland Avenue, joining Mel Cartwright Sr. (1958, ’61, ’64); Husky Hall (1966, ’76, 80, ’81, ’82, ’85, ’86); Troy Wells (2001, ’02, ’06) and Adkins (2015, ’16) with VHSL titles.
Hall is itching to get started, but he is not allowed to have any contact with his team during the VHSL’s current 10-day “dead period” governing out-of-season practice. Moreover, the gym is closed for asbestos removal.
“The most difficult thing for me right now is waiting,” he said. “I want to get to know my kids. I want to talk to my kids. My job, first and foremost, is to build trust. If they don’t trust me and believe in me, it doesn’t matter how many games I’ve won.”
That Hall has even a single victory to his credit is almost a miracle.
Upon graduation from Herndon in 1979, he had no plans to attend college, much less coach basketball or any other sport.
Neither of his parents graduated from High School. His father quit school in the third grade as the youngest of 11 children in a single-parent home.
“I was a really good student through middle school,” Hall said. “When I was a freshman in high school, a teacher called me ‘Stupid.’ From that day, I became stupid. She went to college and my dad couldn’t read or write, so she must know I’m stupid. Words are extremely powerful, and I think young people are just one caring adult away from being a success story. That has helped shape me as a teacher and coach.”
Hall had classmates who were headed to college, so late in his senior year he entertained the idea.
“There were no plans after High School,” he said. “My dad was a construction worker, did drywall, and that was my lot in life. But my friends were talking about going to college, so I went to my high school counselor and said, ‘Mr. Mann, I think I’d like to go to college.’ He said, ‘Well, son, what’s your name?’ He looked my information up and said, ‘Son, you’re not college material.’ And he was right at the time, based on my record. He handed me an application to the Army and an application to trade school.
“To me, I had tried to go to college and I couldn’t do it.”
Hall played baseball instead of basketball in High School and earned some local renown as a pitcher.
One late-summer day, the telephone rang at his house. It was the head coach at Chowan Junior College in Murfreesboro, North Carolina. A scholarship had just come open after a prospective player was a no-show. One of Hall’s friends gave the coach his name.
“He said, ‘The only problem is, class started last week. You have to be here tomorrow,’ ” Hall recalled. “He caught me off guard. If he’d given me time to think about it, I wouldn’t have done it because I didn’t think I could.
“I wrote down the directions to the school on a brown, lunch paper bag. The next day I threw my stuff in a Datsun pickup truck and I was headed to North Carolina to go to college. The biggest thing I found out was I wasn’t stupid, and I fell in love with learning and … I had direction.”
Hall was Chowan’s opening-day starter but his future as a baseball prospect ended because of a torn rotator cuff in his pitching arm.
He returned home, but not to the construction site. Instead, he enrolled at George Mason University, eventually graduating with a B.S. degree in Health and Physical Education.
Meanwhile, Hall frequented the gym at nearby South Lakes High School in Reston to play pickup basketball. One day, the telephone rang again. This time it was South Lakes and Northern Virginia coaching legend Wendell Byrd.
South Lakes had promoted its the coach of its freshman team. Byrd needed someone else to coach his ninth-graders.
“He said, ‘I know you don’t know anything about basketball, but you know our kids and they know you,’ ” Hall said.
Hall coached the freshman team for two years. His first season featured, Hill, the future Duke All-American and NBA star, as the team’s de facto waterboy and manager. Hall moved up as a varsity assistant for two seasons before Herndon had a job opening.
At age 28, Hall was a Head Coach.
Six grandchildren later with a hairline that could make his face a double for ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt, Hall is still trying to win basketball games and influence the lives of young people.
Earlier this year Hall took one of his grandsons to the local YMCA to shoot some baskets. He snapped a photograph that included a group of teenagers in the background and showed the photo to Golding.
“He said, ‘Coach, that’s the whole [Martinsville] starting five,’ ” Hall related. “I do believe the Good Lord puts us where he needs us. I’m like, ‘OK, maybe this is a sign.’
HALL COACHING RESUME
Head Coach, Bishop Louis Reacher H.S., Waco, Texas, 2022-24
Head Coach, South Mecklenburg H.S., Charlotte, N.C., 2020-22
Head Coach, St. Thomas (Texas) H.S., 2018-20
Assistant Coach, St. Thomas (Texas) H.S., 2017-18
Head Coach, Nacogdoches (Texas) H.S., 2016-17
Head Coach, Herndon H.S., 1989-2007, 2011-16
Head Coach, Middleburg Academy, 2010-11
Assistant Coach, South Lakes H.S., Reston, Va., 1984-88
Robert Anderson has worked for well over 40 years in Virginia as a sports writer, including at The Roanoke Times before retiring in June 2022. He has won multiple Virginia Press Association awards for sports writing portfolio and has been honored nationally by The Associated Press Sports Editors. Robert was inducted earlier this year into the Virginia High School Hall of Fame.