For more than 20 years, Stormin’ Norman’s Classic provided a summer outlet for youth boys and girls basketball competition while becoming a statewide treasure in Delaware.
By requiring participants to take classes aimed at improving their educational and social skills plus log community service hours, the league went beyond sharpening basketball talents.
After beginning with 54 boys playing shirts and skins the summer of 1980 at one site, Barbara Hicks Park in Wilmington’s Southbridge neighborhood, it grew to eventually involve more than 10,000 players ages 9 to 18 through 2002.
And now, 20 years after its final season, founder Norman Oliver has decided that it’s time the Classic has a hall of fame.
He plans to put together a committee that will select 100 people who were involved with the league – and no more after that — for a Stormin’s Classic Hall of Fame. Inductions will be at a Chase Center gala next spring.
Debate has already broken out in Facebook conversations about what the qualifications should be and whom should be honored, such as how to regard “one-hit wonders” who had a brief stay in the league.
“There’s already a buzz. It’s the talk of the streets already,” said Oliver. “You can imagine the conversations that are going on. There’s a lot of pride.
“It’ll be very competitive. It’s gonna be big, but it’s a huge undertaking.”
BEST OF DELAWARE: Ranking the state’s most accomplished athletes
The league spread south from Wilmington and grew to 120 teams with satellite operations in Middletown, Smyrna, Dover, Georgetown and Seaford. The player draft in the Wilmington boys 15- to 18-year-old division would make news annually.
“It had that kind of impact,” said Oliver, a Wilmington native who began the league when he was a freshman at Delaware State University and turned the direction over to others when he became a Wilmington city councilman in the late 1990s.
Nearly all of Wilmington’s best players, those from surrounding New Castle County and eventually downstate standouts took part. A.J. English, the Howard High star who later played in the NBA, was among the league’s early participants.
“That league meant an awful lot to an awful lot of people,” English told The News Journal when the Classic closed shop in 2003 because it had basically become too large, expensive and difficult to manage.
Two-time WNBA MVP and 2016 Olympic gold medalist Elena Delle Donne was among the female players. Girls leagues were begun in 1990.
John Carney, now Delaware’s governor, coached in the league. President Joe Biden, then a U.S. Senator in Delaware, was among the many politicians who sponsored teams – Joe Biden’s Jammers. There were also Carper’s Chairmen, Castle’s Crusaders, Frawley’s Launchers and Sills’ Dynasty. Carney coached Minner’s Winners.
Oliver is taking nominations for the Stormin’s Classic Hall of Fame via email at stormins@aol.com or phone at 302-655-8250.
His decision to start a hall of fame came down to wanting to preserve the league’s history and the memory of those who took part.
“People have been asking for years,” he said. “Some of these guys are never going to get into the Delaware Sports Hall of Fame, or the Delaware Afro-America Sports Hall of Fame, or the Delaware Basketball Hall of Fame.
“But they played at the highest level in the city. We had the educational component. We had the community service component. We had coaches who volunteered, and they were asking to coach.”
Have an idea for a compelling local sports story or is there an issue that needs public scrutiny? Contact Kevin Tresolini at ktresolini@delawareonline.com and follow on Twitter @kevintresolini. Support local journalism by subscribing to delawareonline.com.
