Northeast Tennessee basketball has lost a coaching legend.
Len Dugger, a former state championship basketball coach at Elizabethton High School, died Monday.
A standout player for the Hampton Bulldogs in the late 1960s before playing college basketball at Gardner-Webb, Dugger began his coaching career early in life. He went 189-28 as a junior varsity and freshman coach before taking the reins of Elizabethton’s boys basketball team in 1979. The Cyclones reached the TSSAA state tournament in 1983, reaching the semifinals and finishing with 31 wins.
Counting an interim stint with the boys team in 2011-12, Dugger went 304-195 as the Cyclones’ head coach. The team posted a 23-5 mark in 1994-95, before Dugger stepped away from coaching.
After a 12-year hiatus, Dugger returned to lead the Lady Cyclones in 2007. Between 2007-16, the Lady Cyclones reached the state tournament six times including their 2014 state championship run.
“He was much more than a coach to me,†said Science Hill athletic director Keith Turner, who played for Dugger at Elizabethton and visited his mentor the night before he died. “My life wouldn’t be what it is without him, Coach Carver, Doc Sams and that whole crew. He’s been there for me my whole life up until he passed.â€
Turner pointed out that Dugger even helped kids at other schools as well. If there was a kid with talent, he would call college coaches and was always trying to help.
“We lost one of the good ones for sure. I will forever be grateful,†Turner said.
Between the girls and boys, Dugger led his teams to eight region championships while going 6-1 in sectional games with the Lady Cyclones. Over Dugger’s final seven years, his girls teams went 186-20 for a winning percentage of .903. And even after its 2014 state title, Elizabethton went 65-2 over the next two years — both losses coming in the TSSAA state tournament.
Compiling a 236-29 record with the girls, Dugger finished with a career mark of 540-224 as a basketball coach at Elizabethton upon his retirement in 2016.
