Longtime Mercer Island High School boy's basketball coach Eddie Lee "Ed" Pepple (b. 1932) grew up in Seattle, graduating from Lincoln High School in 1950. After earning degrees at University of Utah and Oregon State University, he joined the Marine Corps, eventually returning to the Pacific Northwest to teach and coach high school basketball. When Coach Pepple retired in 2009 after 52 years as a teacher and coach (42 of them at MIHS), he was more than 300 wins ahead of the next closest boys basketball coach in Washington state history.
In this image Slick Watts (b. 1951), left, and Fred Brown (b. 1948), both former Seattle Supersonics players, sit with John Burnley, Nathan Hale High School boy's basketball coach, and Jay McMillan, University of Idaho men's basketball coach. The men are observing a training camp for Coach Ed Pepple's Basketball Congress International (BCI) select team, set to play in a July 17-22 tournament in Long Beach, California. Mr. Watts' son, Donald Watts, Jr., had earned a spot on that summer's team playing for Interlake High School in Bellevue.
Caption information source: "Watts Likes Basketball on the Run," The Seattle Times, July 14, 1993; and "More than a record Coach Pepple taught life lessons on and off the court," Mercer Island Reporter, August 11, 2009. Caption information sources: "Seattle SuperSonics, Part 1-2," by Dan Johnson, HistoryLink.org Essays 3029 and 3112.
Physical Description: 1 photographic print : b&w ; 10 x 8 in.
Additional Information: Digital copy of this item available thanks to funding from a 2016 Institute for Museum and Library Services grant. Metadata updated as part of a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services administered by the Library Services and Technology Act, through the Washington State Library, a division of the Office of the Secretary of State.
Credit: MOHAI, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection, 2000.107.028.06.07, photo by Kurt Smith
