Don Lattin.
Provided to the LVN
A Fallon legend who played on state championship teams in the early 1970s and then pounded the hardwood for the University of Nevada will be speaker for the seventh Greenwave Hall of Fame induction.
This year’s sold out induction dinner is Saturday at the Fallon Convention Center. The inductees will meet Thursday at The Grid and then be introduced prior to Friday’s home football game against Truckee.
Don Lattin, a three-sport athlete who graduated from Churchill County High School in 1972, played for two legendary Greenwave coaches — Wint King and Tony Klenakis — before competing on Jim Padgett’s Wolf Pack basketball teams from 1972-76 and then in Australia for a short stint with the Perth Wildcats.
“The Greenwave community, and I use the term broadly, is talking about the people in the community and the people who were team mothers and people who were on the cheer teams,” he said. “I think all those experiences help you to be a better citizen and better person.”
Lattin is a currently a partner with the law firm of Maupin, Cox and LeGoy in Reno. The former Greenwave standout said individuals who play sports are so focused on themselves and their teammates, but as they age, they learn what a broader community Fallon is.
“It’s a community that really wants you to be better,” added. Lattin, who played on the 1971 state 2A basketball champs.
For Lattin, though, attending high school was more than taking classes and studying hard. It was developing friendships that have lasted for half a century and remembering coaches who instilled ethics for hard work and improvement. One coach, in particular, left an impact on Lattin, and that was his basketball and baseball coach, the legendary Wint King, himself a member of the Greenwave and Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association halls of fame.
“He was a strict disciplinarian,” Lattin recalled. “What he did was teach you the fundamentals of the game. He was a better fundamental coach than game coach.”
To this day 50 more than years later, Lattin said King was tough.
“I saw some things I didn’t like,” Lattin described of his former coach. “I complained to my dad, a no-nonsense World War II vet.”
Lattin was looking for a sympathetic ear, but his father was as just as tough as King.
“He said, ‘Well, you don’t have to play,’” Lattin remembers, adding individuals deal with people like King in everyday life.
Lattin, though, became one of the top basketball players in the state. He was Co-Player of the Year in 1971 and an all-state selection in his final two years. He also averaged 21.1 points per game in his senior season, which was the best in the state. The team also included players Ken Tedford, John Lewis, Kerry Huffman, Richard Hucke, Doug Maupin, Mike Calleas, Mike Fuller, David Getto, Bryce Sexton, Curt Lima and Frankie Gonzales, and managers Brent Heath and Dave Van Meter.
Lattin, who lettered three years in baseball and two in football, then played basketball at Nevada for four years.
When King died in 2003, his son asked Lattin and others who played for his father to be pallbearers at the coach’s funeral. King had a career basketball coaching record of 514 wins at Fallon and Reno High School.
In addition to King, Lattin said Klenakis was also a disciplinarian.
“You knew you screwed up because he’d be in your face,” Lattin chuckled. “He made you tougher, but he was the kind of guy you wanted to play for.”
Yet, Lattin saw a different side of King during the baseball season when he coached with retired educator Gary Imelli. Lattin said King was much more relaxed but just as intense with the playing of the game.
“He was serious about it, but much more laid back,” Lattin said of the baseball season.
The Greenwave baseball team won the school’s second state championship of 1971, with a three-game sweep of Mineral County. Churchill County also won state baseball titles in 1967 and 1968.
After high school, Lattin became a player for Padgett, then a first-year coach in 1972 after leaving the Cal Bears. Immediately, Lattin saw the difference between the preps and collegiate competition.
“In Fallon I played with the same guys since third grade,” he pointed out. “In college, it’s a whole new group. I enjoyed my experience. It was good, and I traveled. I got to see the country and a lot of good players.”
During his Wolf Pack career, Lattin came off the bench, averaging almost 4 points per game and hauling down an average of 1.9 rebounds for each contest.
In his final season, 1975-76, the Pack placed third in the West Coast Athletic Conference with an overall 12-14 record and 7-5 in league. He recalled playing the four seasons with Nevada as a different experience.
“In high school, everyone wanted to win. We expected to win,” Lattin said.
On the other hand, he said a few players with no Nevada ties didn’t share the same expectations when they played for the Wolf Pack. Lattin said he bonded with a few of the Nevada-born players on the team such as Mitch Woods from Winnemucca and Jack Barrett from Reno. Mike Longero of Carson City began playing for the Wolf Pack as a freshman when Lattin entered his senior year.
“We kind of had that common bond and stayed together,” he said.
An exception to the Nevada bond came in the form of Wolf Pack great Edgar Jones, a four-year Nevada starter who later played in the NBA, and Dave Webber, a recruit from Sacramento who worked in the banking world in Nevada and then California after graduating in 1974.
Lattin said Webber, who entered the banking world with another Fallon graduate, John Lewis, spent a number of years in Nevada before returning to his hometown.
During his career, Lattin also played with the coach’s son, Pete, who would later coach boys basketball at Carson and Reno high schools. Padgett was inducted into the Wolf Pack Hall of Fame in 1988.
Lattin said Jones, who was a showman and good player, was one of the nicest individuals on the team who grew to love the Silver State.
“He (Edgar) showed up (to Reno) and all he had when he got off the plane was a paper sack full of T-shirts from all-star games he played in and also tennis shoes,” Lattin remembered.
According to the Fallon grad, then assistant coach Jack Spencer told him to take Jones to Murdock’s in Carson City and buy clothes for the future Wolf Pack Hall of Famer. Lattin said the store didn’t carry many clothes in Jones’ size so they ordered special-sized clothes that would fit over the tall, lanky frame.
One of the first places Lattin took Jones after he settled in was to Virginia City’s annual camel races.
“He, Mitch and I headed to the camel races, and Edgar, who was 6-foot-9, gets on a camel,” Lattin said, laughing. “Imagine him waving his long arms and legs. He enjoyed the new experience and loved going up to Virginia City.”
After he received his degree from Nevada in 1976, Lattin still played basketball by heading to Australia where he played for Perth, but he also experienced the global smallness of running into someone he knew from his high-school playing days.
“Here we are traveling to a tournament in Auckland (New Zealand),” Lattin said, retelling the story. “I see this player down the court and thought who is this who is this guy. He’s shooting left-handed like me. I’m far away from home. So, we go out to the jump center, and he’s standing next to me. Before the ball goes up, he says ‘Go Greenwave’.”
Those two words momentarily rattled Lattin.
“I thought what the heck?” Lattin remembers.
The player positioned next to him was former Mineral County standout Don Orndorff, a 6-6 forward who had played against Churchill County before competing for San Jose State University.
So, in true Nevada fashion, they had a mini-reunion after the final horn blared.
“After the game ended, we went out and had a beer,” Lattin laughed.
Greenwave Hall of Fame Class of 2024
TEAM
1943 Football
1959 Girls Basketball
1966 Boys Basketball
1974 Girls Track
1975 Girls Track
COACH
Bill Archer
ATHLETE
Neal Workman (1981)
Judianna Murray (1983)
Cody Olson (1983)
Mark Mansfield (1984)
Richie Hooten (1987)
Kara Kelly-Borgognone (1992)
Jeff Peterson (1995)
Jake Johnston (2010)
Tyson Ernst (2013)
Morgan Dirickson (2014)