Josh Keen Leaves Legacy on Buchanan Basketball Foundation

OAKWOOD, Va. – An unassuming grey building stands at the north end of the Twin Valley football stadium.

Its metal shell and mundane architecture resemble countless other structures along US-460 in Buchanan County. The only clue that this building houses a treasure is the security camera aimed at the entrance.

Past a padlocked front door and a sign-in register that boasts thousands of hand-scrawled names is a golden basketball court with a surface polished to a sheen. It is bordered by $1,000 shooting machines and an indoor batting cage.

Just off the court is a state-of-the-art weight room, complete with plush leather couches and a shiny flat-screen TV. A bubbling Jacuzzi tempts aching muscles.

This is the Buchanan Basketball Foundation, and its existence and gaudy athletic trappings seem unbefitting in this rural community. 

Created to serve the athletic endeavors of Buchanan County youth, the building cost nearly $300,000. That’s a significant price tag in an area where the median annual household income is $23,975 – less than half the national average – and 20 percent of the community lives in poverty.

So why, then, did a group of parents beg funds from local companies in order to build one of Southwest Virginia’s most ostentatious tributes to athletic achievement?

The BBF president will say that the sacrifice isn’t about winning, while ex-players say it’s about exactly that.

But to really understand what makes the BBF indispensable requires a visit to a heartbreaking destination. It’s a place where dedication, competition, winning, love and death all meet.

Josh Keen, the most gifted athlete in BBF’s history, knew that place well – almost certainly better than anyone. 

Finding a home
In 1996, Robert Simpson and other parents decided that one Buchanan County gym wasn’t enough.

Teams such as Simpson’s K-3rd grade girls’ squad were allotted 45 minutes of gym time per week at Garden High School, and he wondered what more he could do to help his players improve.

“It’s winter time, so you can’t do anything outside,” Simpson said. “The YMCA is 45 minutes away.”

So, the parents began to raise money. They stocked the Jackson River with trout and sold tickets to people who wanted to fish them out. They threw gigantic yard sales on the Twin Valley football field. They held concerts with local bands. They sold four-wheelers, afghans and shotguns.

In three years, the BBF had more than $100,000, a sum that allowed it to rent the old Garden Elementary School gymnasium, which, after Garden and Whitewood consolidated, had begun to rot because of disuse.

BBF parents painted its walls, sanded the floors, poured new concrete and added new wiring and plumbing. The renovations cost the BBF close to $140,000.
But it was worth it. The BBF now had a home – a home that Joshua Keen discovered as a first-grader.

The BBF was founded, according to a press release, “to provide children in rural Buchanan County an increased opportunity to develop and enhance their athletic skills.” That goal included the formation of traveling teams, all on the BBF’s tab, that played in tournaments around Virginia.

As a second-grader, Keen joined Simpson’s traveling squad – a team full of kids who were two and three years older. Simpson typically didn’t require his second-graders to travel, but he sidestepped this rule for Keen.

“Josh was different,” Simpson said. “Josh had learned the difference [between] winning and losing and knew what he wanted at that age. ... He was probably the best athlete at that age that I’d ever seen.”

Simpson said that the BBF is not all about winning, but there’s no doubt that winning is valued. If a traveling team won, for instance, it might be treated to a meal at Pizza Hut. A big win earned a trip to Ryan’s Grill.

“[BBF] is for people [who] want to win,” said Josh Smith, a former BBF player and current junior on Twin Valley’s basketball team. “There are some people out there that just play for fun. BBF is just about winning.”

Simpson conceded that the BBF is not for everyone: “If you want to go to the movies tomorrow night instead of practice, then you probably don’t need to be playing BBF.”

That was no problem for Keen. He wanted to win.

In the fourth grade, he played on a team coached by his father, Eddie. Late in one game that season, the team trailed by a point. During a timeout, with his players huddled around him, Eddie Keen noticed tears in his son’s eyes.

“I’ve never lost to this team,” the son explained. “I’m not going to lose to them now.”

After the timeout, the younger Keen traveled the length of the floor and hit a jump shot that gave his team the lead. He then stole the ball and began to dribble away the remaining seconds.

The opposing coach yelled to his players to foul Keen, who nimbly dribbled through a minefield of defenders.

The coach continued to yell: “Foul him! Foul him!”

Finally, one frustrated player fired back: “If I could catch him, I’d foul him!”

Pins and needles
Simpson didn’t complain when the BBF was pushed out of Garden Elementary School by an incoming pharmacy college. He knew the county needed any sort of business.

So, he and the foundation’s other board members began to visit local coal and manufacturing companies to dig up funds for a new home.

“What do our youth have in the area?” Simpson would ask. “We’ve got one gym that’s spread between 15 groups of kids. Come in and help us do what we need to do for our community.”

Aided by surging coal profits, the BBF soon raised the nearly $300,000 it needed to construct its current facility.

Again, BBF parents did most of the leveling, electrical and aesthetic work on the new building, and three years ago, the youth of Buchanan County were given a state-of-the-art athletic facility to use.

Simpson distributes keys to the padlock to both current and former BBF players, and the building gets almost 12,000 visitors a year.

“The weight room is beautiful,” said Lucas Shortridge, an ex-BBF baller and current Panther. “I mean, we work muscles I didn’t even know we had.”

The monthly fee? Simpson might ask a patron to mop the court or run the clock at a BBF tournament.

The success of the BBF has a direct correlation on the success of the program’s closest high school, Twin Valley, though former BBF players can be found on rosters at Council and Grundy, too.

Jeremiah Lester, the 2006 Group A Virginia State Player of the Year, helped lead a Panther team that featured only one player who did not play BBF ball. That team finished 27-3 and was the state runner-up in 2006.

But while the BBF thrived, its premier athlete withered.

Keen was diagnosed with diabetes when he was 18 months old and with a muscular disease when he was six years old.

Neither affected Keen much when he was in elementary school, but by the time he reached seventh grade, his body was on the verge of giving up.

“He was just so weak,” Eddie Keen said. “He would tell us that when you tried to do something, it would hurt to move.”

Every pass, every dribble, every shot sent the sensation of pins and needles stabbing through Keen’s muscles.

Keen would enter his classroom at Twin Valley middle school every day, his pallor a ghostly pale, with the same message for his teacher: “I might not be feeling too good. I might have to leave.” But when the bell rang, signaling the end of the day, Keen would still be there, a weak smile etched across his face.

By the seventh grade, Keen, the boy who as a second-grader could mimic every move in his Michael Jordan highlight video, needed a wheelchair. His body began to waste away, his muscles evaporating beneath his skin. 

Still, he attended every Twin Valley basketball game to root on his old BBF teammates.

“I’d planned on him being ... a star,” Robert Simpson said. “And he was a star in his own right. But the sickness had taken the stardom of basketball out of him.”

The mixture of diseases did what no opposing player could: Keen had finally been caught.

Remembrance
In the summer of 2007, the BBF traveled to Colorado Springs, Colo., for the biggest tournament in its history: the State Games of America. Though Keen could no longer play, he traveled with his teammates.

“Our kids still had that love for him, and they wanted him to travel with them,” Simpson said. “[Josh’s] love of the game of basketball and his love of teammates ... transcended everything.”

The team stopped in Denver for a Rockies game, where Keen was treated to an autographed ball from the team. And when the Rockies went on a winning streak that landed them in the World Series, Keen’s teammates told him: “It’s because of you, Josh.”

At the U.S. Olympic training facility, Josh Smith, Lucas Shortridge and Hunter Simpson pushed his wheelchair. When they reached a path at Pike’s Peak that couldn’t be navigated by wheels, they carried him on their shoulders.

At the tournament’s opening ceremonies, Keen, flag in hand, led the Virginia procession in his wheelchair.

In the team’s final tournament game, down 20 points with time running out, head coach Richard Smith took a timeout and made one final substitution.

With help, Keen struggled to his feet. And, leaning on his teammates, he entered the game. Too weak to shoot or dribble, he simply held the ball.

“That was actually the last time he was on the floor,” Eddie Keen said. “As I was told by everybody, there wasn’t a dry eye in the gym that night. It just broke everybody’s heart.”

The BBF later held a benefit dinner for Keen at the team’s headquarters. At the end of the night, it presented him with a shadow box that featured his black No. 23 jersey and pictures of his time with the team. No other BBF player will again wear No. 23.

Simpson then asked Keen where he’d like it hung. Keen replied: “I’d like for it to be left in the gym.”

He died on May 6, 2008, at the age of 14.

The pallbearers at his funeral were Jeremiah Lester, Lucas Shortridge, Brandon Viars, Hunter Simpson, Josh Smith and Katie Jo Lester – all former BBF players. Richard Smith, Robert Simpson and the BBF were named as honorary pallbearers.

“You couldn’t ask for a better organization,” Eddie Keen said. “It wasn’t like they found out that there was nothing else they could do and here they come. They were there before.
Josh just loved the BBF. I could never give enough thanks to the BBF.”

Maybe Simpson is right when he says that the BBF isn’t all about winning. Maybe the facility at the edge of the Twin Valley football stadium isn’t out of place. Maybe Keen still speaks to what the BBF is about.

Maybe he did that when he asked Simpson to hang his jersey inside the gym.

It is always there, suspended above the entranceway to the weight room.

Dedication and sacrifice. Life and its heartbreak. A constant reminder.

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