The Way It Was: The night Lentz didn't let up

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By Dick Heller

On a cold winter's night in late February 1961, the lanky Mount Vernon High School senior snatched a basketball and shot it in a game against Fairfax County rival J.E.B. Stuart.

Then he shot it again, again and again. Thirty-two minutes later, when the final home game of his career ended, Marty Lentz had scored 74 points - still a single-game record for the metropolitan area and the state of Virginia.

In so doing, Lentz eclipsed the regional record of 63 set in 1954 by a Spingarn High player who went on to greater things. His name was Elgin Baylor.

And involuntarily, he was responsible for the worst lead on a story ever perpetrated by a sports writer who is still laboring at his trade: "Mighty Marty Lentz exhausted all adjectives last night as he scored a fantastic 74 points."

Say what? If Marty exhausted all adjectives, why use one? I wonder why I did that.

Lentz's other offensive numbers were remarkable, too: 27-for-51 from the field, 20-for-25 at the free throw line. He easily outscored Stuart all by himself in Mount Vernon's 107-63 victory.

"I was at the game, but I don't remember much about it except all the excitement," sister Cathy Lentz Baker said last week from her home on Johns Island, S.C. She added that her brother and his friends probably celebrated his big game "by going to Hot Shoppes for a Mighty Mo and hot fudge ice cream cake - that's what kids did in those days."

Forty-eight years later, Lentz's name springs to mind when old-timers discuss the greatest schoolboy players to astound and astonish local fans. For many, it was a distinct shock to learn that Lentz died of an aneurysm at age 65 last winter in Valrico, Fla.

What in the name of Dr. James Naismith ever happened to Lentz after he averaged 36.7 points that senior season? Highly recruited, he turned up at West Virginia University, where he shot out no lights in beautiful downtown Morgantown. Hampered by a severe knee injury sustained as a sophomore, he averaged just 6.2 points in three seasons and 67 games with the Mountaineers. Then he moved on to a life in the insurance business here and eventually in Florida.

"I don't know that West Virginia was the right fit for Marty," Baker said. "A lot of schools were after him, but our family was from there, and that might have been why he went."