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 Coach Fletcher Arritt 1970-Present "Coach Arritt is a motivator, a coach, a spiritual uplifter, a teacher, and a leader to me. When I signed my letter of intent to attend UVA, he always believed that I would play a substantial amount of time my first year and eventually become a starter no matter what everyone else thought of me. And he was right!" -Harold Deane, University of Virginia, FUMA Class of 93  "Not only did Coach Arritt teach everyone on the team the same lessons in life and basketball, but he challenged us and expected us to perform at a high level everyday......He gave us the knowledge and confidence to become better and we did so because of him." - Sydney Johnson, Princeton University, FUMA Class of 93, Princeton University Head Coach "Coach Arritt has played a huge part in the development of many young people's lives. Every player that has played in Fork Union's program owes a good deal of their success to the year that they spent with Fletcher Arritt." - Frank Martin, Hofstra University, FUMA Class of 89 For most of the last four decades, Fletcher Arritt has dedicated his life to Fork Union Military Academy (FUMA) as an athlete, teacher and coach. Now, over 750 wins and 41 years later, Arritt has molded FUMA into one of the top basketball programs in the country. Fork Union has not only won over 75 percent of its games in Arritt's tenure, they have also produced more than 150 Division I basketball players includ  ing Melvin Turpin, Chris Washburn, Kenny Williams and Shammond Williams, who continued on to the NBA. Arritt first came to Fork Union into 1958 as a post-graduate player himself. After starring at Fayetteville High School (WV), Arritt went to Fork Union to get stronger and better under the direction of Coach Bill Miller. Miller, a former University of Virginia basketball star, helped Arritt earn a scholarship to play for Virginia. At Virginia, Arritt was a solid three-year player (it was mandatory for freshman to play on the freshman team) under Bill Gibson and played and roomed alongside Cavalier great Chip Connor. Ironically, 12 years later, Arritt succeeded Miller as the head coach at Fork Union. Along with former basketball coaches Graham Thomas and Bill Miller, Arritt agreed that the program could develop college players and be second to none. "Fork Union is the pioneer of (post-graduate) prep school basketball," a former college coach said. "In a lot of ways, they created a blueprint for the way many of the prep schools are today." FUMA's vision turned into reality as big-time players from the southeast and then the nation started coming to Fork Union to hone their skills for college ball. It all started with a player named Tom Glenn in 1976, who went onto to star at George Washington. In the next five years, FUMA began to produce the likes of future college and professional stars of Solomon, Turpin and Washburn. "We started to get some real good players, it made a lot of schools (colleges), pay attention to (Fork Union)," Arritt said, who noted how important Glenn was to future players. "They would come to look at one player and then see a couple others." Arritt's ability to recruit talent not only helped the quality of players he got, but his teams started to dominate the competition . Beginning in 1977 the FUMA program began to flourish starting as the team led by Dale Solomon went 19-1. Two seasons later Arritt led his 1979-1980 squad to a stellar 25-1 mark with players like Turpin and Dean Shaffer. But while Arritt excelled throughout the next decade, he achieved perfection in 1986 when his team went 29-0 on a team that featured future Indiana Pacers forward Kenny Williams and Virginia Tech star Antony Moses. While they haven't been perfect again, FUMA has won 21 or more games for the last 20 years under Arritt. In that time, Arritt's team have won 496 and lost only 97, winning a staggering 84 percent of the time. Perhaps the most successful run in that time was from 1989 to 1995 where FUMA was 155-15 including 28-1 in 1989 led by future college stars Cornell Parker (Virginia), Pevires Greene (West Virginia), Gerald Jarmon (Richmond) and Janko Narat (Davidson). The 1992 squad also stood out at 29-2 featuring four Virginia Tech stars in Jim Jackson, David Jackson, Shawn Goode and Shawn Smith as well Larry Davis, who played at South Carolina and North Carolina. Others FUMA standouts in that time including future college stars: Harold Deane (Virginia ), Shammond Williams (North Carolina) and Merl Code (Clemson). FUMA winning ways haven't slowed into the next century as Arritt's FUMA squads have won at least 23 per year since 2000. Arritt has continued to produce players as 52 FUMA products have gone to Division I colleges to play basketball since 2000, including college standouts like Jason Parker (Kentucky), Taron Downey (Wake Forest) and Adrian Moss (Florida), who captained his Florida Gator squad to a National Championship in 2006. Arritt's influence also extends off the court as nearly 25 former players are also coaches at the high school or collegiate level. But no matter what his players have done on the court, Arritt has sought first and foremost to develop young men into productive adults as much as teaching them how to play basketball. "Coach Arritt has played a huge part in the development of many young people's lives," former Hofsra and Fork Union guard Frank Martin "Every player that has played in Fork Union's program owes a good deal of their success to the year that they spent with Fletcher Arritt."Coach Bill Miller 1958-1970 Biography Coming Soon.  
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