Nield Gordon, the man who started the Winthrop men’s basketball program, dies at 91
The father of the Winthrop men’s basketball program has passed away.
Nield Gordon, the man who founded the Winthrop basketball program in 1978 and helped grow the school’s athletic department in the years after that, died on Monday night. He was 91 years old.
The Winthrop athletic department confirmed the news to The Herald on Tuesday afternoon. Winthrop interim athletic director Chuck Rey, in response to Gordon’s passing, said in a statement to The Herald that “words cannot describe the lasting impression Nield had on Winthrop University, the athletic department and the game of basketball.”
“Neild’s teams averaged 20 wins per season, a standard teams strive to live up to today, while also playing a significant role in setting up future success with the construction of the Coliseum under his watch as athletic director,” Rey wrote. “We hope Eagles basketball has made him proud over the years. We would like to offer heartfelt condolences to the basketball community, our Winthrop alumni that had the good fortune to play under his tutelage, and especially his family during this time.”
Word of Gordon’s passing didn’t take long to circulate in college athletics circles. The Brunswick, Maryland native was a fixture in South Carolina sports — as a player and coach and pioneer.
Andy Solomon, who was Winthrop’s first sports information director and one of Gordon’s first employees, reminisced about Gordon on Tuesday afternoon.
What Solomon will remember most about his “mentor and friend” is his willingness to be innovative at Winthrop — doing a lot to connect the school’s athletic department with Winthrop alumni, Winthrop faculty and the broader Rock Hill community.
“We created traditions,” Solomon told The Herald when asked about their time beginning Winthrop athletics in the late 1970s. “We created the Eagle Club. We created the baseball team. We created the basketball team. The sports information office. The training room. We started cheerleading. We had a dance team.
“You gotta remember, this was 40 to 45 years ago. We just always said, ‘Why not? Let’s try it.’ ... Nield set the tone of, ‘Work hard, do the best you can and the results will come.’ And the results came due to his leadership.”
Gordon’s path to Winthrop
Gordon came to Winthrop in 1977. He arrived already as an accomplished coach.
Formerly a basketball player at Furman (whose jersey is among six retired by Paladin basketball), Gordon served in the U.S. Army before beginning his coaching career at Belmont Abbey College in 1956. He later made a name for himself in his 15-year tenure as head coach at Newberry College — which included the 1976-77 season, when Gordon coached Newberry to the NAIA national championship game.
Gordon had five of his Newberry players on that 1976-77 team follow him to Winthrop in 1977. In doing so he ushered in some of the first men on the campus of Winthrop, which for nearly a century had been an all-women’s school.
NAIA rules forced the WU men’s basketball program to sit out the 1977 season, so the program began the following year in 1978. And his team was welcomed by the Rock Hill community.
As former Herald sports editor wrote in a 2016 story honoring the late Bennie Bennett (one of Gordon’s first players at Winthrop and WU’s first 1,000-point scorer): “Bennett and his teammates were a big deal in Rock Hill, the first men’s college sports team in town. They packed the cramped gym at Sullivan Middle School on Saturday nights. During basketball season that was the place to be.”
Gordon spent nine years as Winthrop’s head basketball coach and athletic director. He coached his program to 160 wins in that span.
Among his most notable feats as coach at Winthrop: His first Winthrop team of 1978-79 compiled a record of 25 wins and 10 losses and became the first team to qualify for the NAIA District 6 playoffs in its first year of existence.
“At that time, they had 17 teams in the NAIA District 6,” Gordon said of that first season, in a video in 2017 posted by the Winthrop athletics department. “We were No. 1 in the District 6 that first year, and we got beat by one point at Lander College, and we didn’t make the NAIA tournament that year.
“But two of those players, Bennie Bennett and Rick Reese, are in the Hall of Fame. And Ronnie and Donnie Creamer, their numbers were retired and hung on the wall in the Eagles Club.”
His 1980-81 team, too, was special. Per his Hall of Fame bio on Winthrop’s website, that team won 31 games and became just the third team in South Carolina collegiate history to win 30 or more games in a single season.
Gordon as an athletic director
Gordon’s impact on the foundation of Winthrop athletics extends beyond his coaching record.
He had a significant role in the construction of Winthrop Coliseum, and he was responsible for making Winthrop a charter member of the Big South Conference, which would compete at the NCAA level.
Gordon was inducted in the Winthrop Hall of Fame in 2005. He is also a member of the South Carolina Hall of Fame, the Newberry Hall of Fame, the Frederick County (Md.) Hall of Fame, the NAIA Hall of Fame and the Furman Hall of Fame.
Gordon was a father of three daughters — Kelly, Lucy and Angela — and spent his retirement in Anderson, South Carolina.
Funeral arrangements have yet to be announced, per Furman athletics communications director Hunter Reid as of online publication time.
“He was my boss,” Solomon said. “But he was also my mentor, and he was my friend. And that’s a unique combination.”
This story was originally published May 3, 2022 at 3:40 PM with the headline "Nield Gordon, the man who started the Winthrop men’s basketball program, dies at 91."
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