Former SMU basketball coach dies at 57
Welton Brown, former head coach of the women’s basketball team at SMU died Dec. 12 of complications from a severe stroke he suffered on Sept. 26. Brown was 57 with no wife or biological children of his own, yet he was a coach and more to the young basketball players of SMU.
Current SMU head coach Rhonda Rompola was a former player under Brown and she served as an assistant coach until his retirement in 1991, when Rompola took over as head coach of the Mustangs.
“He was really like a father to me here, my dad in Dallas,” Rompola said, now in her 12th season at SMU. “We were that close. I really feel like he’s the reason I’m at SMU.”
Brown coached the Mustangs from 1977-1991 and totaled a record of 162-233 during his 14 years as head coach. A memorial service for Brown was held Jan. 4 at Moody Coliseum.
Brown was a friendly, outgoing man, friends say. He celebrated his team reaching the SWC Post-Season Classic by wearing a black tuxedo complemented by a top hat and cane that gave him the appearance of a magician. He was well known for wearing colorful tuxedos during Southwest Conference tournament games as a promise to his players. The tuxedos were characteristic of this man who always kept a positive attitude.
“He was one of the nicest men, and nicest people in coaching, I have ever met,” Rompola said. “He knew how to put a smile on your face. I used to kid him because I felt he was too nice. He could not yell at his players.”
Brown developed a women’s basketball program that was just one year old and had one scholarship into a competitive team in the Southwest Conference in 1977. In his third season, Brown guided SMU to a third place finish in the Texas Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. The following season, the first year of Southwest Conference competition for women, he led SMU to a fifth-place finish – his best ever with the Mustangs.
Brown’s best finish came in 1981-82 when the Mustangs went 18-15. Rompola was named All-American that season. SMU’s only other winning season (15-14) under Brown came in 1979-1980. He went 9-19 in his final campaign in 1990-91 and tied for sixth in the Southwest Conference.
Brown coached several other prominent players besides Rompola. Carol Blauvelt (1978-82) was the first Mustang to score 1,000 points. Lisa Davis (1979-83) also surpassed the 1,000 mark and still ranks fourth with 300 free throws made. Shasta Smothers-Johnson tallied 1,426 points, the fifth-highest total in school history.
Prior to coming to SMU, Brown coached girls’ basketball, volleyball, and track at Bishop Dunne High School in Dallas. In eight seasons as a girls’ high school basketball coach, he recorded a 120-76 record and 38-18 in three seasons as the volleyball head coach, including a volleyball district and bi-district championship his first year.
In his first season at BL, he guided the basketball and track teams to the state championships and the volleyball team to a bi-district championship, and he was named state coach-of-the-year honors in basketball and track.
A 1968 graduate of East Texas State University with a bachelor’s degree in social studies, Brown attended Henderson County Junior College in Athens, Texas before attending ETSU.
Brown is survived by his sisters Betty Barber Vaughn and Barbara Ann Brown Smith and his brother Bill Brown.
