John Niles Sr., Champion Bridgehampton Killer Bees Coach, Has Died

John L. Niles Sr., 84, who coached powerhouse Bridgehampton High School Killer Bees boys basketball teams in the 1980s, teams that beat the likes of Brooklyn’s Boys and Girls High, Hempstead, and Amityville, died Saturday in Conway, S.C., a town near Myrtle Beach to which he and his wife, Nancy, who predeceased him, moved when he retired in 1991.

Joe Niles, a son who lives in Charleston, S.C., said Monday that his father had been born in Harrisburg, Pa., on Oct. 23, 1931, but had been reared in Bridgehampton, “in a house across the street from the school, toward the intersection where the monument is.”

Mr. Niles went to the Bridgehampton School, where he played six-man football, basketball, and baseball, after which, his son said, he attended the University of Buffalo.

Mr. Niles’s wife, the former Nancy Ross, also grew up in Bridgehampton. They had five children, Michael, Stephen, John Jr., whose nickname is Jay, Joe, and Michelle Paterson, all of whom survive him. Both Mr. and Mrs. Niles, at one time or another, served on the Bridgehampton School Board.

“Basketball in Bridgehampton really began with Roger Golden,” Mr. Niles said during an interview in 1997, when he returned here to celebrate with his successor, Carl Johnson, and his players, the school’s seventh Class D state championship. Mr. Golden coached for a decade, beginning in 1970, and so did Mr. Niles, from 1981 to 1991.

Under Mr. Golden, the Bees, then known as the Bridgies, won state championships in 1978, ’79, and ’80, and Mr. Niles followed suit with state titles in 1984 and ’86. His 1985 team was a state finalist, and his ’91 team was a state semifinalist. The 1986 and ’89 teams, moreover, won county small schools championships. In addition, he won numerous coach-of-the-year awards.

“He was a good coach — he coached me in the C.Y.O. league and in junior high — and was an even better person,” said Coach Johnson, who played on three of Bridgehampton’s state-championship teams and has coached four of them. “He was there 100 percent for these kids. He did anything and everything for them. He meant a lot to the kids and to the community.”

Ronnie Gholson, who played for Mr. Niles on the junior varsity and varsity between 1984 and ’87, and Louis O’Neal, who coaches now at Southampton High School, and who played for Mr. Niles in junior high, agreed.

“In three years we maybe lost one or two games,” said Mr. Gholson. “We beat Amityville my junior and senior years, in ’87 we beat Boys and Girls, we beat Hempstead. . . . Yes, we had talent, what with players like Troy Bowe, Bobby Hopson, Darryl Hemby, Tim Jackson, Chris Parker, Polis Walker, Duane White, Rodney Harris, and Kevin Dance, but a lot of the credit goes to him. He didn’t just roll the ball out onto the court and say, ‘Play.’ He knew the game, he worked us hard in practices, and then when gametime came he allowed us to play with freedom, with creativity.”

Bowe went on to play at the University of Hawaii, Hopson at Wagner, Harris at Southampton College, where he was one of the leading 3-point shooters in the country, and Gholson at the University of Bridgeport.

Mr. Gholson, who has coached the Westhampton Beach High School’s boys varsity basketball team since 2003, credits Mr. Niles with having turned his life around.

“Coming into my freshman year I was about to go down the wrong path, but he got me into a summer camp, with his son Joe, at Potsdam. That camp wasn’t just about basketball — they talked to us about work, about dedication and commitment, and asked us to think about what we wanted to be when we grew up. It was a great experience. As a result of it, I became a different player, a different person. And it was because of him.”

A memorial service for Mr. Niles, who is also survived by seven grandchildren, will be held on Dec. 5 at Hillcrest Mausoleum Chapel in Conway at 10 a.m.

Asked if there would be a gathering of some sort here for Mr. Niles, Coach Johnson said, “We’re hoping to honor him on Feb. 5, the day we play Stony Brook. We’re hoping that our Wall of Fame will be up by then, but if it’s not, we’ll honor him anyway.”