“I have made it a point not only with our players at Vashon but our students as well, that they know about the legacy that my dad developed,” says Tony. “When my dad left Vashon in 2007 it wasn’t on the best of terms. That’s no secret. They pretty much tried to eliminate him from the history of the program. I have made it a point to put up the old pictures, display the old trophies, let people know about the legacy of Vashon basketball that he built.”
After Floyd Irons removal as coach of the Vashon Wolverines, and his subsequent stretch in federal prison for his role in a felony mortgage scheme, two of his former players were given the keys to the program. First, Anthony Bonner, Irons’ best-known former Vashon player, a superstar at St. Louis University and a long time NBA regular took over the Wolverines in 2006. He resigned mid-season in 2009. DeAndre Davis, a resource police officer at Vashon and a 1992 graduate, sat in the head coaches’ seat through the 2015 season. Neither was able to keep Vashon at the level anywhere close to the lofty perch of the Floyd Irons’ years. During the tenure of both coaches, most seasons the once mighty “V” finished with a very un-Vashon like record of below .500.
It is a twisted and complicated past between the Irons coaches (Floyd and Tony), the Vashon community and St. Louis area basketball. In 2015, the son fully and voluntarily interjected himself into the brew. Floyd was never the type of father to hold his son’s hand. He is the type who will have his son’s back. Dad attends most Vashon practices and games. He sits alone, his entourage from the glory days of long ago, dispersed.
The fact that Tony is the only child of the man who ran with the “fist of Irons”, the Vashon program for so many successful years is certainly grist for the Freudian mill, but don't go too far with it. There is no question of who today leads the “V”. The son is his own man running his own resurrected version of the hoops dynasty his dad started building on Cass Avenue almost 50 years ago.
In the glory years, Floyd had a game face that oozed fury. He stomped, he screamed, he pointed and jumped like an ireful child, his puffed-up face often frozen in a sneering rictus of rage. Tony’s courtside manner is much less demonstrative than his father’ was – mostly stoic to the extreme. If father was Type A, son is Type Z.
Tony has developed his own bench persona. He paces constantly, a combination, depending on game circumstances, of a gentlemanly Dean Smith amble and a Bobby Knight High Noon saunter. His banter with his players and his assistant coaches is steady and focuses on corrections and strategy. He will raise his voice, but seldom to an official. His communication with the men in stripes is always clinical and lacking emotion or insinuation.
Jimmy McKinney was a McDonald’s All-American playing for Floyd at Vashon in the early 2000s. He played over a decade of pro basketball in Europe and then returned to work for Tony at Vashon as an assistant coach. McKinney says the two Irons’ gameday sideline demeanors may be opposite, but what makes both successful is an identical approach to practice. "Discipline drives both. Their obsession with detail is identical,” says McKinney, currently the head coach at suburban Kirkwood High.
Tony’s tongue is as whip sharp as his dads ever was. He was destined from birth to be a basketball coach, a very good one. With a clipboard in his hand, a new practice drill on his fingertip and a barb on his tongue, he says he is today exactly where God intended. Sounding like the lyrics from some 1970s soft rock love song, Tony Irons tells his players, “When you think you have given me all you have, you had better reach down and find me just a little bit more.”
Today, Floyd Irons has been for near a generation removed from his position as head coach of the Vashon Wolverines. With his son Tony now leading the north side power, Floyd Irons is a sort of conscience-in-residence. Dad is a good and willing sounding board.
The senior Irons knows his son is not a template of his dad’s style. “He is more like his mother,” Floyd says, when discussing the difference in temperament. “He has never been one to like to get out of his comfort zone, whereas I was always looking to push the limits. Still, even today, after all the success he has had, he is very low key. Tony keeps his circle pretty tight.”
Floyd Irons has always played an oversized role in the lives of his players: a disciplinarian, a counselor, a mentor, a hard ass, a kind soul and, above all, a pedagogue. Torrance Miller, a small-time drug dealer and cell mate who taught Irons about the vagaries of the criminal justice system says, "Floyd could teach a dead rat to be deader."
Floyd’s wife and Tony’s mother, Sandra Irons lived shoulder to shoulder with her husband through that frustrating first decade. The wins always came, an average of 22 per year between 1974 to 1982, but never the Big Win. They lived in a fishbowl. Everyone had an opinion. Sandra says her husband agonized over each loss, never fully enjoyed the wins. She suggested that he attempt to develop a better relationship with the press, but he never listened.
In an age of peripatetic, keep-trading-up-for-a-better-job coaches, Irons stayed put. During his over three decades as coach of the Cass Avenue dynasty, Irons says he has seriously entertained only two offers from other schools. In the mid-1980s, Irons traveled to Rhode Island and interviewed for an assistant coach’s position with the Providence University Friars. He says he knew right away it was not a good fit. “They wanted a guy on the road full time recruiting. I wanted to be on the practice floor coaching.” To say Floyd Irons is not cut out to be an assistant, would be a more than fair assessment, one he was wise enough to make early.
In the mid 1990’s, Irons says he briefly looked into the position at neighboring suburban school University City. “By then, I had moved into administration with the St. Public Schools, and it was a bad time. The bussing, the charter and magnet schools that seemed to be springing up everywhere, the revolving door of superintendents; we literally were watching daily the gutting of the public schools in the city.”
But as with Providnce, when it came time to pull the trigger and separate from the V, Irons could not do it. What Irons has done over the years is to gather around him an extended Vashon family of former players he could not abandon for suburban greenery; colorful and strong men like, Cody, Campbell, Trice, and Collins. Maybe not generating the endowment connections of a De Smet or a Chaminade, but they’re family.
Floyd Irons was 34 years old when he won his first state championship. Today, Tony is 35 years old and has already captured five state titles, three as the head man at Vashon. Dad sometimes worries son’s road has been too smooth, lacking in the character-building disappointments he himself endured for a decade.
“If Tony is missing anything from his resume,” Irons observes, “it is failure.”
The younger Irons, even as a player, knew nothing but success. He finished his high school career at Lutheran North High School as a state champion. His collegiate career at College of the Ozarks closed with him as a member of an NAIA national champion.
Father says son recognizes this. “This was his idea, but I loved it,” Floyd says, “comes right out of my coaching playbook. A couple of years ago Tony had his whole team back from a state championship year. That fall he made them all play soccer. Vashon has never been known for its soccer and most of his players had never played. They won one match the whole fall. I think one loss was like 14-0. He said he wanted them to see how it felt to be on the other side.”
Does the son feel the yoke of family honor to bring back the gloss to his father’s reputation? If he does, he does not show it. Revenge is best served cold. Regardless, once again, with an Irons back at the wheel, the “V” is ready to roll and the north side pride in the iconic Irons’ led Vashon basketball machine has returned with a whole new generation of passionate supporters.
“I am very family oriented,” Tony says. “I am with my mom and dad all the time, visiting at their house, going out to dinner. To be honest, my dad’s probably my best friend. My wife and I hope to be starting a family soon. Covid has kind of pushed everything back. But I’m hoping things soon are going to get back to normal.”
“It’s really been tough on our kids with the pandemic. We’ve got a couple of Division I level seniors this year that really didn’t get to show their stuff this summer in the AAU ball. Basketball is just so important to these kids and to this community. If you do it the right way, basketball can be a positive. My dad did it the right way for 30 years. I like to feel I’m doing it the right way now.”
How will it end? Regardless of how, the son has made the dad proud. “To see him bring back the “V” is truly gratifying,” says Floyd Irons of his son’s mega success.
“I could see myself someday getting into college coaching,” says Tony. “But I’m not actively looking. I think I have a great situation at Vashon. I have a chance to continue a family legacy but also to make my own mark, to have my own impact on these kids. So, if it happens it happens. If not, I’m very happy here.”
Nothing stays the same, even on Cass Ave. Evolution can have a melancholy aspect, of course. Whenever things change—attitudes or the times themselves—there are inevitably those who fade away. But today, hope has poked its head from the hole of irrelevance the Vashon basketball program had become, and the consistent tune of the pied piper played loud and proud for 33 years by Floyd Irons strums again on these north side streets.
A father is a man who expects his son to be as good a man as he meant to be. Within the Iron’s coaching tree, the son is not burdened with the restoration of his father’s legacy but, more fittingly, in 2022 is respectfully establishing his own.
Say this for the still young coach living in a fishbowl darkened by the long shadow of his iconic and controversial father, through nine years and five state titles, he hasn't yet turned into anybody but whom his parents raised him to be – simply he is Tony Irons. And, the 74 year old man who created all these expectations will tell you, that's good enough.
