Folks who were in Rupp Arena on March 20, 2004 still talk about THE DUNK, not trying to embellish the story of the exclamation point Lonnell “Worm” Dewalt III put on Warren Central’s state-championship victory over Mason County but rather attempting to explain what they witnessed in terms mere mortals would understand. When Dewalt stretched his 6-foot-6 frame to snare a missed 3-point attempt that had bounded outside the backboard, cupped the ball in his oversized right hand, and used his 38-inch (at least) vertical leap to windmill it through the hoop, you would swear some of Newton’s Laws were broken along with Mason County’s will.
Photographers and videographers stopped to check their digital media, making sure they saw what they thought they saw. Spectators let out a collective “Whoa!” And Dewalt? With a single play on the biggest stage in Kentucky high school basketball, he encapsulated why many consider him the greatest athlete to come out of the 4th Region.
“He brought the gym down’” recalls his father, Lonnell Dewalt Jr. “I remember it like it was yesterday.”
“That dunk would have made any NBA player proud,” says Tim Riley, coach of that championship team. “It was unbelievable. The crowd went crazy. People were running out in the aisles. It was a phenomenal play.”
Phenomenal. A good word to describe Dewalt, who today says, “I thought it was a regular dunk until I saw it on tape. It was crazy.”
As in crazy mad skills, the kind you normally see on display on ESPN and the kind Dewalt exhibited almost routinely during his time as a two-sport star at WCHS. How good was he? Good enough that coaches from Southeastern Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference schools wanted him to come play basketball and coaches from any school with a football team wanted him to suit up for them on Saturdays. In today’s social media parlance, he was OMG good.
“I don’t know that Bowling Green has ever produced a better athlete than Lonnell,” Riley offers. “At one time, he was ranked as the third-best wide receiver prospect in the country, and he was ranked right behind Chris Lofton (Kentucky’s 2004 Mr. Basketball who enjoyed a stellar career at the University of Tennessee) among the state’s basketball prospects.”
Ricky Wood, who coached Dewalt in football, ratchets it up a notch in his assessment of the wide receiver/linebacker/special teams star. “He was a pro-type athlete, no doubt,” Wood says. “He could have played on either side of the ball, outside linebacker or receiver. I always thought he could be one of those guys who bulked up some and played tight end in the NFL.”
The NFL hasn’t come calling, but Dewalt’s athleticism has taken him to the pro ranks on a journey filled with equal helpings of highlights and disappointments. Today, at age 29 and living in Pittsburgh with his girlfriend and young daughter, Dewalt hopes that journey hasn’t ended.
After a senior year in which he won that basketball championship and caught 58 passes for 1,203 yards and 14 touchdowns for a WCHS football team that reached the state semifinals, Dewalt began his post-secondary odyssey in Lexington. As an 18-year-old true freshman at the University of Kentucky, he had a season that seemed to have him on track for stardom. He set the school record with seven blocked kicks and earned a National Special Teams Player of the Year Award. As a back-up wide receiver, he also caught 11 passes and scored a touchdown.
“I loved UK,” Dewalt says today. “Wesley Woodyard (now in his eighth season as an NFL linebacker) was my roommate. I was gaining weight and getting in great shape. But I just wasn’t ready. I was childish.”
Academic issues derailed Dewalt’s Big Blue dreams, and he took his talents south, playing both football and basketball for a year at Northeast Mississippi Community College and then playing one season of football at the University of North Alabama.
Leaving academia behind, Dewalt then tried his hand at professional football, Arena League-style. Playing on that league’s 50-yard field, Dewalt starred on both offense and defense for the Louisville Fire, the Lexington Horsemen, and the Columbus Lions before joining the Pittsburgh Power, where he spent three seasons and caught 21 touchdown passes in 2011. The Power folded in 2012, and Dewalt hasn’t played since.
“He was doing good in the AFL,” says Dewalt Jr., who explains that Dewalt earned the nickname “Worm” from his grandmother because he was long like a worm. “Every sport he has ever played, he was good at it. He had a gift.”
The younger Dewalt might object to the use of the past tense. While “working day-by-day” these days in Pittsburgh, he is trying to translate that gift into a second career as a professional athlete. Now weighing 245 pounds (about 35 more than he weighed at WCHS), Dewalt is working out and honing his basketball skills, with an eye on catching on with a professional basketball team overseas.
“I’m playing in a league that’s sort of like Bowling Green’s Dirt Bowl,” he says. “There are some pretty good athletes up here. I played against a 7-footer the other day. I’m working on my outside game, trying to improve my dribbling and shooting.”
His father encourages Dewalt to pursue his dream of playing overseas and capping off an extraordinary athletic journey by playing two different sports professionally. “I think he has a good shot at it,” says Dewalt Jr. “I told him if he’s going to do it, this is the time to do it. You’re not getting any younger.”
