Appalachian Figures Series – The Story of Glenn Edward Roberts of Wise, Virginia
Today, the jump shot is so fundamental to basketball that it is difficult to imagine the game without it. Players rise above defenders, release the ball at the height of their leap, and score from nearly every place on the court. Yet during the early 1930s, most players still shot with their feet planted on the floor. One of the men who helped change that tradition came not from a major city or a nationally powerful university, but from the coal country of Wise County, Virginia.
Glenn Edward Roberts grew up near Pound and learned basketball on an outdoor court where rain, mud, and uneven ground shaped the way the game had to be played. At Emory & Henry College, he developed into one of the most prolific scorers of his generation. He later played in the National Basketball League, joined his brothers in wartime exhibition games, built a business career in Southwest Virginia, and returned to coaching at Clinch Valley College.
Roberts has often been called the inventor of the jump shot. That description is too absolute for a development that appeared in several regions through several players. What the surviving evidence does support is still remarkable. Roberts was among the earliest documented college stars to use a true jump shot regularly, deliberately, and successfully. He did not merely experiment with the shot. He built a record-setting career around it and helped demonstrate what basketball would eventually become.
A Basketball Education on a Dirt Court
Glenn Roberts was born on October 25, 1912, in Pound, Virginia, one of seven sons in a family that became closely associated with basketball in Wise County. Later institutional accounts describe him walking several miles to school, sometimes carrying a lantern on winter mornings, and practicing on a packed dirt court because Pound did not have the facilities enjoyed by larger schools.
That rough court became part of the Roberts story. When rain softened the ground, ordinary dribbling and set shooting became difficult. According to Roberts’s later recollections, he learned to spring upward and release the ball while airborne, partly to keep his shot from being blocked and partly to overcome the conditions beneath his feet. His early motion was not identical to the modern one-handed jumper. It was commonly described as a two-handed shot taken while rising or near the top of the leap. Even so, it departed sharply from the stationary set shots that dominated the period.
Pound High School reportedly did not field a regular team during Roberts’s first two high school years. Once the program was organized, Roberts and his teammates quickly became a regional power. Institutional biographies credit Pound with records of 28 wins and 2 losses during his junior season and 35 wins without a loss during his senior year. They also credit the school with two state championships and identify Roberts as an All-State player. Some later accounts differ over the exact championship years, which makes surviving Virginia High School League records, school scorebooks, and contemporary Wise County newspapers especially important for a final reconstruction of those seasons. What is not in dispute is that Roberts left Pound as one of the most celebrated young players in Southwest Virginia.
Emory & Henry’s Ace Center
Roberts entered Emory & Henry College in 1931 and played for coach Pedie Jackson. At a time when basketball players were usually identified by fixed positions and centers were expected to work near the basket, Roberts became something different. He could score over defenders, shoot from farther away than most big men, and create an advantage by leaving the floor before releasing the ball.
Contemporary newspapers show that Roberts’s reputation was not created only through later memory. The February 24, 1933, issue of Emory & Henry’s student newspaper, The White Topper, referred to him as Jackson’s “ace center.” During his senior season, the Suffolk News-Herald reported that he scored seventeen points in a 45 to 14 victory over Potomac State. The Virginian-Pilot and the Norfolk Landmark reported that he led Emory & Henry with twelve points against Richmond. A 1939 Richmond News Leader item identified him as the holder of an Emory & Henry scoring mark of 421 points in twenty-three games during the 1935 season. These reports document a player who was already being treated as an exceptional scorer while his career was unfolding.
The totals most often associated with Roberts are 1,531 points in eighty collegiate games and another 482 points in twenty-four games against professional, semiprofessional, or independent opponents. Together, those figures produce a frequently cited total of 2,013 points in 104 games, an average of slightly more than nineteen points per contest. Such numbers require historical context. Basketball teams of the early 1930s often scored only thirty or forty points in an entire game. The center jump also followed every made basket, slowing play and giving possession back to the team that won the tip. There was no shot clock, and the high-scoring offensive systems familiar to modern audiences did not yet exist.
Institutional sources differ slightly about Emory & Henry’s exact team record during Roberts’s career, with totals ranging from 68 to 72 victories in eighty college games. The original scorebooks would provide the best final authority. The broad conclusion, however, is secure. Roberts led a highly successful small-college team while producing scoring numbers far beyond the normal expectations of his era. In 1935, the Helms Athletic Foundation selected him as a first-team All-American, making him one of the earliest nationally honored basketball players from Virginia and one of the most important athletes in Emory & Henry history.
More Than an Athlete at Emory & Henry
Roberts’s college years were not limited to basketball. Emory & Henry’s Hall of Fame biography states that he completed both Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees in four years, made the honor roll, participated in student government, and belonged to Beta Lambda Zeta. The May 3, 1935, issue of The White Topper also places him within the graduating college community.
These details help explain why Roberts remained closely connected to the institution long after his playing career. He was not simply a traveling athlete recruited to score points. He was part of campus life at a small Appalachian college whose students often balanced academics, work, and extracurricular responsibilities. His success gave Emory & Henry a national basketball identity at a time when small colleges could still challenge professional and independent teams in exhibition play.
Roberts also became a regional symbol. A 1936 Richmond News Leader article described Emory & Henry as playing “without the great Glenn Roberts,” while a 1937 item asked whether readers remembered the sensational former national scoring leader. Those near-contemporary references show how quickly his name became a standard against which later players were measured.
Did Glenn Roberts Invent the Jump Shot?
The question of who invented the jump shot has never produced a universally accepted answer. Basketball techniques rarely appear in a single instant. Players in different places can discover similar solutions without knowing about one another, particularly in an era when games were not televised and local newspapers carried most sports information.
Several players have been associated with early forms of the shot. John Cooper, Kenny Sailors, Belus Smawley, Joe Fulks, and others appear in histories of its development. Hank Luisetti became nationally famous for a running one-handed shot during the 1930s, although that motion was not exactly the same as the later vertical jump shot. Roberts belongs in this broader story because he was using an airborne shooting motion at Emory & Henry by the early 1930s and because his scoring made the technique impossible to dismiss as a novelty.
Roberts’s case is strongest when stated carefully. It cannot be proven that he was the first person anywhere to leave the floor while shooting a basketball. Informal games and poorly documented school contests almost certainly included earlier examples. It is more defensible to describe him as one of the earliest known organized college players to make the jump shot a regular and productive part of his game. He was also among the first to demonstrate that the shot could transform offensive basketball.
Modern histories increasingly treat the jump shot as an innovation with several independent pioneers rather than one inventor. That interpretation does not diminish Roberts. It places him within a small group of athletes who recognized the same future before the rest of the sport had caught up.
From Norton to Professional Basketball
After graduating in 1935, Roberts returned to Southwest Virginia and taught at Norton High School. The University of Virginia’s College at Wise credits him with coaching the girls’ basketball team for two seasons and winning district championships in both. Those seasons deserve more research through Norton yearbooks, school newspapers, and district tournament records, but they show that Roberts began coaching almost immediately after his college career.
He then entered professional basketball during the years before the creation of the National Basketball Association. Roberts played for the Dayton Metropolitans during the 1937 to 1938 National Basketball League season, recording thirty-nine points in eight games. He joined the Akron Firestone Non-Skids the following season and scored forty-six points in fifteen games. Firestone finished 24 and 3 and won the NBL championship. Roberts later appeared in one game for the Toledo Jim White Chevrolets during the 1941 to 1942 season.
His surviving NBL record totals twenty-four games and eighty-seven points. Those modest professional totals stand in contrast to his overwhelming college production, but the industrial league system of the period was very different from modern professional sports. Players often held jobs with the companies that sponsored their teams, rosters could be deep, and careers moved between league teams, independent clubs, and workplace competition. Roberts’s place on the Firestone championship team connected an Appalachian college star to one of the most important professional organizations of the pre-NBA era. The NBL later merged with the Basketball Association of America in 1949 to form the NBA.
The Roberts Brothers and Wartime Basketball
Basketball remained a family enterprise. Glenn and several of his brothers formed the Roberts Brothers team during the 1940s, playing exhibition and barnstorming games while supporting war bond campaigns. A January 26, 1946, article in the Richmond News Leader provides contemporary evidence that the team was active and publicly recognized.
Later institutional accounts credit the brothers with a 32 and 4 record and with helping sell more than one million dollars in war bonds. They also describe a March 1945 victory over the Milligan College V-12 Naval Aviators that reportedly generated more than $50,000 in bond sales. Those totals should eventually be tested against individual advertisements, Treasury reports, box scores, and local newspaper coverage. Even with that caution, the surviving record shows that the Roberts family used basketball for more than entertainment. Their games connected local athletic fame to the national wartime effort and brought crowds together across Appalachia during the final years of World War II.
A Businessman in Wise County
Roberts did not remain permanently in the industrial basketball centers of Ohio. He returned to the Wise County region and entered the tire business, drawing on his connection to Firestone. Institutional biographies associate him with tire and recapping businesses that served customers in Norton and the surrounding area.
This part of his life is important because it shows the pattern followed by many Appalachian athletes before professional sports offered long-term financial security. Roberts’s basketball fame opened doors, but his adult life depended on business, family, and community work. Corporate records, city directories, advertisements, property records, and surviving family papers could reveal much more about this period.
His public identity in Southwest Virginia remained tied to basketball. He was remembered not only as a former All-American and professional player, but also as a local businessman who had returned home. That presence helped make his later coaching work possible.
Building a Winner at Clinch Valley College
In 1964, Roberts became the basketball coach at Clinch Valley College, now the University of Virginia’s College at Wise. The December 8, 1964, issue of the student newspaper, The Highland Cavalier, identified him as the new coach and noted his Emory & Henry background.
Clinch Valley had gone 2 and 12 during the previous season. Under Roberts, the 1964 to 1965 team finished 10 and 5, including a 7 and 1 record at home. The university identifies it as the first winning basketball season in the young program’s history. Roberts coached a second season, but the complete 1965 to 1966 record has not been firmly established. Some later sources give a record of 14 and 6, while the official institutional account acknowledges that documentation remains incomplete.
The uncertainty surrounding that second season is itself a reminder of how easily small-college sports history can disappear. Scorebooks, student newspapers, photographs, schedules, and player recollections may still settle the question. What can already be established is that Roberts inherited a struggling program and quickly produced a winner while continuing his business responsibilities. His return to coaching linked the beginnings of Southwest Virginia college basketball with one of the region’s greatest earlier players.
Recognition Near the End of His Life
Emory & Henry made Roberts a charter member of its Sports Hall of Fame in 1972. In April 1980, the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame inducted him for his achievements as a player and basketball pioneer. Roberts died on May 21, 1980, only weeks after that recognition. He was sixty-seven years old.
His reputation continued to grow after his death. He was honored by small-college basketball organizations, remembered by Emory & Henry and UVA Wise, and commemorated in Pound. Researchers and supporters also continued to argue that his career deserved recognition from the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
That campaign has not disappeared. The Hall of Fame included Roberts among the veteran candidates eligible for consideration for its Class of 2026. When the nine members of the class were announced on April 4, 2026, Roberts was not among those selected. His continued appearance in the Hall’s selection process nevertheless shows that his historical case remains active more than nine decades after his final college season.
Why Glenn Roberts Matters
Glenn Roberts matters because his story changes the geographical map of basketball history. The jump shot is often associated with famous arenas, major universities, and nationally known professionals. Roberts’s version of the story begins on a rough outdoor court near Pound, where a young player adapted to mud, distance, and defenders by leaving the ground.
His career also demonstrates how innovation can travel outward from places that national histories overlook. Roberts carried his shot from Wise County to Emory & Henry, from college gymnasiums to professional industrial teams, and later back into Southwest Virginia coaching. His scoring records gave the technique credibility before it became standard practice.
Calling Roberts the sole inventor of the jump shot asks the evidence to prove more than it can. Calling him merely one claimant among many understates what he accomplished. He was one of the earliest documented masters of the shot, one of the greatest small-college scorers of his era, a champion in the early professional game, and a figure whose career connected the coalfields of Virginia to a fundamental change in basketball.
The most accurate tribute is also the most meaningful. Glenn Roberts did not need to be the only inventor to be a pioneer. From a dirt court in Pound, he helped show the basketball world that the future of shooting was above the floor.
Sources & Further Reading
The White Topper (Emory, VA). February 24, 1933, 1. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/
Suffolk News-Herald. February 8, 1935, 7. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/
Virginian-Pilot and the Norfolk Landmark. February 14, 1935, 12. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/
The White Topper (Emory, VA). May 3, 1935, 1. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/
Richmond News Leader. January 23, 1936, 18. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/
Richmond News Leader. January 23, 1937, 14. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/
Richmond News Leader. February 28, 1939, 16. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/
Richmond News Leader. January 26, 1946, 14. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/
Richmond News Leader. January 23, 1953, 26. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/
The Highland Cavalier (Wise, VA). December 8, 1964, 4. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/
Emory & Henry University. “Archives.” E&H Library. Accessed July 22, 2026. https://www.emoryhenry.edu/library/services/archives/
Emory & Henry University. “Glenn E. Roberts.” Emory & Henry College Sports Hall of Fame. Accessed July 22, 2026. https://hof.ehc.edu/members/glenn-e-roberts/
University of Virginia’s College at Wise Athletics. “Glenn Roberts.” Accessed July 22, 2026. https://uvawisecavs.com/sports/mens-basketball/roster/coaches/glenn-roberts/3021
Virginia Sports Hall of Fame. “Glenn Roberts Sr.” August 25, 2017. https://vasportshof.com/inductee/glenn-roberts-sr/
Small College Basketball. “Glenn Roberts.” Accessed July 22, 2026. https://www.smallcollegebasketball.com/glenn-roberts
Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. “Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame Announces Eligible Candidates for the Class of 2026.” December 19, 2025. https://www.hoophall.com/news/naismith-basketball-hall-of-fame-announces-eligible-candidates-for-the-class-of-2026
Basketball-Reference. “Glenn Roberts NBL Statistics.” Accessed July 22, 2026. https://www.basketball-reference.com/nbl/players/r/robergl01n.html
Pro Basketball Encyclopedia. “Glenn Roberts.” Accessed July 22, 2026. https://probasketballencyclopedia.com/player/glenn-roberts/
Pound Historical Society. “Glenn Roberts: Credited with the Jump Shot.” Accessed July 22, 2026. https://phs1.org/Glenn%20Roberts/glenn.htm
Fox, Stephen R. Big Leagues: Professional Baseball, Football, and Basketball in National Memory. New York: William Morrow, 1994. Reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. https://books.google.com/books?id=zQuC0vXksDMC
Goldblatt, Abe, and Robert W. Wentz. The Great and the Near Great: A Century of Sports in Virginia. Norfolk, VA: Donning Company, 1976. https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=The%20Great%20and%20the%20Near%20Great%20A%20Century%20of%20Sports%20in%20Virginia
Christgau, John. The Origins of the Jump Shot: Eight Men Who Shook the World of Basketball. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/bison-original/9780803263949/the-origins-of-the-jump-shot/
Fury, Shawn. Rise and Fire: The Origins, Science, and Evolution of the Jump Shot, and How It Transformed Basketball Forever. New York: Flatiron Books, 2016. https://books.google.com/books?q=Shawn+Fury+Rise+and+Fire
Fury, Shawn. “Basketball’s Jump-Shot Revolution.” Wall Street Journal, February 5, 2016. https://www.wsj.com/articles/basketballs-jump-shot-revolution-1454687382
Malla, Pasha. “How the Jump Shot Brought Individualism to Basketball.” New Yorker, March 14, 2016. https://www.newyorker.com/sports/sporting-scene/how-the-jump-shot-brought-individualism-to-basketball
Peterson, Robert W. Cages to Jump Shots: Pro Basketball’s Early Years. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002. https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/bison-books/9780803287723/cages-to-jump-shots/
Nelson, Murry R. The National Basketball League: A History, 1935–1949. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009. https://books.google.com/books?id=8HYQQYEtQ4gC
Stark, Douglas. Wartime Basketball: The Emergence of a National Sport during World War II. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016. https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803245280/wartime-basketball
Library of Virginia. “Virginia Newspaper Directory.” Accessed July 22, 2026. https://www.lva.virginia.gov/collections/vnd
Library of Virginia. “Wise County Microfilm.” Accessed July 22, 2026. https://www.lva.virginia.gov/collections/ccmf/VA/VA297
Virginia Department of Health. “Genealogy and Vital Records.” Accessed July 22, 2026. https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/vital-records/genealogy/
National Archives and Records Administration. “Census Records.” Accessed July 22, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/census
Author Note: Glenn Roberts’s story shows how an athlete from a small Wise County community could influence the development of a national sport. Although his claim as the sole inventor of the jump shot remains debated, his place among its earliest and most successful pioneers deserves wider recognition.