Mike Delekta was the first player in Bristol County basketball history to average more than twenty points in three consecutive seasons.  And this was accomplished at a time when the three-point shot was not in use.

But before basketball Mike made a name for himself in baseball, playing on the Little League Baseball championship Braves and being named the Outstanding Boy of 1964.

In basketball he averaged twenty-five points a game and received 1968 Class C South honors.  The next year he averaged “only” twenty-one points and was named All Class C South; against East Greenwich he notched forty-three points, setting the Warren High individual game scoring record that was later matched by Justin Hackley.

In his senior year of 1970 he ran wild.  First he was named All Barrington Christmas Tourney.  Then he waltzed into Bristol’s Fitzgerald Gym and scored thirty-eight points, twenty-seven of them in the fourth quarter; both of these achievements were Fitzgerald records.  Mike was named All Class C South (26.4 point average) and All Class C Tournament as he led the Redskins to the Class C playoff semi-finals. 

After being a four-time member of Bryant College’s Intramural Basketball Champions, Mike played in the Newport Basketball League from 1975 to 1977 and then starred in the Bristol Recreation League for the next four years.  Playing for two-time Champions DaPonte Furniture, he was named the playoff Most Valuable Player in 1979 and the regular season Most Valuable Player in 1981. 

Playing in the Warren Slow-Pitch Softball League for more than ten years, Mike was a member of the 1971 Playoff Champions Thunders Thumpers and the 1974 Delekta’s Pharmacy squad that nabbed both the regular season and playoff crowns, in the process interrupting the run of Old Ironsides’ triumphs.  In 1977 he was the league’s playoff Most Valuable Player.

He also spent more than a decade starring in summer and winter basketball leagues in Warren and throughout the state.  Mike was a member of several Warren  Basketball League championship teams.  These included the Columbus Club team that won the 1973 regular season and playoff basketball titles and then repeated as the 1975 playoff winners, the Gob Shop five that won the 1977 playoff basketball title (he was named the Most Valuable Player), and Jamiel’s 1990 regular season co-champions. 

In 1989 and 1990, while on the far side of age thirty-five, he was named to the league’s All Star team.

In the 1990s Mike was involved in youth basketball programs in Warren and Bristol as both a coach and a game official.

Picture from Hall of Fame archives