Today’s visit will end WHEN the expected phone call arrives from Atlanta Braves headquarters, any minute, even 1:47 a.m. Tuesday, March 5.
Sooo, let’s get at it by congratulating every young’un who positively represents Enterprise High School in/out of classrooms, starting with two recently-crowned Alabama High School Athletic Association All-State Wrestlers.
Kameron Stiffler (125 lbs.) and Grier Hunt (132 lbs.) earned their titles and joined Baby Boomer EHS grapplers Edward Acuna, Steve Rogers, Randy Tucker and Kent Brummet, 1960s state title-holders, whose abilities on blue mats developed after the arrival of the late Morris Higginbotham who introduced wrestling during his 1959-61 run coaching here.
Speaking of EHS Boomers, especially those who played basketball for coaches Dan Pridgen and Charles Clark in the 1960s, coach Rhett Harrelson and his staff leading the Wildcats to a State Basketball Championship, a semi-final setback and state runner-up finish the last three years, respectively, is almost beyond belief.
Ask Jim or Donnie Reese, Charlie Abernathy, Billy Cotter, Bill Wells, Herbie Gannon, et al, and those of us who watched them play, when Enterprise beat New Brockton and Kinston in the same season, we’d done something memorable.
Today’s EHS young’uns may not think much of that sports nostalgia but when Creigh Purnell coached at Kinston and Bryant Steele led New Brockton, the Bulldogs and Gamecocks played but one sport and both always played it well.
EHS fans had to arrive early when the Cats played those Coffee County foes.
Speaking of crowds, in the late 1960s, shortly before full school integration, Dothan’s Carver High School basketball team came to Coppinville High School to play coach Alfred Peavey’s Eagles.
The late Charles Cole, himself a remarkable coach at least at three levels, smiled when we talked about that game that drew the largest basketball crowd your scribe ever beheld.
Charles was one of two special referees called to officiate the special game.
Cars were parked all over Coppinville’s campus and both sides of Ouida Street from Park Avenue to the railroad tracks more than an hour before tip-off.
The House of Adams, then at what’s now 123 Plaza Drive, was as near Coppinville’s gym as your scribe could find a parking space.
Soooo, what was the big attraction?
Carver’s Artis Gilmore who grew to 7 feet, 2 inches and played in the ABA and NBA and is a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Sooo, who won?
You’ll have to ask someone who made it inside the gym.
Hmmm.
Boomers may recall the 1960 Presidential campaign that pitted John F. Kennedy against Richard Nixon.
Kennedy won the election despite, pundits reported, being Catholic, a fact that caused many Americans much mud-slinging grief, for some reason.
On Election Day 1960, as now, your scribe couldn’t recognize a Catholic on sight but knew nobody looking like JFK went to City School.
Somebody, maybe future EHS wrestler Jim Warren, explained we ate fish on Fridays because of Catholics among us.
Those fish were good.
Fast forward to January 2024, one week after Nick Saban retired as Alabama’s head football coach, your scribe learned Nick is Catholic.
Times they have and are a’changin’.
The phone’s ringing: Gotta be the Braves calling, confirming your scribe’s been hired to replace “The Freeze” in warning track footraces against fans at 2024 home games …
