Category: St. Clair Sports

Moody’s rising rodeo star

Story by Paul South
Submitted photos

Truth be told, the closest most of us have come to mounting a bucking bull was as a kid on the 25-cent-powered horses at the local five and dime, watching John Travolta in “Urban Cowboy” in college,  or worst-case, when  liquid courage in a shot glass convinced usually sensible adults that they could tame the mechanical bull at the neighborhood cowboy bar.

But the miniature bulls that Moody’s Ryder Carpenetti takes on in rodeos from North Carolina to Las Vegas are the real deal – 1,200 pounds of thick muscle and foul mood that are as unpredictable as it gets. These animals can with a buck, or spin or dip send their riders into the air like a rag doll, leaving them with a face full of mud, bumps and bruises – or worse.

But Carpenetti has captured three world titles riding miniature bucking horses and half-ton bulls.

He’s 4-foot-6, weighs 71 pounds and still has some of his baby teeth. And he’s only turned 12 years old in September.

As John Wayne might put it: Pilgrim, this is one tough little hombre.

It all started with a bulletin board. Ryder’s Dad, Frankie Carpenetti, remembers.

“He was 3 years old. I saw a flier at a Tractor Supply down in Sterrett, and they had ‘mutton bustin,’ you know, where they ride the sheep. I said, ‘I’ll take him down there and let him ride in that. Maybe he’ll ride in that, and then he’ll be done with it.”

Ryder won. And he wasn’t done. Turns out, the sport had lassoed the toddler. From there it was riding his first calf at 5, then steers to junior bulls to mini-bulls. In 2013, he won his first world title in mutton busting. In 2015, he captured world titles in bucking horses and mini bulls.

Watch Ryder Carpenetti on YouTube and you see a kid as cool as the backside of a pillow. He has a quick grin that gleams from beneath the long shadow cast by his big, black cowboy hat. While waiting for his next ride, he waits quietly. His demeanor seems more school play backstage than bull rider.

Once his protective gear is on – a helmet and vest mandated by the MBR (Mini Bull Riders Association) – he’s unflappable.

“He really doesn’t have any fear,” Frankie Carpenetti says.

“We have dirt bikes at the house, and he does jumps and all that. When he gets on the back of the bucking chutes, a lot of the kids are nervous. You can tell. We always have people say, ‘How’s he so calm?’ He just sits on the back of the bucking chutes and waits his turn. Nothing bothers him. He’ll find my wife in the crowd, and he’ll wave to her. The other kids, they’re back there shaking and stuff.”

Carpenetti added, “There’s times when I’m a little more nervous than he is. We go to a lot of big deals. The PBRs (Professional Bull Riders), the Built Ford Toughs (rodeos), you know. I guess I get a lot more nervous than he does sometimes. I guess my nervousness would be him getting hurt. He’s pulled the tendons out in his elbow a couple of times, aside from the normal bumps and bruises.

“But nothing bothers him. He’s in his own world right there. He’s getting ready to ride,” Frankie Carpenetti said. “He’s in his own zone. He just gets in there and rides”

Like any mother, April Carpenetti had the jitters, too. But now, her worries aren’t as great as when he plays youth football in Moody, as a running back and defensive back. On a recent Saturday, Ryder played a half day of football, then was on the road for a rodeo in Bessemer City, N.C.

“Any mom would be terrified,” she says. “But it’s just like anything. The more they do it, the more I feel comfortable. He had to move up in (weight class) in football. Right now, I worry more about him playing against bigger kids in football than I do about him rodeoing. I guess it’s just something he’s been doing so long that I’m comfortable with him doing it.”

At only 12, Carpenetti has drawn comparisons to the late Lane Frost. Frost, who won the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) Bull Riding World Championship in 1987 when he was just 24, was killed in the arena in 1989. To this day, long after his death, Frost casts an almost mythic shadow over the sport.

Gary Leffew, a member of the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame and the 1970 National Finals Rodeo champion, is Carpenetti’s coach. He believes the comparison to Frost is on target.

“He’ll go wherever he wants to go,” Leffew said. “He’ll either be in the PBR or the PRCA. He’ll be in there somewhere where he’s a star. He’s like a young Lane Frost. He’s charismatic. People are going to know his name, wherever he decides to go.”

Leffew’s career offers a backstory to Ryder Carpenetti’s championship ride. Leffew is called “the rodeo guru” of positive thinking. Leffew finished 10^th in the world in 1966, then hit a slump. As a new husband, soon with a baby on the way, Leffew worried more about making a paycheck than setting goals and visualizing how life could be for him and his family if he won. Worry beat down on him like a July Texas sun.

Then he read Maxwell Maltz’s 1960 bestseller – “Psycho-Cybernetics.” His thinking – and his career – took a turn

“Once I read that book, I just sat up in bed and laughed,” Leffew says. “I was 22 years old, and it was the first time anyone had explained to me how the mind works and that it can work for you or against you. (The mind) doesn’t care, it’s a piece of machinery. Whatever you program in, it will take and give it back to you. I realized I was a victim of my own thinking.”

Leffew also studied the style and technique of George Paul, who Leffew calls “the greatest bull rider I ever saw.” Paul, who tragically died in a plane crash in 1970, rode 79 consecutive bulls without being thrown. Paul was considered “the strongest man ever to ride bulls in professional rodeo.”

Studying Paul and diving into the workings of the subconscious mind, transformed Leffew’s career.

“That next year, I was third in the world. I rode the Bull of the Year his last ride. I came out in 1970 and won the world title and the National Finals Rodeo. Once I got into positive thinking, it took me three years to reach my goal of the world championship,” Leffew said. “During that period, I was no lower than third.”

And those who were skeptical of his positive thinking approach started to come around.

“(Early on), there was a lot of laughing. The first rodeo I went to at Denver in 1968, I was one point from the all-time record – 89 points – on a bull that had never been rode. I rode him like Patton for a dance. I was runner up for the championship. I went three months without getting thrown off. They were like, ‘This kid’s on to something’ They’d come around and ask, ‘What page was that on?’”

Now, Carpenetti is part of a stable of star pupils who have embraced Leffew’s power-of-positive-thinking approach. Leffew has mentored 19 world champions.

“What we teach is hyper body, quiet mind. Your heart will be pounding, your adrenaline will be running, which is good, but you want a quiet mind. A quiet mind operates at the speed of light. It processes a billion pieces of information per second. A hyper mind works a second at a time. You’d think a hyper mind works faster. It just screws things up. There’s no continuity, no timing, no flow. So, you have to get in a quiet mind state. You just focus much better.”

Carpenetti has that laser focus. Like other St. Clair County athletes, like Springville’s Casey Mize, the first pick in last summer’s major league baseball draft, and Odenville’s Dee Ford of the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs, Ryder has a dream.

“He wants to do bigger things,” April Carpenetti says. “We don’t make him go to any rodeos. We’ll be in the car on Friday afternoon after school, drive 12 hours to Dallas for a Saturday rodeo and drive back on Sunday to keep his points up.”

Therein is another part of the story. No competitor in any sport reaches a high level without a support system. Last year, the Carpenettis rolled up 56,000 miles traveling the rodeo circuit. And Ryder’s sister, Harley, a student at Moody Junior High, is a competitive cheerleader on a Birmingham-based squad. It’s not unusual for Ryder and his Dad to be traveling in one direction, April and Harley, 13, off in another.

A quick note: Before taking her talent in another direction, Harley Carpenetti excelled as a barrel racer, another competitive rodeo sport.

“We’re all over the place,” Frankie Carpenetti says.

Both Leffew and Frankie Carpenetti praised the young rider’s work ethic.

“He’s got persistence. He’s got goals set. He’s got a great support system. He’s got everything he needs to be a superstar. He’s a very focused young man and he’s a talented young rider. But he’s a gentleman. That’s one of the things we try to teach our kids. You can’t be too polite,” Leffew says. “You want to think about other people. You don’t want them to just say he’s a good rider, but that he’s a good young man, a role model for everybody who comes behind you. People don’t just judge you on how good you ride, but what kind of human being you are. Integrity.”

Says Frankie Carpenetti: “He’s just a humble kid. He doesn’t boast about anything he wins. You know he can go out there and win the world championship. He’s not out there boasting. He’s just as happy for the other kid who beats him one day. He’s just as happy for the kid who won the rodeo as he would be for himself. His sportsmanship is what makes me the proudest,” he says. “A kid can be bucked off and get mad and throw their helmet or something, and he’ll go back to the back and try to figure out what he did wrong. Then a few minutes later, he’s back to himself, out playing or whatever. That’s what makes me proud. And he’s got a real good work ethic. He’s up in the morning wanting to go ride the bulls.”

That integrity, that gentlemanly spirit, has captured the attention of corporate sponsors. The Lane Frost brand, owned by the late champion’s family, backs Ryder, as does Rodeo King hats, 100X helmets, Capri Campers, Flying P Farms and of course, Carpenetti’s Pizza, owned by Ryder’s grandfather, Frank Sr., and the family.

And Ryder and his family have also won the respect of Cirildo “Junior” Leal and his wife Lilly, who along with two-time Professional Bull Riding (PBR) champion Chris Shivers, own the Mini Bull Riders.

Born in 2010, the MBR began with 120 kids in Ogden, Utah, and has grown to an international sport, attracting competitors from Brazil, Canada, Australia and the United States. Kids ages 8 to 14 compete in the events, which emphasize safety, respect, sportsmanship and building confidence. Venues have included AT&T Stadium in Dallas, the Mandalay Bay Casino in Las Vegas and elsewhere. In 2015, Professional Bull Riders became a presenting sponsor of the Miniature Bull Riders Association.

Junior Leal sports a bushy handlebar moustache and bears a striking resemblance to country singer Freddy Fender. He’s quick with a laugh. As the father of six daughters, he jokes “I’ve already got my ticket to heaven. I raised six girls.” And, it seems he and his wife Lilly have hundreds of sons – the bull riders like Ryder, who the website proclaims, are “the toughest little cowboys on the planet.”

Leffew calls MBR and its competitors “the future of the game.”

Cirildo Leal, whose day job is raising mini bulls and daily delivering feed for 200,000 head of cattle to ranchers from his home in Lockney, Texas, sees a world title or a National Finals Rodeo crown in Ryder’s future. For the Leals, Cirildo, Lilly and daughter Alysa – a family of faith – the MBR is a labor of love.

“He’ll be a PBR world champion or an NFR world champion … because he’s just got a lot of potential, and his parents really support him and take him, and the kid doesn’t give up. Sometimes he might get trampled on, but he just gets up, shakes it off and goes on. And he’s ready to ride again.”

Lilly Leal agrees. “Ryder is a super good kid. He’s always been super good. What you see with him is what you get. Ryder gets on a bull, and he’s businesslike, ‘Come on, I gotta do what I gotta do.’ ”

She adds, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Ryder cry. Like I said, he’s tough, and he’s got super good parents and grandparents, all of his family.”

Ryder also has fans close to home, like Pell City steel executive John Garrison, a longtime fan of rodeo. He believes the sport is part of the “great Western experience” that helped make America great.

For Garrison, seeing young people like Ryder Carpenetti excel is an encouragement. Garrison studies different generations. Kids like Ryder give Garrison – a Baby Boomer – hope for the future. “Any time I see a young person that’s doing something special, I have a tendency to take particular notice of that young person because they’re doing something outside the norm. I think Ryder Carpenetti and Harley, his sister, are doing positive things. Ryder is making a mark in the rodeo world.”

Predictions of future greatness for Ryder are “spot on,” Garrison says.

“A young person who starts in that kind of sport, it’s remarkable that he comes from Alabama … a state not known for rodeo greats. That a young kid from Alabama can go out there and compete is just over-the-top amazing.”

He adds: “It’s a dangerous sport, and you get banged up now and then. He’s no doubt a tough kid and a hard competitor. As long as he stays healthy, I think he’s unstoppable.”

Talk to Ryder, and you hear the competitive fire of a cowboy who successfully rode all four bulls on the way to the 2015 world title at the Chris Shivers Bull Riding. But you also hear the heart of an 11-year-old kid, who likes to play Fortnite, ride dirt bikes, to play with the animals at the family home and who giggles at the names of some of the bulls he’s ridden, like “Butthead.”

 The reason he rides?

“It’s fun,” Ryder says. “I have a lot of friends that ride. When you get a good score, you win.”

And as the adults in this story have said, he is fearless.

“It’s fun to me. When I’m doing something fun, I don’t get nervous or anything.”

It’s important to note, too, that Ryder is an A-student. His lowest grade at the end of the last school year was a 96.5.

And as most kids will, he makes the complex – like riding a half-ton bull – a simple thing.

“You gotta stay on the front end,” he says. “Don’t lose your feet and keep your hand shut. I ride with my left hand shut and my right hand up. You can’t tell what a bull’s going to do. But when they open the gate, you have to stay on for a full eight seconds.”

When asked, he’ll talk about his world titles and the 50 bright belt buckles he’s won in competitive rodeo. And he’ll say he wants to win a PBR world title one day He says his world titles “mean a lot.”

 But while some talk about his boundless future. Ryder Carpenetti hangs his big, black hat on humility, like most kids his age would do.

“I don’t really care if I win. I’m happy if I ride for the full eight seconds.”

Somewhere, Lane Frost, the rodeo legend, is smiling. l

Springville’s $7.5 million man

Story by Paul South
Photos by Wade Rackley – Auburn Athletics
Photos by Wallace Bromberg Jr.
Submitted photos

In more than 40 years of covering Auburn athletics, Mark Murphy has seen arguably the best pitchers in Tiger baseball history – former Los Angeles Dodger Joe Beckwith, former American League Rookie of the Year Gregg Olson, former Oakland and Atlanta star Tim Hudson.

And Springville’s Casey Mize may be the next on the list. The Detroit Tigers think he will be. As even those with a casual interest in baseball know, Mize was the first overall pick in the June baseball draft, signing a contract with the Tigers, which includes a $7.5-million signing bonus, the second-largest in the history of the game.

With apologies to Lionel Richie, Mize’s journey from Springville to Auburn to Detroit makes him once, twice, three times a Tiger.

Like Olson and Hudson, Mize is a fierce competitor with a wicked fastball and a command of pitches that makes great hitters swing, miss and return to the dugout with astonishing frequency.

Auburn’s Plainsman Park teemed with big league scouts the past two seasons, armed with hand-held radar to clock Mize’s pitches. It looked like the baseball version of troopers on the interstate on a holiday weekend

“There were more scouts than I’ve seen in a long time,” Murphy said. But as he put it, “Guys like Casey don’t come along very often.”

Baseball is a game steeped in numbers – miles per hour, earned run and batting averages, strikeout-to-walk ratios are a few. But to be the top draft pick – The Guy – how does that happen?

Talk to his parents, coaches, sportswriters and former major leaguers, three traits rise to the top when it comes to considering what makes Casey Mize tick.

Submitted for your approval, consider the three Cs of Casey: Commitment, Command. Character.

Commitment

The stories of Casey Mize’s passion for the game of baseball come from every direction – from his family, from coaches, from family friends. Here are a few:

When he was 7, Mize made an announcement to his Mom, Rhonda, that he was going to go to Auburn and play baseball when he grew up.

At 11, while most of his friends were engrossed in Xboxes and PlayStations, Mize offered another word for his mother.

“He actually told his mother, ‘Mom, I’m gonna want one, but whatever you do, don’t ever buy me a PlayStation or Xbox. That’s going to take up too much of my time.’”

And in high school summers, he and his parents often made the six-hour roundtrip for him to play travel ball for Chris McRaney and Team Georgia Baseball Academy in Alpharetta. When a Springville friend’s Mom asked why he didn’t want to play with his friends locally, Mize was respectful, but matter-of fact.

“Miss Melissa, I have to look after my future,” he said.

“We’re thinking the other parents probably think we’re crazy, that we were putting this stuff into him,” Dad Jason Mize said. “But we never did. We were just the facilitators for his dreams and his goals. That’s the way we’ve looked at it. Both of our kids, whatever their dreams were, if they put in the work toward it, we provided them whatever they needed, just to make it happen.”

In fact, like other parents who had to get their kids to power down the gaming system, the Mizes had to coax their son to take a break from ball.

“There was never that burnout or anything like that. Rhonda and I would discuss it, and we had to make him stop playing. We had to make sure he got that rest time that he needed,” Jason Mize said. “But he never wanted to stop. He was passionate about it. He was always playing it. He loved even the camaraderie of it. He loved being around those likeminded kids.”

The desire carried on to Springville High, where he played for Coach Jonathan Ford. Mize was 19-2 in his Springville Tiger career. He was the first SHS player drafted since Brandon Moore (also an Auburn alum) was drafted in the early 1990s.

Like all his coaches, Ford could not have foreseen all that would transpire for his ace. But he saw something special, including the unquenchable blue flame, a drive to be great.

“He had some of the intangibles you look for in all your players. First, he had a head for the game. He really understood how to play the game. Then, the second thing he had was a desire. I mean he had a desire to be great. Third was the ability he had. When you put the three together, understanding, desire and ability, I had that expectation wherever he went, he was going to be successful.”

Command

ESPN college baseball analyst Ben McDonald is in a unique spot in relation to Casey Mize. Like him, McDonald was the first overall pick in the draft (1989 from LSU). McDonald pitched with Olson in Baltimore and against Hudson. On a rainy day in May before Mize’s SEC Tournament start against Texas A&M, McDonald turned to some of Mize’s stats in strikeout to walk ratio.

“[F]or the last two years, he has a 13-to-1 strikeout to walk ratio. He’s walked 19 guys in two years and punched out 242. For me, that’s what separates him from most. He’s going to be a fast climber in the big leagues.”

McDonald added, “He has command of four pitches he can throw for a strike whenever he wants to throw them. That’s what separates the minor league pitchers from big league pitchers. Can you command the stuff you have? Not only can you throw a strike, but can you throw a quality strike? Casey . . . when you watch him pitch, and he’s on his game, he never throws anything in the center part of the plate. It’s a plus fastball up to 96 (mph). He’s got a good slider, a split finger fastball, and he’s got a cut fastball which is something new that he uses. That’s what I like about him, too. He keeps evolving. Last year, he was a three-pitch pitcher and didn’t have the cut fastball. This year, he’s added a cut fastball to go with the other three pitches he has. That’s what separates him from the rest. By far, he’s the best player in the country.”

Even a month before the draft, McDonald predicted Mize would be the top pick.

“He’s so advanced. What makes him advanced is that he commands his better than Olson did. I played with Olson in Baltimore and I played against Tim Hudson. This kid to me is even better. Olson had two pitches; Hudson had three. This kid has four quality pitches. And what I like about him, too, is that he calls his own game. He’s studying hitters already. He’s got a big-league approach already, and he has a big-league workout between starts, too.”

Scott Foxhall, now the pitching coach at North Carolina State, served in the same role at Auburn and recruited Mize to the Tigers. Mize’s strength as a pitcher – that earned him All-American honors and made him a finalist for college baseball’s highest individual award, the Golden Spike – is part God-given, part blue collar work ethic.

“I think its nature and nurture. You can tell he’s born with a lot of athleticism, and he’s gifted in that sense,” Foxhall said. “You can tell he’s spent an enormous amount of time paying attention to the right way to do things and just repeating them.”

The two reconnected when Auburn traveled to Raleigh for the NCAA Regionals.

“I watched him just for fun while he was here because they were here for four days. I watched him playing catch, even when it was a casual game of catch, you could tell that it was a sense of urgency with him that he was paying attention to every little thing that he was doing and paying attention to where the ball was going and going where he wanted it to go,” Foxhall said. “He was making adjustments with every throw, just when he was paying catch in the outfield. It’s all about attention to detail and God-given ability.”

Like every great ballplayer, Mize has also invested time in learning from others. Former Auburn teammate Keegan Thompson took the young hurler under his wing as workout partner and throwing partner. Baseball requires players to be human computers, processing a barrage of information and filtering what works for them. With every pitch, hurlers must process grasp of the ball, leg lift, arm motion, location, release point and on and on.

“Keegan helped him understand about pitching,” Foxhall said. “Every great pitcher is picking everyone’s brain and has to have the right filter to figure out what – of all that information – will help him. Casey’s got the right processor in his head to find out what will help him … That might be one of his strongest qualities.”

Auburn’s Butch Thompson has sent seven pitchers to the major leagues. From the first day he met Casey Mize, he saw something special.

“I knew he had talent. I knew he had a future. But I don’t think anybody would have expected this.”

As a freshman, Mize had a solid fastball and a good slider and worked out of the bullpen and as a spot starter for the Tigers. The next year, he added a split-finger changeup to his repertoire of pitches. There, the young hurler began to blossom.

“The biggest thing year two was his commitment to shove the ball into the strike zone. He was trying to end the at-bat on every pitch, so his command between his freshman and sophomore year grew like crazy, and he added a third pitch. The third thing that helped was Keegan Thompson (the Tigers Friday night starter).”

“(On Friday nights), Casey would sit, chart and watch the game that Keegan was pitching, and I think Keegan was such a professional, Casey watched, and they built an unbelievable relationship. I think Casey’s work ethic picked up, his command picked up, and he didn’t just pick up a split change, he picked up arguably the best pitch in college baseball,” Coach Thompson said. “Keegan was a huge piece.”

The sophomore season was a turning point.

“He had the opportunity to represent our country and pitched seven innings of shutout ball. I think heading into year three, he said to himself, ‘I know my body, I know how to work. I need to galvanize my own routine. I’m going to really figure out how to take care of my body and get my arm in the best shape of its life.’ He did that.”

And in January of 2018, Mize unveiled a fourth pitch, the cut fastball, that he could throw 90-plus mph.

“When he came with that fourth pitch, it scared me to death. I wondered, ‘Why does he need a fourth pitch?’, Coach Thompson said. “He just cares about his craft. He started thinking, ‘I’ve got a future at this’. . .He’s just a lifelong learner.”

Character

Mize’s first start of the 2018 SEC Tournament was tough, a 4-2 loss to Texas A&M on a sticky-humid night in Hoover. After the game, he was asked if there was anything good he could take from the game.

“Nothing,” he said, “I didn’t pitch well.”

When asked about the Tigers’ struggle to produce runs, Mize again shouldered the blame.

“They did the best they could against a great pitcher,” Mize said. “I didn’t do my job.”

Those quick quotes speak volumes. In an ESPN age that has created the “Me” athlete, Mize puts team, family and friends first.

“That’s what attracted me the most to him when I met him and during the short recruiting process – that I didn’t think I was missing on character,” Foxhall said. “I knew I couldn’t miss on character. When you have character, and you have talent, those are the guys who have a chance to be elite. That’s what he is.”

Coach Thompson agrees. He has seen that high character time and time again. And as Keegan Thompson mentored him, Mize mentored young Tiger Tanner Burns, who in early July was named to the USA Baseball Collegiate National Team, following in his mentor’s footsteps.

“You can’t be the first overall pick unless you have a certain level of skill,” Coach Thompson said. “But (Casey’s) really learned how to work. He learned how to focus on his craft. He’s a great teammate. He gives others credit. You know he told his Mom when he was seven years old he wanted to be an Auburn Tiger. And then he winds up doing everything he sought after. Casey, he’s only going to be part of our team for three years. But he’ll always be part of Auburn, he’s going to give back to Auburn, and Auburn is going to have its doors open to him for the rest of his life.”

When Coach Thompson assumed the reigns of Auburn baseball, the program was in shambles. By 2018, the Tigers were nationally ranked, within an eyelash of the College World Series

“You can have a good team when your best players have your best character, your best work ethic. That goes a long way,” he said. “You know, we have a rule: You’re not allowed to pass the buck, and when your best players have that kind of character and when your best player has an off night and doesn’t pass the buck, that resonates with the entire organization. When it comes from your best player, it means more.

“Whatever we were trying to teach, (Casey) put it into practice. That molded everybody else to be wired the same.”

Talk to those who know Casey Mize, and they talk about how he has friends from all walks of life, jocks and computer wizards, folks who eat, sleep and breathe baseball to those who don’t know how many innings are in a game. It’s been that way since Springville.

“Some people have the gift to be really likeable,” Coach Thompson said. “And when you value everybody, it doesn’t matter whether they’re at the top of the food chain or at the bottom or in the middle.

“When you respect everybody from every walk of life,” he explained, “that allows you to connect with many. Casey’s got that tool, where he values every single person he comes in contact with. That makes you pretty likeable, and that allows you to connect with a lot of people. And that means when you do something really special, that means that a lot of people are going to give you a lot of respect and are going to pull for you.”

Mark Murphy recounted a story that proves the coach’s point. In right field at Plainsman Park, there is a spot known as ‘the K-Corner.” For years, diehard Auburn baseball fans mark each Tiger pitcher’s strikeout with a bright, bold, orange “K,” scorebook language for a strikeout.

At the end of each senior pitcher’s Auburn career, he’s awarded one of the “K”s, a simple honor, but a powerful symbol of gratitude.

On a warm spring day when Casey Mize fanned school record 15 Vanderbilt hitters, the K-Corner broke with tradition.

“They gave Casey a “K”, even though he was only a junior,” Murphy said. “That was pretty cool.”

Mize’s caring for others runs deep, Coach Thompson said.

“He cares about others a ton. That’s his greatest strength and his greatest weakness. He’s going to be an unbelievable leader. He’s going to be an unbelievable teammate. I believe that’s going to make him an unbelievable husband and father, because he cares about others so much. But he takes so much on himself because he doesn’t want to disappoint his family, his coaches, teammates and friends.”

Jason Mize summed up his son’s approach to life.

“It’s simple. He’s not one of those kids who wants to be in the spotlight, or put himself out there. He loves baseball and wants to do his job. But he’s not one seeking attention. He’s a good guy, very, very humble. He’s unbelievably driven. I’ve never seen that kind of drive in a kid his age. I’ve never seen that kind of focus in a kid his age, and I know they’re out there who are right there with him at that level. It’s a rarity for me to see the kind of person he is. I don’t think we can take all credit for that as parents, a lot of that is in him.”

Murphy, the reporter who watched Tiger baseball superstars Olson, Hudson, Frank Thomas and Bo Jackson, called Mize “a superstar who doesn’t expect superstar treatment.”

At the heart of all this, beyond statistics and signing bonuses, people sometimes forget that Casey Mize is a kid, who still hangs out with his Springville pals like Nick Rayburn and likes to play “Fortnight” on the gaming system he finally got this year, as a birthday gift from his roommates. While top pro draftees in other sports may celebrate with black limousines and bottles of champagne, Mize celebrated with family, friends, teammates and coaches over burgers and pizza at Baumhower’s Victory Grille in Auburn.

Maybe a single piece of paper written in Springville years ago gives a clue to Casey Mize’s ultimate ambition.

Coach Jonathan Ford asked his players to write down their goals for the season. Some wrote they wanted to make it to the big leagues. Others wrote they wanted to hit .350.

Then, only a freshman, Mize wrote one sentence.

“I want to be a leader.”

Thirty years after remarkable state championship basketball run,
Lady Panthers still winning – at life

Story by Paul South
Photos by Wallace Bromberg Jr.
and Melissa Purvis McClain

When Larry Slater arrived at Pell City High School from Lawrence County in 1987, the Lady Panthers were mired in a girls’ basketball backwater.

“They had a token program at best,” Slater said. “I think they had only played like 10 games the year before. They had a team just to meet the requirements of Title IX – barely.”

In a single season, all that changed. Slater and a group of young ladies with a blue-collar work ethic that mirrored their hometown transformed the Lady Panthers from patsy to powerhouse.

You could call it the “Mill Town Miracle.”

Thirty years later, the 1988 5A State Champions are still winning, as successful in life as they were on the court.

And looking back, some call it “amazing,” others compare it to a fairy tale. But Tonya Tice Peoples, who came to Pell City from Lawrence County when her Dad, Mike Tice, became Pell City’s head football coach and hired Slater as the girls’ hoops coach, puts it more simply:

“… There were no individuals. That’s why the bond is what it is. You can be on a team but not really experience team. If you are ever on a team, and you experience team, you’ll never forget it.”

“There’s a difference, being on a team and actually being able to experience experiencing team. That’s when you don’t have people who are so individual and want to make it about themselves. That’s what I’d want people to know about our team,” she said.

There is so much more to know. From the first day Slater came to Pell City, his new players learned quickly that there was a new sheriff in town. And Slater learned something about his players. He had coached Tice Peoples and Danielle Fields Frye in AAU summer leagues, but everything else was unknown.

“I knew going in that I had two really good ballplayers – Danielle and Tonya – and then the rest was just astonishing, as far as the girls and their hunger for basketball and willingness to work, and everything was amazing.”

And his girls from the blue-collar town were ready to work. Slater, who began as a teacher at the middle school, found that out right away.

 “The Pell City kids would come from the high school to the middle school where I was, and the kids would yell, ‘Hey Coach, are you going to open the gym tonight? ‘And I thought, “Man, I’ve died and gone to heaven. That’s how it started.”

The gates to Slater’s basketball heaven opened earlier. The preceding summer, he opened the gym daily, so the girls could shoot. The road to a state title began there. In those grueling practices, in summer and throughout the season, the light began to come on for the Lady Panthers, said Melissa Purvis McClain.

“To be honest, it was Coach Slater. We were all like sponges when it came to him and his instruction and his philosophy and his game plan. We began to see that if we execute his game plan we will do this. I think for a lot of the players who had already been there, they finally had someone who believed in them and who pushed them. I was not only learning his ways and his philosophy, I was learning the game of basketball at the same time,” Purvis McClain said.

The gym would be open, and players would stay late, working on their game. It was a demanding regimen, executing a run-and-gun Loyola-Marymount-style offense and a relentlessly-pressing Big 10-style defense. But from day one, the players – starving to win – embraced the new coach and his style.

“It was all about making us better people and better players. A lot of it was him. He was hard on us. He demanded excellence, and if you didn’t deliver it, we ran for it. It was just gradually building confidence that we could go out there and win games.”

And win games they did, a new sensation for the Lady Panthers, said Danielle Fields Frye. She had played in two of the lean seasons before Slater’s arrival

“Pell City Girls Basketball had never had a winning season, to the point where what our team did,” Frye said. “We had a few wins here or there, but no one ever considered us much of a threat. We came from nowhere.”

At that time, the universe of prep girls’ basketball in Alabama consisted of Hartselle, Sylacauga, Athens, schools in the big cities like Birmingham, Mobile, Montgomery and Huntsville.

“For us, we literally came from out of nowhere,” Frye said. ‘It was like (the movie) Hoosiers.”

By the numbers, the Lady Panthers went 26-1 in 1987-88, including three wins over rival Sylacauga, the Aggies only losses of the year.

And the greatest win, the one grown folks still talk about in Pell City, came over a girls’ basketball machine, the nationally-ranked Hartselle Lady Tigers in the state title game. Hartselle had won 62 straight games from 1984-86. Compounding the drama: Slater’s daughter Jeanice was a starter for Hartselle.

“The publicity was unreal as far as Jeanice and I playing against each other in the championship game,” Slater said. “It was packed for the first time ever.”

Panther fans had an admonition for their coach, because of his family tie.

“Some of ‘em would say, ‘Now Coach, we know you love your little girl, but you have an obligation to these girls,’” Slater said with a laugh.

And as hard as the Lady Panthers worked, there was also a team chemistry that went beyond the gym – trips to KFC, movie nights, and so on. The team was a unit. And, they also possessed a twinkle of mischief.

A few days before the Final Four, an unhappy Slater bounced his starters from practice.

“We went and got some toilet paper and started rolling Coach’s car,” Tice Peoples remembered. “A police officer came up. We got scared, but she told us we weren’t doing it right. She helped us roll the car.”

That was just one example of a town’s embrace of a team. Townspeople raised money to support the team and bought team gear. Lady Panther Basketball sweatshirts were a hot item in shops where storefronts were painted black and gold. It was that way all the way to the finals.

The Championship Game

The Lady Panthers trailed by two and had the ball. As Tice Peoples moved up the floor, she looked to the sidelines to get Slater’s instruction. The arena at Calhoun Community College in Decatur was jammed with a standing-room-only crowd. Even 30 years on, Slater and his players recalled the breathtaking details of those closing seconds.

A Hartselle defender knocked the ball away from behind but was quickly fouled by Pell City’s April Hughes with 8.3 seconds left. The Tiger player had entered the game with 1:38 left, replacing Jeanice Slater, who had fouled out. Pell City’s coach called a time out to ice the shooter, who went to the line to shoot a one and one.

Slater then called a familiar play: “Sideline break, make or miss, with Tonya shooting the three.” It was a play the Lady Panthers practiced nearly every day.

The Hartselle shooter missed. And Danielle Fields Frye grabbed the rebound.

“I really didn’t have to fight for it,” Frye said of her big board. She passed the ball quickly to Tice Peoples. Hartselle crowded the lane, expecting the talented guard to drive to the basket. Instead, she stopped to the right of the key, outside the three-point line and drilled the shot, giving Pell City the lead with four seconds left.

A stunned Tiger team failed to call a time out. Precious seconds drained from the clock. And the Panthers’ astonishing run was complete. Final score: 77-76, Lady Panthers. Keep in mind, Pell City trailed by 15 in the third quarter.

Thirty years later, Tice Peoples’ only remembered emotion heading into the game-winning bucket was anger at giving up a turnover.

“He looks right at me and says, ‘You’re going to shoot the three. You’re going to take the shot,’” she said. “I wasn’t nervous, because I was still mad about what had happened.” So, I was ready to make a play mentally. I just was hoping she didn’t make the shot. Everybody just did their job. We had practiced it. Everybody was underneath in case I did miss it, and it goes in.”

History made. The Pell City High School Lady Panthers were champions, the school’s first state title team in the history of the AHSAA playoff format in any sport. But Slater believes the upset win meant more than a championship for one school. It was a landmark win in the history of girls’ prep sports in Alabama, a state that at one-time prohibited girls’ sports.

“Some people don’t like for me to say it, but I’m going to say it anyway,” Slater said. “It really helped launch girls’ basketball in the state of Alabama.”

Still Winners

The years have flown like a Lady Panther fast break. Some of the Lady Panthers went on to play college basketball at Auburn, Alabama, Troy, the University of Montevallo and Columbus College. Slater went on after two sparkling years at Pell City to become a successful junior college coach at Wallace-Hanceville, recruiting some of his former Pell City stars along the way.

Like Slater, Tonya Tice Peoples became a teacher and coach. After working in NASCAR, Danielle Fields Frye is director of community engagement for the United States Auto Club (USAC) and lives with her husband and two daughters outside Indianapolis. Melissa Purvis McClain is an engineer. Erica Collins Johnson, like McClain, is still in Pell City. Alicia Moss Ogletree and Kathy Vaughn – a distinguished military veteran — are still in the area as well. April Hughes is in the fashion industry in New York.

Sadly, one beloved teammate, Nikki Golden, passed away a few years after the fairy tale season. Collins-Johnson’s Mom Alice, one of the team’s most devoted fans, died a few months after the championship.

Slater has kept up with them all. And they with him. Many of his former players say he was “a second Dad.” He’s followed them through their lives and now keeps up with their children. If he had to sum up his team after 30 years, he said, it’s about more than basketball. And that’s the way he wanted it all along.

“They were not to be denied,” he said. “They wanted to play the game. And they wanted to be good at the game. I think that last ballgame just showed the sheer determination of that team. Not just one person. It was April Hughes committing the foul. It was Danielle getting the rebound on the missed free throw. Tonya making the shot. It’s unreal what the kids accomplished – then and now.”