Lady Panthers Basketball 1988

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.”

A Century of Panther Football

Story by Paul South
Photos by Mike Callahan
Submitted Photos

In the 1970s, like generations of little boys before and after him, David Gulledge lived for fall Friday nights and Pell City High School Panther football.

Growing up in Avondale’s Mill Village, the gleam of the stadium lights was for Gulledge and his pals, the stuff of hopes and heroes. And joy could come from something as simple as a shred of fabric from Panther running back Wayne McCoy or quarterback Jay Grogan, or future Florida State All-American Ken Roe.

“When I was a kid growing up, that was back when they had tear-away jerseys,” Gulledge said. “I remember looking up and admiring all those folks. I was one of those little kids standing by the fence waiting to get a piece of one of those tear-away jerseys.

“If we were fortunate, we’d get the whole jersey, tie it into a ball and go play football up on the hill,” Gulledge added with a laugh. “Friday nights, as in most towns, mean the town shuts down and comes together.”

Gulledge would grow up to be one of those Pell City Friday night warriors, a three-year starter at quarterback who would later play at Jacksonville State and in the NFL. His is just one of the many stories that course through the 100 years of Pell City High School football.

Friday Night Lights

The impact of Panther football reaches from some not-so-auspicious beginnings – like a 95-7 loss to Anniston Presbyterian in 1921 – to undefeated seasons and to pro football’s biggest stage. Pell City lore includes Bobby Skelton, who quarterbacked Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant’s first bowl team at Alabama. Skelton would later become an SEC and NFL official, part of the crew for one the most exciting Super Bowls, San Francisco’s win over Cincinnati. Grogan would also play for the Tide, part of a host of Panthers who would go on to play college football.

Pell City teams would endure the trials of losing seasons and the triumphs of winning ones. But every game night, the town would come together to cheer the sons of millworkers and merchants, lawyers and doctors.

“Friday night, it’s like the town closes down and everyone is there to support the program and it just kind of brought the community together,” Gulledge said.

Retired attorney Bill Scott knows Pell City football as well as just about anyone. For 25 years, Scott, a former Panther player, helped haul the sideline chains at Pete Rich-Alumni Stadium. Chat with him long enough and he’ll talk about Coach Will Glover, Pell City’s winningest all-time coach, (81-39-6), a mythical state title in 1951 and a tradition of great teams, players and coaches.

The 1951 team, led by All-State end Bobby Golden went 10-0 and allowed only 63 points for the season. The Birmingham News tabbed the Panthers the Class A state champions in the days before the statewide playoff system.

The Panthers made their first playoff appearance in 1974 and captured their first playoff win and region championship the same year. In 1986, Gulledge helped lead the team to its first 11-win season. And in 1993, Pell City earned its first 12-win campaign. Across its history, Pell City has won eight area or region titles, according to ahsfhs.org

Glory Days

Glover led the Panthers in what many consider the golden age of Pell City football. Scott, along with former Panther star Charlie Gray, even helped Glover by scouting the next week’s opponents. Gray “thought the world” of Glover, a beloved Panther head coach, who helped build the stadium with his own hands.

Glover was a fiery competitor, a fever that sometimes spilled into the crowd.

 “We are a country town, but especially back then,” Scott remembered. “People in the neighborhood liked to take a nip or two. And some of them would come to the ball games. Four or five would hang on the fence around the field. Will would get excited, and there’d be some skirmishes on the field. And some of those people on the fence would get a little too inebriated and crawl the fence.

 “I just happened to be the City Recorder (now city judge). A couple of (the fans) got excited and got arrested. They’d come before me and I’d tell ‘em. ‘You tell all your buddies – you know who they are – the next one of them that crawls the fence and gets on that football field, tell ‘em to bring their clothes for six months, because that’s how long I can put ‘em in jail. The next one of you guys that crawls the fence at a football game, you’re going to spend six months in the city jail.’ I didn’t have another one crawl the fence.”

Panther fans had reason to be excited in the Glover era. The 1954 team went without a loss, the only blemish on a spectacular year was a 13-13 tie at Cleburne County. And in 1955, led by senior all-state quarterback Bobby Skelton, the Panthers went 8-1-1.

The World War II generation also played a role in Panther football glory. Some veterans who hadn’t completed high school were able to return to the high school to play football and graduate. The 1946 team under Coach Bill Friedman went 8-1 and defeated rivals Oxford, Leeds and Lincoln along the way.

“I was a scrub on that team,” Scott said. “It was a great team.”

The 1948 team was also memorable, helping establish Pell City’s tradition for great defense. The Panthers shut out Cordova 12-0 in the first game of the season and did not allow a first down until the second half of the second game, Scott recalled.

Defense has been a common thread throughout Panther history, said Scott Adamson, former sports editor at The Daily Home in Talladega. Adamson covered the Panthers for nearly two decades beginning in the late 1980s.

“The one thing I do remember, they always had a good defense, even when they didn’t necessarily have a good season. During the time I was there, they had quite a few losing seasons, but it was very rare when they weren’t competitive,” Adamson said. “And even in their down years, it seems like it was usually the defense that carried the day for them.”

Along with championship seasons and all-star players, Bill Scott tells tales of colorful moments in Panther football, of missed weddings and Scandinavian kickers.

Scott knows the wedding story firsthand. It was his sister Martha’s. And he was the guest who missed the Friday afternoon ceremony. Even brides have to understand the importance of football.

“One of the first games I got to play in, we played Lincoln. My sister Martha got married that afternoon in Tuscaloosa, and I didn’t go to the wedding because I went to the football game and got to play a little bit. She was pretty understanding, I think. She never mentioned that I didn’t go.”

And then, there is the story of Vidar Lunde, the exchange student-turned-kicker. Scott doesn’t remember the opponent, but he remembers Lunde’s kick after a Panther touchdown.

“The ball hit the cross bar. It bounced straight up. The officials under the cross bar apparently ducked their heads. The ball went straight up about 10 yards in the air. It came down on the other side of the crossbar. It was good. But both officials under the crossbar signaled no good. Pell City didn’t get credit for the point.”

From sidelines to gridiron

And Gulledge, who grew from the little mill-village kid clamoring for a scrap from a tear-away jersey into a prep All-America quarterback, college star and NFL draft pick, has a colorful story of his own. Fittingly, it’s about a jersey.

Bill Scott, 1948

“We’re playing at Gardendale, both ranked, in the playoffs, and we go out and warm up in our white away jerseys,” Gulledge recalled. “We come in after we warm up and they’ve got probably the ugliest gold jerseys you’ve ever seen in your life to go with the gold pants we had. The atmosphere in the locker room, just because of the change of the jerseys… it created a lot of excitement and a lot of buzz, and we went on to win the game. But those kinds of memories and the plays that individuals made during high school, those are the things we cherish.”

One-hundred years of precious memories do linger. But more than championships captured and games won, there are generations of lives touched and a community unified. Regardless of the state of the world, color of skin, or station in life, Pell City could always come together to cheer for the Black and Gold. Those were the only colors that mattered.

“I think the main thing is that you’re a part of Pell City football ,whether you are a player or coach, or go to school there or just root for them,” Adamson said. “It is such an integral part of the community. That’s true of a lot of high schools, especially in smaller towns. But it seems for a lot of years, Pell City football was the focus of the community. Even out of football season, people were still talking about it. It was such a legacy situation. You would go to a game, and there were players and fathers and grandfathers who played for them.

“That’s true of a lot of places, but for me as a sportswriter and as someone who lived there, there was no escaping Pell City football. It permeated everything. You learned about the Black and Gold. You learned about the Panthers. It was the pride of the city. Even when the teams didn’t play that well, they still showed up. They still cheered them on. And those kids were looked at like, ‘You’re carrying on a tradition. You may not have the wins that other teams have had, but this is something you’re going to carry with you for the rest of your life.’”

Gulledge, who many regard as the greatest player in Pell City history, gets emotional when remembering his Pell City days. He remembers earning a Pell City letterman’s jacket as a privilege. Lessons learned on the playing field at Rich Alumni stadium serve him to this day as a regional executive for Coca-Cola. He is quick to point out that football, like life, is a team sport.

“(Football) is bigger than one person,” he said. “I’ve been blessed to be surrounded by really talented players, really good teams, really good coaches, through high school, through college and to the NFL at Washington. Now in my professional life, the Lord has really blessed me and shown me favor by putting great people around me.”

When he talks about Panther football’s impact, Gulledge’s voice cracks with emotion.

“As a mill-village kid growing up, there was a time when we were having family challenges and struggles. I was headed down a road of no good. Football was my avenue to get away from those things. Fortunately for me, Coach (Pete) Rich and Coach (Lyle) Darnell and the coaches who invested in me personally and into those other kids in that community and the community as well, for me is what high school football is all about.

“What high school football did for me is give me an opportunity to keep my nose clean and stay out of trouble. It was an avenue that gave me a platform to compete in life. “

Ask Bill Scott about the meaning of Panther football, and he thinks of the nights standing near the concession stand as he readied for another game on the chain gang. The autumn Friday night air was perfumed with the aroma of buttered popcorn, roasted peanuts and steamed hot dogs.

“I’ve told many a person, there’s no place I would rather be in the world at 7 o’clock than right here at the Pell City High School football field on Friday night.”

Wrestler and more

wrestler-chief-thunderhorse

Wrestler, sawmill operator, Dad – Answering the call

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Michael Callahan

Cliff Horsley waits behind the curtain while the ring announcer pumps up the audience. He thinks about the wrestling matches he watched on television and at Birmingham’s Boutwell Auditorium when he was growing up. He thinks about his Mohawk/Cherokee heritage, and starts slipping into character as Chief Thunderhorse, the Silent Giant with the Hands of Stone, who stands for what’s right and good.

Wearing a headdress, arm bands and coordinating black-and-yellow tights, he listens to the fans chanting, “Chief! Chief! Chief!” and hears their whoops and war cries. He holds his head up high, stiffens his back, and slips into the role he will play tonight. Once the introductory music starts, and Horsley walks into the spotlight and crawls under the ring ropes, the transformation is complete. He is no longer Cliff Horsley, Springville resident, sawmill operator, single father of four. He is Chief Thunderhorse, Oklahoma native, representative of the Cherokee Nation, the Real American.

“In the ring, you get to step out and be the character you dreamed of being as a kid,” says Horsley. “It’s the satisfaction of knowing you’ve accomplished what you’ve always dreamed about growing up and watching it, saying, ‘One day I’ll do that.’ It’s knowing you’ve accomplished that, with a lot of hard work and perseverance.”

Being a wrestler was all Cliff Horsley ever wanted. He wrestled at Pinson High School, where he also played football, then turned professional at the age of 22. For the first few years, he used his own name as he wrestled for various entities at the Pell City Civic Center and other Southeastern venues. One day, the head of Global Championship Wrestling told him he needed an Indian and dubbed him Chief Thunderhorse, a part ready-made for Horsley, who fashions arrowhead necklaces for friends. So for the next 10 years, he played the part, while living a gypsy life in a motorhome that he could move any time he wanted to.

wrestler-chief-thunderhorse-2He pushed through his injuries, like the wrist that was broken twice and never healed, the ribs he popped out of his sternum, and the hernia he developed in his lower belly. “The match has to go on,” he says. But it wasn’t the body slams, the scorpion leg locks, the bad-guy punches or the cross-body drops as his opponents fell on him that finally took their toll and pulled him away from the wrestling ring. It was the kids he had never really known.

“In 1996, when they were one-and-a-half years old and newborn, their mom left with them,” he says of his oldest son and daughter. “For 15 years, I did not know their whereabouts. I had no money for a private detective.” To add insult to injury, the man their mother married took on Cliff’s identity, with the aid of one of Cliff’s old driver’s licenses that she had kept.

Then one day, out of the blue, the Chilton County Department of Human Resources (DHR) called. “They said here’s your kids, now you need a stable income,” Horsley says. “They started demanding structure and order.”

He didn’t have to think twice.

“My kids were teenagers, they demanded my time,” he says.

He was already supplementing his income with a portable sawmill, but he had to sell it to keep his head above water for a while. “I had to make child support payments, which went to DHR because the kids had been in their custody for two years.”

His grandfather had been a sawyer and cabinet maker, so working with wood was in his blood. It was something he knew he could do without his children having “a broke-up daddy and no paycheck,” he explains.

He admits that it was tough making the transition from his bachelor lifestyle and the role of Chief Thunderhorse to the role of Daddy and the restrictions that came with it. “But I knew what it was gonna take, me walking away from that business to focus on them, that’d I’d have to give my children the 110% I was giving to wrestling.”

For the past five years, Cliff has spent his time cutting lumber and raising four children — he adopted his biological offsprings’ half-brother and later, a friend’s daughter. He started Cliff’s Mill, buying a 100-year-old sawmill from a retired teacher whose husband had built it, then died before using it. He moved it from Wattsville to its present site in Pell City one piece at a time. It took him about a year. The engine and other parts had rusted out, so he converted a 1968 Ford engine and gas tank to power the mill. “I hand-built everything down to the drive shaft,” he says. “I always was a jack-of-all-trades.”

It was a gasoline-powered mill, and as fuel costs rose, it became too expensive to operate. So he bought a more modern mill. “It got to the point that $20 would not have cut five logs, and the belts were expensive, too,” he says of the antique mill. “But $40 will last a week on the newer one.”

He still uses the old mill when someone wants a time-period cut, because it makes old-fashioned kerfs in the wood. People who are restoring an old house, for example, might prefer those circular grooves to the straight-line kerfs of modern saws. He turns pine and hardwood trees into 2x4s, 2x6s, framing lumber, siding, wood shingles, trailer blocks for mobile homes and occasionally flooring. In the winter, when business is normally slow, he sells firewood.

He will cut to any size, but believes in a true cut. “My 2x4s are 2x4s and not 1-5/8 x 3-1/2s,” he says. He charges by the board foot, averages 200,000 feet a year, and no job is too big or too small. “It’s a small, entry-level sawmill,” he says. “But it’s not a hobby mill. There’s lots of maintenance involved, too.” It’s a physically demanding job, wrestling 1,300-pound trees onto the mill’s conveyor belt. He has one helper, a man named Roy Odom.

Raising teenagers hasn’t been easy either, but Cliff doesn’t regret a minute of it. For the first few years after he got his kids back, he would take a match four or five times a year. That’s a far cry from the two or three per weekend he was accustomed to. His two oldest children grew up and moved out, but he still has a daughter and son at home. While he enjoys being a dad, he also looks forward to getting back into the ring on a regular basis.

“I miss the lifestyle, the physicality of it,” he says. “There’s more to it than just jumping out there and wrestling. You have to watch what you eat, work out between matches. I don’t watch what I eat as much and don’t get the cardio I used to, but I still work out.”

It has been two years since he last heard that intro music and the chanting of the crowds. He recently started eating right again, trying to lose some of the weight he gained during his time out of the ring, itching to get back to the business. But it’s tough.

Yet when asked what he finds tougher, wrestling 300-pound men, 1,300-pound logs or 100-pound teenagers, Cliff doesn’t miss a beat. “Wrestling children,” he shoots back.

The smile in his voice says they’re worth it.