Great local athletes past and present make Tree party even more special

By LARRY HYPES

Having a chance to speak with Coach Buster Large last week at the Community Christmas Tree party was fun.

Although he is a veteran coach, it still seems like only yesterday that Large was one of the key members of the Graham G-Men in a variety of sports.

Buster was talking about seeing Coach Allen Willey, who came within a whisker of leading Graham to a state basketball championship 35 years ago during the heyday of Jerome Wolkoff, Ronnie Edwards, Buster, and others.

That was when the old Southwest District was at its best, too, and the competition was terrific.

Glynn Carlock was only a couple of years removed from Bluefield High School and the rapidly improving G-Men were beginning to re-establish their position on the gridiron. Buster was one of the key players, too, so he knows what he is talking about when the conversation drops back to the mid-70s area sports scene (and the current athletic programs, too).

Will Cole, who played football at both Graham and Bluefield, earned a state title at BHS and then won the last Kennedy Award in West Virginia, was there, too, helping his dad, Charlie, working the party and doing a fine job.

Buster’s Beaver basketball players, along with many Graham athletes, were helping to distribute the treats. John O’Neal, a fine athlete himself just a year or two after Buster graduated, is now the principal at GHS. He was there with football coach Doug Marrs. Doug’s son, Alex, earned many postseason honors for his football exploits and also helped.

John’s son, Hunter, one of the top golfers in the Southwest District in recent years, was there, too. Hunter is now in college, playing golf and doing very well. So, it was a great time for memories and conversations.

John and I reminisced about the great 2001 Graham football team and he was just slightly sad that he missed a chance to coach that group by one year. He had some professional and family choices to make and certainly did the right thing to move up the administrative ladder but as a long-time player and coach, he naturally would have liked to be part of sideline group that year.

We both agreed that while it would be hard to say any team is the best in area history, it was likely that ’01 Graham team was the most exciting. They could and did score from nearly every place on the field and they did that fairly often.

From H. T. Matthews, Ahmad Bradshaw, Nathan Belcher, Chase Elswick, and others, that team was a thrill-a-minute group. I can’t remember the exact game, but I recall that Coach Carlock took Paco Jones out of the game with the issue already decided. Paco had gained 115 yards rushing. The fun part was that it happened at the end of the first quarter. It was simply that kind of year.

So, being around several good friends with a rare chance to talk without being under a news deadline was truly one of the great Christmas presents I enjoyed this year.

In addition, even though we all had fun talking about the great deeds of a generation ago, it was encouraging for us to agree that we still have some outstanding young athletes who are adding great new chapters to Four Seasons Country sports history.

That includes a host of terrific girls who excel and continue to set records almost monthly in many area schools on the court(s) and fields in their respective sports.

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