Crawford team has ‘brought that spirit of basketball back’

ROBERTA -- There would be no pep rally. Not at the high school on East Agency Street or at the gym over on Manor Street. Not this day.

The old coach would not hear of it. No, ma’am, not on the eve of his basketball squad’s biggest game in more than 30 years. Coach Clyde Zachery’s Crawford County High Eagles would not be upsetting routine for cheers and pregame boogie.

“He’s old-school,” the school’s assistant principal, Cynthia Dickey, said. “He likes to keep things regular.”

There was, after all, a state championship on the line, and come tipoff Friday afternoon at 4:45, Zachery wanted his boys even-keeled as ever.

“Don’t change anything,” he said Thursday morning.

Pep rally or not, purple-and-gold school spirit was everywhere. On banners, on T-shirts and in the form of drumbeats, booms that would, at the end of the school day, echo in the halls as drummers thundered through in an impromptu show of support. Pep-rally light.

The Eagles won their last AA title in 1982.

They haven’t returned to the final game since. The future Kentucky star and NBA player Kenny Walker was on that last championship team, one that won back-to-back titles under Zachery.

Walker’s older brother, Lewis, who played in the late 1970s and is now the local sheriff, says this year’s squad has given folks in this county of 12,500 something to be proud of.

“It’s brought that spirit of basketball back that’s been gone for a while,” Lewis Walker said.

Principal Mike Campbell says the town will shut down Friday afternoon when the Eagles head for Macon and their championship clash with Seminole County.

“If you want to buy something in Roberta, you’re just gonna have to wait,” he said.

“Everybody’s so behind them. It’s an easy team to root for. They behave in the hallways and in the classrooms.”

The other day, Zachery wasn’t so sure.

He heard there was mischief afoot.

“All your players are out in the hallway,” senior Kymbria Carson told him.

“What are they doing in the hallway? I don’t have time to be playing,” he said, stepping out to see walls decorated with paper silhouettes of all dozen Eagles in action.

Zachery, 69, who is 6-foot-6 and fond of wearing warmup suits, has been at the school since 1972. A Newnan native, he was a pitching prospect for the New York Yankees. He had a 95-mph fastball, but his arm gave out and he turned to coaching.

His Eagles, all underclassmen, are 27-3 this season. They last lost in December and are led by William “Pooh Bear” Jarrell, who is averaging 25 points a game.

Zachery calls Jarrell “the complete package.” Zachery is less complimentary of Jarrell’s nickname. “I just don’t feel right hollering out on the floor to a young man, ‘Hey, Pooh Bear!’”

Tony Little, who played point guard for Zachery in the late 1980s, remembers the coach’s no-nonsense ways.

Basketball shorts in those days were short and tight. They fit more like underwear compared to the spacious trunks players sport today. One night during a game, Little kept tugging at his shorts, trying to stretch them, slide them down a pinch. Zachery waved him over to the bench.

“He grabbed me by the back of my pants and pulled them up,” Little said. “Right in front of the whole crowd.”

Little was at the team’s home gym Thursday helping sort gold championship-game T-shirts.

“It’s been a long time coming,” he said. “I’m proud. The community is ecstatic.”

Zachery, meanwhile, has kept his poker face.

When the drums boomed at the end of school Thursday, he stood watch and made sure his charges emerged from the hoopla unscathed.

“You’ve still got to coach,” he said. “You’ve got to be the dad and all that. You’ve got to be the disciplinarian.”

Not that this year’s run toward a state title hasn’t brought him joy. It has.

“It gives you pleasure,” he said, “to see these young guys trying to make their mark on basketball history in Crawford County.”

It just seems that perhaps Zachery, who jokes and tells students that he is really 78 years old, wants to pass on some of his wisdom: You don’t win rings at pep rallies.

This story was originally published March 5, 2015 at 5:48 PM with the headline "Crawford team has ‘brought that spirit of basketball back’."