Published: March 15, 2008 10:21 pm            

'87 state champs

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in dalton magazine’s spring issue. Copies of the magazine are available at The Daily Citizen office at 308 S. Thornton Ave. in Dalton.



“Years from now when events start to haze

What will be our memories of the last few days?

... But Kristi got a hit and so did Shannon,

Then Tara hit her shot like a cannon,

Up the middle, they were on the run,

When the dust had cleared the Bruins had won.”

— From “State Champs,” assistant coach Debra Sloan’s tribute poem to the 1987 Northwest Whitfield Class AAA state championship softball team.

Tara Barton needed a moment.

To breathe, perhaps. Maybe to think about what the seconds just behind her would mean to the years in front for her and 20 other girls. But mostly just to see.

In a spell of acute awareness for which she’s surely grateful now, Barton, then a teenage first baseman for Northwest Whitfield High School’s slow-pitch softball team, took time to let the scene before her stream into the file her brain was busily building.

Late in the evening on Oct. 24, 1987, Barton’s teammates were in a blizzard of pandemonium — of the enjoyable variety — near home plate, celebrating Northwest’s 6-5 victory over Coffee in the Class AAA state championship. Lady Bruins parents and fans, bursting with their own pride and emotion, were pressing against the chain link fence under the lights at the E.E. Hamilton softball complex in Tifton, some 275 miles from the high school’s Tunnel Hill address.

And Barton — still frozen in a cocoon of calm at second, where she had arrived after delivering a two-run double in the bottom of the seventh inning — wasn’t quite ready to join them. Not yet.

“It was just surreal,” said Barton, a senior that season whose married name now is Ponders. “I stood on second base and just watched my teammates running and hugging and jumping and cheering. I stood on second, it seemed like forever, thinking, ‘Wow, I can’t believe this happened.’”

Had Barton had big hits before?

Good grief, yes.

In the week of practice before the state tournament, Lady Bruins coach Mike Cole singled out the pop in her bat. And there was little doubt Barton, who came to the plate against Coffee as a pinch-hitter for starting pitcher Kerry Erwin, could swing in a can’t-miss spot. Hours earlier, she had punched out an eighth-inning, go-ahead double in a 9-7 victory over McIntosh that sent her team into the title game.

But this hit was exceptional, something worth enjoying, even if only for a few seconds longer.

“I finally thought, ‘Hey, I want to get in there, too,’” Barton said. “But I just really savored that moment. And it was never ever thinking, ‘Hey, I just hit in the winning run.’ It was like, ‘We did it.’”

Although they may stretch over months, sports seasons — at their best and worst — are defined by small moments, pieces of the whole that represent what it was like to be a part of a team in a given year. In the same way the flavor and texture of one slice represents a whole pie, or the way a tree’s rings reveals not only its age but the story of its life, sometimes a few precious seconds of a single big game can testify for an entire season.

It’s certainly true with Northwest’s comeback victory over Coffee for the school’s first state title in that sport and its second team championship in Georgia High School Association competition.

Take Barton for example.

Cole’s decision to send her to the plate was the result of a brief consultation with assistants Debra Sloan and Christy Cupp, both of whom he’s quick to credit for what they added to the team that year. Cupp had been in the running for the head position before that season, while Sloan was in charge when the program started a year after the school opened in 1975.

“I could keep score and keep him informed on the team, tell him who was hitting well,” said Sloan, who stopped coaching in the mid-1990s and, after 30 years as a math teacher at Northwest, retired from that profession in 2006. “He says I was an assistant coach, but he’s being kind. I knew the girls and I was the kind of person who could be an encourager.”

Barton came up as a pinch hitter in that game because Tonya Gordon (now Brown) was granted the start by Cole, who had platooned the duo all year at first base because he thought both seniors brought enough skill to the team to warrant equal playing time.

At first frustrated by the split, Barton eventually made peace with the plan.

“I realized that it was more than just about me,” Barton said. “It was a team. And I would say that’s probably the first time I really had to realize it was a team sport, and so by the end of the year, I was fine with it.”

That became a common theme for the Lady Bruins in 1987. Cole didn’t worry about bickering among his players, because it simply didn’t happen that often. They got along naturally, not just because it helped them win games.

Most of them had been playing against and with each other for years, starting with recreation league ball. Some would go on to play basketball for the Lady Bruins after softball season ended, while others would stay together all the way through the spring when they moved on to track and field.

“I guess it was like we were all a big family,” said Liz Anderson (Dennis), a junior third baseman that year. “We clicked real well. We got along real well. Nobody tried to be a superstar. Everybody knew their role and they did it.”

It taught Kristi Harris (Douhne), a registered nurse for the past 17 years, a lot about what it meant to truly be a teammate and help others.

“It’s molded me into who I am today,” Harris said. “It was such a great sisterhood. And it wasn’t just that year. I pretty much grew up with those girls.”

The understanding among teammates made it easier for Cole, who was in his first season leading the program after serving as an assistant one year before. He had a good starting lineup backed by a strong bench and the pieces fit without friction.

“Two of my best players were the catcher and the right fielder,” Cole said of Lisa Ryan (Stinnett) and April Horne (Ogle), respectively. “Many teams, that’s where they hid their worst players.”

Ryan, in fact, would have her jersey retired after that season, her fourth as a varsity starter. Horne’s “cannon arm,” Cole said, helped her approach double figures in assists that year. But the team’s talent, while certainly there, was secondary to the willingness of 21 individuals to unite, Cole believes.

“I coached nine teams,” said Cole, who led the program to a second state title in 1993. “They were probably only about the fourth or fifth best team I had, athletic wise, softball wise. But they had that chemistry.”

One place it showed was in their defense. Many of the Lady Bruins from that year’s team believe shared responsibility was a must due to the slow-pitch game’s emphasis on hitting and fielding — a dominant pitcher can take over a game with ease in fast-pitch, which has overtaken slow-pitch in terms of popularity and participation during the past two decades.

The experience of having played so many years together was a big plus for Northwest.

“We had a smart team, too,” said Celeste Creswell, a junior shortstop that year. “And we anticipated where we needed to be.”

Take another look at that scene from Tifton and the moment when it all truly came together.

While Cole may not include the 1987 lineup at the top when evaluating pure athletic talent, he doesn’t discount the speed of that year’s team. And Harris and Shannon Whaley (Walters), who stood on first and second with one out after back-to-back hits, certainly didn’t bring down the team’s MPH average.

Barton’s double was clean enough to send Harris home without question. Whaley was another matter. Fast as she was, Cole — coaching at third base — didn’t settle on sending her home until he saw a slight bobble from the outfielder, a moment of hesitation that provided a gamble worth taking.

“She was just smoking around that baseline,” Cole recalled.

Whaley ended up on the good side of a bang-bang play at the plate, but for years Cole pondered whether his baserunner had shortened her route from first to third.

He doesn’t have to wonder any longer.

“I did touch second,” Whaley said. “You touch the corner and go.”

And she went. All the way home, where the celebration soon started.

“I’ll never forget it,” said Whaley, who earned tourney MVP honors after going 7-for-9 at the plate in three victories that day at state, the first an 18-0 trouncing of a Milton squad sporting a 20-0 record.

“I can still see it in my mind. I’ll never forget seeing the fans grabbing on to the chain link fence and seeing their mouths open. It’s almost like an out-of-body experience.”

It’s not quite so out-of-body for Cole, who can recall perhaps a little too vividly that he took on a bit of pain to honor a promise he made to his team. On his hands and knees, in the South Georgia dirt that made up the line from third to home, he crawled before kissing the plate.

“What I remember about it was that I didn’t realize how long it would take me to crawl from third to home plate,” Cole said. “But it’s not like I just hated it or anything. They really enjoyed it and if that had something to do with them playing a little harder, then good.”

That good-natured stunt was the second big one of the season for Cole, who had honored a deal to lose half his mustache if his players won the Region 7-4A title, which they did via a 3-2 comeback victory over Ringgold on Oct. 10. The night before the region tourney began, the Lady Bruins rolled Cole’s yard with toilet paper.

His willingness to play jester once in a while said plenty about the relationship he had with his players — and, in a weird way, their fondness of him.

“He was great,” Harris said. “A good coach, but also a good friend and understanding and easy to talk to. He just really carried the team well.”

He had to hide some of his emotions early that season, though. While the Lady Bruins finished well, they didn’t exactly start that way. Expectations were high with a bumper crop of seniors and juniors — sophomore outfielder Stacy Childers (Pardee), affectionately known as “Rook,” was the team’s only underclassman.

But in those days, getting to state meant winning your region. (Four teams from each region now qualify). And winning Region 7-4A meant getting through solid programs at Ringgold — which had won three of the previous four Class 3A titles — Rossville and Lakeview.

Northwest started the season by getting trounced, 10-0, by Ringgold. If you were taking a trip to the Grand Canyon, it would be the equivalent of getting a flat tire while pulling out of the driveway.

“I remember thinking, ‘What have I got myself into?’” Cole said. “‘This is not what I expected.’ I had some parents on me. I was second-guessing myself.”

But Cole must have done a good job managing those worries privately, because the team avoided any state of panic, even though they fell to 10-6 before winning 17 straight games to finish the season. Along the way, the Lady Bruins avenged the loss to Ringgold in the regular season, then topped the Lady Tigers twice in the region tournament.

“I don’t know what happened,” Cole said, “but we got on a roll.”

It took the Lady Bruins on to a sweep of a vaunted South Gwinnett team at the best-of-three state sectionals and then to the tourney, where they finished a memorable year that doesn’t easily escape their recall, even more than 20 years later.

The familiarity among the Lady Bruins seems as crisp as ever.

“We still keep in touch,” said April Horne (Ogle). “And now our kids are playing ball together. It’s kind of neat to watch.”

When the team reunited recently at their old stomping grounds for a picture, the conversation started as soon as players made their way from the parking lot to Northwest’s softball field. The bond remains strong, as do the lessons they taught each other.

“I look back on my days when I played and I remember them to be a time when I learned discipline and teamwork,” Creswell said. “Some people may have had more talent than others, but it didn’t make them better. Everybody on that team contributed something to make it whole.”

Maybe that’s why Barton knew she couldn’t tarry forever on second base that night, no matter how much she was enjoying her view of the celebration.

She had to get in on that party. After all, she was part of a team.

        

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