Little Linden

from The Nashville Tennessean, Sunday, 03/13/05

Dream season? Little Linden’s lasted 3 years and still amazes

By LEON ALLIGOOD
Staff Writer

LINDEN, Tenn.  Even now, a half-century after their accomplishment, the Kings of Basketball marvel at what transpired so long ago, back when they were young, when their hair lacked gray and their bodies were perpetual motion machines, capable of running all day, especially if they were chasing a bouncing, tan ball.

“Sometimes you have to pinch yourself. Did that really happen?” asked Albert Ellison of Clifton, Tenn. He was the “great No. 8,” a gangly 6-foot-4 teen remembered for his accurate shooting and his wide, lopsided smile.

For a trio of magical years beginning 50 years ago this month, Linden High was the undisputed champion of boys’ basketball in Tennessee.

Look at the record books. Draw your finger down the list of teams which have won the boys” title and when you get to 1955 you will see this entry: Linden, coached by Willie Hudson. It”s the same for 1956 and 1957. Take note, the Linden team is the only boys” champion listed each year.

Before Tennessee schools were grouped according to size, boys” basketball was a winner-take-all proposition. Linden High, student population 167, give or take a dozen, competed against big-city teams with enrollment 10 times larger.

And little Linden won.

You”ve heard of Hoosiers, the 1986 movie based on the true story of a rural Indiana high school team that scrapped its way to the state championship game?

Tennessee’s version is three times better.

Linden, about 90 miles west of Nashville, was and remains the county seat of Perry County. In early March 1955, the county was home to about 6,500 citizens.

The county”s primary livelihood was farming. Most families squeezed a life from logging the hardwood hills or from raising crops in the bottomland of the Buffalo River. On Saturdays, the county seat was always bustling, as county folk paid a visit to town for groceries or clothes or to go to the movies at one of the town”s two theaters.

Every year from October until March, the county contracted basketball fever. At every home game, particularly in the early to mid-1950s there would be standing room only with 800-plus fans squeezed into seven rows of bleachers on each side of the court.

“The only people who weren’t there were the inmates at the county jail, and surely the sheriff and his deputies were at the game. The inmates were pretty much on their own,” remembered Ben Rutledge, a retired Nashville doctor and a starter on the 1955 team.

Come post-season tournament time, the town virtually shut down. In those days, Perry County’s economy may have been bound to the land, but its people were defined by the fortunes of Linden High basketball.

As the summer heat of 1954 eased and the calendar on the wall at the Greyhound Grill, the local gathering spot, was flipped to September, then October, Coach Willie Hudson knew the upcoming season looked promising.

Only one starting senior had graduated from the previous season, when Linden had gone undefeated, save for a loss in the quarterfinals of the state tournament against powerhouse Dobyns-Bennett High of Kingsport.

Hudson, a no-nonsense tactician who drilled his teams in the basics day after day, often said the 1954 team was the best he ever coached. Many people still agree, but the larger Kingsport school, which had more than 1,200 pupils, squeezed out a two-point victory.

Left behind, after the 1953-54 season, was a starting lineup that included three seniors, Rutledge, James “Brother” Cotham and Eugene Grinder. Ellison was a junior. Gene Paschall was a sophomore.

Cotham, Grinder and Ellison later became successful high school coaches. Paschall moved to Oklahoma and found a life in the oil fields.

With every win of the 1954-55 season, the mascotless team known simply as “Linden,” converted skeptics who said the previous year”s trip to the state tourney was a fluke, who said the country boys weren’t up to the task.

“We showed ’em,” Cotham said.

The final game was a rematch with the team’s 1954 quarterfinals opponent, Dobyns-Bennett of Kingsport. The Kingsport Indians fell by a score of 52-48. The following day the headline in The Tennessean proclaimed: ‘It’s Little Linden.”

“In my estimation what they did is the greatest accomplishment of Tennessee high school sports, bar none. Sadly, few people know about it,” said Gene Pearce of Jackson, a retired businessman and former sportswriter who is writing a book about the 1950s teams of Coach Hudson at Linden High.

Sportswriters of the day were enamored with the David vs. Goliath story. The squad of country boys had fans across the state. For a time, members of the 1955 team were bona fide heroes.

“We were sitting on top of the totem pole. Everybody wanted to say something to you or just reach out and touch you,” Paschall remembered.

The convoy of eastbound cars after that Saturday night in March 1955 must have seemed endless. The convoy was much of the population of Perry County, returning victorious. The next day, after church services, a crowd gathered at the Greyhound Grill to greet the new heroes.

“Coming home, it was unbelievable. It was an amazing sight,” said Grinder.

“It seemed like the whole town was there to see us,” Cotham said.

As the decades have passed, Linden hasn’t forgotten those heady days, but the town has changed. The movie theaters are gone. So are the five-and-dime, the dry goods stores and the pool hall. Perry County”s population is now about 7,500, about 1,000 more than 50 years ago. Industrial jobs are still hard to come by, even though there’s been some progress.

Two important changes have occurred since the 1950s. In the fall of 1963, Linden and Lobelville High School consolidated to become Perry County High. At that time, the team adopted a mascot, the Vikings.

The other important change occurred in the 1972-73 season, when the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association grouped schools by student population. Perry County High, in Class A, has since added three other state championship banners to hang alongside the ones earned in the 1950s. Six hang from the rafters.

A new one will not be added this year. Both Perry County girls and boys teams were eliminated from advancing to the state tourney. But 50 years after basketball put this community in the spotlight, game nights at Perry County High are popular, sometimes attracting 1,000 or more fans.

“It’ll happen again,” said Kirk Haston, referring to a future state title. The 1997 Class A Mr. Basketball winner went on to play college ball at Indiana and now plays for the Florida Flame of the National Basketball Development League, an affiliate of the National Basketball Association.

“There’ll be another banner hanging up there one day.”

A round ball still rules in Perry County.

Leon Alligood can be reached at 259-8279 or at lalligood@tennessean.com.