Lattimore High School Basketball: An Interview with Buddy Weathers

The following is a transcription of an interview with Buddy Weathers at the regular meeting of the Lattimore Town Council on Monday, February 11, 2014.  The questions were asked by Alton Beal, the mayor of the Town of Lattimore.

Q: When did you play for the Lattimore High School?

A: I played through 1954. We had some good basketball players through that period.

Q: Who were some of your teammates that you had during the years that you played?

A: First all, I think of Bill Lovelace because he is still here. Bill Bell, Gilbert Greene, Bill Ray Mauney, Steve Blanton, Cecil Bailey, Bobby Greene, Joe Ed Walker. That is just some of them. Red Towery was our old coach and he started taking us to the old Dixie Classic. They had it every year down in Raleigh. They had the “Big Four” which was North Carolina, NC State, Wake Forest, and Duke. Then they would have four teams from the outside to come in, and they would bring the best teams in the whole country. We saw some of the best ball [playing], and we got some good pointers from going to that Dixie Classic. That is where I picked up my jump shot. You didn’t see the jump shot back then. We went to the Dixie Classic and two or three were shooting it, and I came back and started copying that. Coach Towery didn’t much like it because he wanted you to shoot this ole’ two hand set shot from the top of the circle and to shoot free throws from under your legs. I got away from that [because] I didn’t want to shoot that ole’set shot. I started shooting that one hander, and then started adding the jump to it. It evolved and I got pretty good at shooting the jump shot.

Our best year when I was playing was my junior year when Billy Ray Lovelace, Bill Bell, and Gilbert Greene were seniors. We had a really good team. Unfortunately, Mr. Padgett the principal some way or another failed to pay our registration fees for the state tournament and we were ineligible to go into the state tournament that year. We could have probably advanced real far.

Now the next year we had lost Billy Bell, Bill Lovelace, and Gilbert Greene, and no one gave us a chance to do anything. There were only two returning starters, myself and Billy Ray Mauney. We surprised everybody. We didn’t lose a home game, and we lost three games in the regular season. We won the county tournament, went two deep into the state tournament and got beat by a team from Gaston County on our third game. We didn’t have near the team my senior year as we had my junior year. Unfortunately we didn’t get into the state tournament that year.

Q: Did other teams start using the jump shot after you started using it?

A: Yes, other teams started using it, and others on our team started using it pretty regular. We had a person up at Fallston that before me was shooting a form of a jump shot. His name was Elliott. I believe he taught auto mechanics at Crest and at Burns. I can remember him at Fallston; he would come down the side of the court, and he shot a two handed jump shot. He would jump up and shoot that thing with both hands. That was kind of unorthodox. That is the first person I can ever remember shooting a jump shot. He was not shooting a one-handed jump shot. After I started shooting that in the 10th grade, I kept developing it, and by the time I was a senior, I could shoot the jump shot from anywhere on the court. Most of my jump shots would be where the three point line is today. We didn’t have a three point line back then. A good portion of my points came from that area.

Q: What was the home gym here in Lattimore like?

A: Well, I started off my first two years in the “Old Tin Can.” I don’t know if you have ever heard about it or not. That was a rough place to play. The floor was so rough that if you fell down, you were going to get skinned up! If it was going to rain, they had to set buckets out to catch the rain so you could hopefully play the ball game that night. The first two years were in that “Old Tin Can.” Then they started throughout the county building these gymnasiums like we have got there at Ambassador [Baptist] College. We got that when I was in the 10th grade. That was really one more upgrade. The big difference from the way things are now is the old fan shaped backboards. It was not a rectangular shaped backboard, but fan shaped. Everybody in the county had the same type of backboards. All the basketball courts were the same. We had piped-in steam heat. The building was good and warm. You would freeze to death in that “old tin can.”

Q: What was the atmosphere like on a basketball night?

A: They [the fans] backed you home and away. You thought it was a big crowd back then, but the gym couldn’t hold many people. It would jam packed every ball game. We had twelve rural high schools in the county then. We didn’t have football so most all of our emphasis was placed on basketball. I can remember that we always beat Shelby, Because we had been playing basketball all summer long. They would be playing football and wouldn’t have but a week or so to practice befor they played us. We always beat them. Lloyd Little the coach said, “I don’t want to play Lattimore anymore because that have been playing ball all summer.” They stopped playing us after my sophomore year.

Q: Did Lattimore have a rival school when playing basketball?

A: Well, I guess our biggest rival was Fallston because they always had a good team. They had a real good coach Blain Baxter. Fallston was the number one rival.

Q: What other teams in the immediate area did you play?

A: Mooresboro was never much any competition. Boiling Spring never was much competition. Polkville never was much. Piedmont at Lawndale had a tremendous coach. Casar had a real good coach. Belwood was somewhat up and down. They beat us my senior year. I fouled out in the first half, so I wasn’t able to give much support in that game.

Q: Did you have any kind of mascot and what colors did your team use?

A: I guess it was royal blue. You didn’t have but one set of uniforms. You didn’t have a home and away uniform. You had the same uniform wherever you went. You wanted to have something with a little bit of contrast with the other teams.

Q: Did you have certain number that you liked?

A: No, I think number 6 was the one I had most of the time.

Q: What was your coach like?

A: From my first year, Red Towery was the coach. Red got involved in farming, and was not teaching at Lattimore. He had taught up at Polkville and was a coach up there. When he came to Lattimore, he had already started farming in Lattimore pretty big. He coached us on the side. Red bought a farm down around Sumter, and he left when I was a rising junior. Ray Towery had always come to the practices with Red, and he was put in charge. He was kind of our coach, but we coached ourselves a lot too. Ray coached us my junor year, and then my senior year, Pop Simmons was hired as the coach. He was well-known in the area for his coaching ability primarily in baseball with Shelby American Legion. He coached us my senior year. He coached both the boys and the girls. You didn’t get a pep talk before the ball game because the coach was out there coaching the girls.

Q: What would be an example of a typical score of a close game back then?

A: A good close game with a lot of competition would be in the 50’s. I can remember that most of our closer games were around 50 points.

Q: What is the most points you ever scored in a game?

A: 55 points. My teammates helped me a lot. I’ll tell you a little bit about that. I was in a scoring race with a fellow from Grover. We were neck and neck in who could score the most points. This might have been the next to last game of the season against Bethware which never had a good team. At the end of the half, I think I had 22 points. At the end of the third quarter, I had 33 points. Between the third and fourth quarters, Pop Simmons said, “Ok, we are going to move Buddy inside. I want you other boys to hit him with that ball and let him shoot the jumper.” And they did. They started feeding me inside and I was shooting that little ole’ six or eight-foot jumper and ended up with 55 points. I scored 22 points the last quarter.

Q: Do you hold the record for the most points in a season or game?

A: It is still a record in Cleveland County for the most points scored in a game. 55 points.

Q: Does any particular game stand out in your mind?

A: The one that stands out the most for me in all of my games is a game we played before Christmas. It started snowing and we were playing Piedmont/Lawndale at Lattimore. They were good. They had a boy by the name of Roger Pearson. He would get on me, and it was like he was glued on me. It was nip and tuck up until about the middle of the fourth quarter. Piedmont was leading us for most of the game. I got Roger in foul trouble, and he fouled out. Well, I took off then and started scoring since I could get free. We ended up beating them at the last second by one point. It was a thrill to beat them because they were so good. I can remember the county tournament coming up, and I was dreaded having to play them. If they won and we won, then we would have to play them. Luckily, Fallston beat them and upset them. That made us play Fallston, and I knew we could get Fallston. We beat Fallston and went on to beat Grover in the championship.

Q: Did you ever have any disruptions or fights at the games?

A: We never did while I was playing, but I can remember a fight in the “old tin can” over here. Bill Lovelace was involved in it. He was a freshman going up for a layup and a boy from Number Three just horse-collared him. They went down on the floor and got up swinging at each other real good, and everyone else got into it. It was a mess! I remember Toy Stockton getting two boys under his big ole’ overcoat and hauling them off the court.

Q: Where was the “old tin can” located?

A: It was down next to the railroad tracks on the Fire Department’s property in the far left corner. A good many scuffles took place in there, and they always kept it locked. But some of them made a hole in the floor and crawled up through the old wooden bleachers to get in there to play ball.

Q: Did they charge people to attend those games?

A: They charged. I don’t remember what it was. It seemed like it might have been fifty cents.

Q: How did you travel to your away games?

A: We didn’t have any bus. You just got somebody who had a car who could get there. We would go in various people’s cars to get there. There were a number of times that I drove Doc Bridges big ole’ Roadmaster Buick. He would let us have his car and I would take a group of player. That was riding uptown!

Q: What are the differences between the game then and now?

A: Coaching is much better. The players are more athletic. You didn’t have people to dunk the ball back then. If someone had used a zone press defense, we would have never been able to get the ball up the court.