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KFDM COOP

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  2. WHERE ARE THEY NOW Members of Lincoln's 1981 basketball team have been busy since receiving their gold medals. The News tracked them down. Leonard Allen -- Nicknamed "Long Goodie" by Gamble, the 6-9 Allen was named Texas Player of the Year, all-conference at San Diego State and a third-round draft pick of the Dallas Mavericks in 1985. After eight years of pro basketball, mostly abroad, Allen returned to San Diego, where he's a computer support technician. Alvincent Comeaux -- The 5-foot-5 "Soo" was a junior and backup point guard in 1981. He left Port Arthur for school at the University of Houston and is now in the financial services business in Houston. Mecheal Jackson -- They called this 6-5 player "Baby D" after pro Darryl Dawkins, but now his friends know him as "Biscuit." After playing college basketball at Southern University and the University of St. Thomas, he returned to Port Arthur and now works as a state corrections officer. Michael Jaco -- An all-state pick, the 6-1 "Juice" played for Willis Reed at Creighton before transferring to finish his career at Lamar. The Port Arthur resident works as an operator for Lucite Acrylics at DuPont. Kirk Jones -- The 5-foot, 4-1/2 inch "Mighty Mouse" was the littlest Bee with perhaps the biggest role as team captain. The Port Arthur resident is an operator at Temple Inland paper mill in Orange. Tim McKyer -- A junior in 1981, he achieved his biggest fame on a football field, earning three Super Bowl rings with San Francisco and Denver. He recently completed his college degree and works as a TV sports analyst in Charlotte, N.C. R.C. Mullin -- Already 6-6 and 230 pounds by his sophomore season in 1981, he was drafted by the Los Angeles Rams as an offensive tackle and played six years of pro football. He's a substitute teacher in PAISD and a corrections officer at Mark Stiles Prison who lives in Mauriceville. Frank Neal -- A 6-1 super sub known to teammates as "Java Man," he now owns Top Dog Screen Printing in Port Arthur and is a major Memorial High athletic booster. Nolan Nurse -- "Bird" went into the Marine Corps and spent 20 years traveling for Uncle Sam. He played on a pro basketball team in Germany and served in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm. Retired from the service, he's working as a correctional officer in Austin and working on a management degree. Barron Prevost -- Nicknamed "Little Tall" because his older brother (6-foot-8) Rueben had been "Too Tall" to Gamble, 6-foot-6 Barron and his family were uprooted from Port Arthur by Hurricane Rita and now live in Oklahoma. Tracy Smith -- A 5-9 guard known as "Ice," Smith spent nine years in the Air Force after graduation. He and his wife, a teacher, operate a family business in Mansura, La., that caters to at-risk children, and he is currently working as a corrections officer at the Larry Gist State Jail in Beaumont. Darrell Thomas -- A two-year starter at guard for the Bees, "Wax" worked for PAISD until he was disabled by kidney failure a few years ago. Hurricane Rita forced him to move to Houston, where he is on the waiting list for a kidney transplant. Warren Trahan -- The 6-foot-3 Trahan played football at TCU before returning to Port Arthur, where he runs a trucking business. His son Isiah Trahan was a senior cornerback for Memorial last fall and is on the Titans' baseball team. Whereabouts of team members Patrick Barnes, Terry Ceburn and Greg Joubert could not be determined. James Gamble -- A coach at Lincoln from 1962-88, the effects of a 1987 stroke caused Gamble to retire after his fourth championship run. But he has returned several times to help PAISD, including in 1999, when he took over the basketball team and led it to a state runnerup finish. James Knowles -- He left Lincoln to become head coach at Thomas Jefferson and in 2000, his Yellow Jackets beat Lincoln for a spot in the state tournament. He moved to Beaumont Kelly in 2003 and has coached three straight TAPPS state championship teams there. Melvin Getwood -- A one-time player for Gamble, Getwood left coaching to become Lincoln High School principal. He is currently director of special projects and external funding for PAISD. HOW IMPORTANT WAS IT? The significance of Lincoln's run of basketball championships wasn't lost on civic leaders. Here's what a few of them think of the tradition of excellence begun by the 1981 Bumblebees team. Oscar Ortiz, Port Arthur mayor "If Port Arthur was recognized for anything else back in the 80s, it was for the championship basketball that Lincoln brought. Economically, that was a bad time for Port Arthur. We had big layoffs at the Texaco and Chevron plants. Lincoln basketball took the minds of people off the depressing things they were going through at work. It lifted people's spirits up." Verlie Mitchell, Lincoln principal 1978-85 "Of course, coach Gamble was an outstanding coach. That 1981 year, we happened to have some very very capable players who worked together under his leadership. I happened to go to Austin for that game and naturally I was on Cloud 9 about it. It was just really a wonderful occurrence. "For such a long time, football had been the sport that the town pretty much looked toward. but I think that kind of turned the tide toward basketball. It was pretty much mixed for Lincoln thereafter." Charles Breithaupt, UIL athletic director "It was significant because coach Gamble got his first one in 5A. He'd been in 5A (the UIL's top classification) for so long. It was important for him to crown all those years that he didn't make it, and he did it in style. "No one did it with such class as Coach Gamble. He's been a good role model for all these other coaches with his class and dignity." Willie "Bae" Lewis, city councilman "It showed the kids that if you work hard and you are disciplined, you can be a winner. "And economically, we had gains in Port Arthur. Lincoln basketball had a great impact because people turned out. They packed they gym. After the games, they packed restaurants. It had a great impact on my restaurant." Ronnie Thompson, PAISD athletic director "Coach Gamble really did a great job with the coaches and players he had. They came in and flat got after it. They repeated and repeated their success. I don't know if they knew anything but winning. "Winning's good, especially in high school. Kids get a little smarter. Girls look prettier. Everybody's happier."
  3. WOS has some good young ones coming up.
  4. Don't they play at home Tuesday?
  5. Texas High School Football Stadium Stats * The Ten Largest High School Football Stadiums in Texas Name City Seating Capacity 1. Alamo Stadium San Antonio 23,000 2. Frisco Soccer & Entertainment Center Frisco 21,193 3. Kimbrough Memorial Stadium Canyon 20,000 4. Mesquite Memorial Stadium Mesquite 20,000 5. Ratliff Stadium Odessa 19,302 6. Farrington Field Fort Worth 18,500 7. Buccaneer Stadium Corpus Christi 18,000 8. Ozen - Lamar Cardinal Stadium Beaumont 17,500 9. San Angelo Stadium San Angelo 17,500 10. Stallworth Stadium Baytown 16,500 Stadium Capacity Statistics Number of Stadiums Seating Capacity Ranges 10 16,000 and greater 57 10,001 to 16,000 173 5001 to 10,000 388 1,001 to 5,000 267 100 to 1,000 93 No Data Total State Wide Seating Capacity 3,463,241 Average Seating Capacity 3,505 The Oldest High School Stadiums in Texas (With 297 Stadiums Reporting an opening year) Name Town Year Opened Current Age 1. St. Anthony (Lang Field) San Antonio 1910 95 2. Legion Stadium Marlin 1915 90 3. Jones Stadium El Paso 1916 89 4. Woods Field Scurry 1918 87 5. Bulldog Field Jasper 1927 78 6. H. Govan Memorial Stadium Rotan 1927 78 7. Shaw Field Leefors 1927 78 8. Barry Field Hondo 1928 77 9. Mitchell Zimmerman Field Lockney 1928 77 10. Bart Coan Field Fort Davis 1929 76 11. Jackson Field Alpine 1929 76 12. Wildcat Field Wink 1929 76 13. Bulldog Field Wortham 1932 73 14. McKee Stadium El Paso 1932 73 15. New Century Club Field Clarksville 1932 73 16. Chambless Field Mart 1933 72 17. Martin Field Marfa 1934 71 18. Brogden Stadium Gorman 1935 70 19. Bulldog Stadium Howe 1935 70 20. Eagle Field Eagle Pass 1935 70 21. Leeper Stadium Gainesville 1935 70 22. Miller Stadium Mineral Wells 1935 70 23. Brule Stadium Navasota 1936 69 24. Lion Stadium Henderson 1936 69 25. Fair Park Stadium Laredo 1937 68 26. Shirley Field Childress 1937 68 27. The Bears Den Baird 1937 68 28. West Rusk Stadium New London 1937 68 Playing Surface Other Stadium Statistics Total Numbers of Stadiums in the Database 989 Area of Playing Fields 1226 Acres 1.94 Square Miles The first High School Stadium with Lights for night games. West Rusk Stadium - New London. (1937) The last High School Stadium to add lights for night games. Bart Coan Field - Fort Davis The field added lights in 1976 Mile High Stadium Bart Coan Field - Fort Davis There are 254 counties in Texas. Three of them do not have High School Football Stadiums. They are: Loving, Hartley, and Kenedy,
  6. BC at Cleveland (DH) Kountze at Buna
  7. Johnson passes Kenseth for last-lap win at Vegas LAS VEGAS -- It took Jimmie Johnson 270 laps to get to the front Sunday, but that was soon enough. Johnson took advantage of a late-race caution flag Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, catching and passing Matt Kenseth in a two-lap overtime sprint to the finish in the UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400. 1. Jimmie Johnson Chevy 2. Matt Kenseth Ford 3. Kyle Busch Chevy 4. Kasey Kahne Dodge 5. Jeff Gordon Chevrolet Victory LaneJimmie Johnson celebrates his Las Vegas victory Final lapsJohnson passes Kenseth in the last turn to take the win Runner-upKenseth disappointed with his second-place finish Rough racingThings get heated between Stewart and Kyle Busch Early cautionsNewman and Sorenson both smack the wall hard Sign up for TrackPass now BUY THE NEXTEL i836 Johnson's No. 48 Chevrolet surged past Kenseth's No. 17 Ford on the outside after the two sped side-by-side through the third and fourth turns on the 1.5-mile oval for the final time. The winner crossed by finish line 0.115 seconds -- about half a car-length -- ahead as he led a lap for the only time in the 271-lap event. Johnson said he sympathized with Kenseth for getting beat that way, noting he lost to Carl Edwards on the same kind of move last spring in Atlanta and then edged Bobby Labonte with an outside pass on the last lap in May at Charlotte. "I was slowly catching Matt before that last caution," Johnson said. "I think we could have got up there to race with him but, if it stayed green, I believe Matt had it in the bag. Then we got that last yellow. "I thought long and hard about what I would do if I was protecting the lead. I knew I wanted to be on the outside. I faked kind of to the bottom and he kind of bought it." Asked if he thought about trying to block Johnson's move to the outside, Kenseth said, "I was running in the groove where my car was the fastest. If I had to redo it right now, I don't think there was anything I could have done different." Johnson is off to a great start in 2006, winning the Daytona 500 and finishing second two weeks ago in California before taking his 20th career win on Sunday. And he's doing it without crew chief Chad Knaus, banned by NASCAR for the first four races of the season after making unapproved modifications to Johnson's car in Daytona qualifying. With lead engineer Darian Grubb stepping in for Knaus, Johnson will head to Atlanta Motor Speedway next week with a 52-point lead on Kenseth in the standings. It was Johnson's second consecutive victory at Vegas, but this one was a lot harder than 2005 when he led 107 laps. It appeared through most of the race that Kenseth was going to get an easy win after being handed a victory two weeks ago in California when front-runners Greg Biffle and Tony Stewart encountered late-race engine problems. ENGINES EXAMINED LAS VEGAS -- NASCAR spent Sunday night examining the motors from five of the top-running cars in the UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400. NASCAR tore down the engines of race-winner Jimmie Johnson and runner-up Matt Kenseth in the garage area at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The engines of Mark Martin, Kasey Kahne and Kyle Busch were taken by NASCAR and will be torn down at the NASCAR Research and Development Center in Concord, N.C. NASCAR takes engines, often with little notice, to measure their horsepower and gauge parity between teams. The sanctioning body selects engines that represent all three manufacturers, sometimes taking up to 10 motors from the 43 finishers. Kenseth, who won at Vegas in 2003 and 2004, led a race-high 146 laps and was out front and almost assured of victory before a collision between rookie Denny Hamlin and Kenny Wallace brought out the last of seven caution flags on Lap 264 of the race scheduled to go 267 laps. A dejected Kenseth told his crew by radio his engine didn't feel strong for the restart, but he was able to hold off Johnson for a lap-and-a-half after the green flag waved for the final time on Lap 270. "Sorry, you guys won a race and I lost it," Kenseth said to his crew. "Can't do no more, I don't know." All three Cup races this season have gone into overtime because of late-race cautions. After getting out of the car, Kenseth said, "Nobody likes to run second. We led all day. ... If I tried any harder, we were going to wreck. I just got beat." Local boy Kyle Busch, who ran second to Johnson last year, finished third, followed by Kasey Kahne, Jeff Gordon and Mark Martin. Two-time and reigning Cup champion Stewart had his second consecutive disappointing finish after running fifth in Daytona. He led 54 laps Sunday and stayed in the top five until the last few laps when he had a tire rubbing and fell back into the pack, finishing 21st. Stewart became angry at Busch late in the race, reaching out the window and shaking his fist at the younger driver and bumping the rear of Busch's car at one point. The defending champ is 19th in the standings, already 236 points behind Johnson. The 20-year-old Busch, who was criticized by Stewart at Daytona for being too aggressive on the racetrack, said he didn't feel he was doing anything wrong but would be glad to talk with Stewart about it. "With about 40 laps to go, it's time to race and time to get after it and that's what I was doing," said Busch, last year's top rookie. "If I did something and aggravated Stewart, well, I'm sorry."
  8. Your right Thomas can flat out play.
  9. More Districts to come!
  10. WOOO You ain't Kidding!!
  11. Madisonville 3 Woodville 2 Woodville 6 Trinity 3 Woodville 17 Corrigan 3
  12. 1981 Bumblebees set gold standard -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Dave Rogers - The News staff writer Posted: 03/12/06 - 12:47:03 am CST -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- AUSTIN - They were kids and they did what kids do. "We were all pretty close," Kirk Jones recalls. "We would call one or another up, go play at TJ's gym, or go play at the park near McDonald's off Savannah." But these kids were special. Hindsight makes it oh-so-clear. Jones and his boyhood pals grew up to play basketball at Port Arthur's Lincoln High School and on March 21, 1981, at the new Frank Erwin Center in Austin - aka the "Super Drum" - Jones' group of Bumblebees defeated San Antonio Marshall 92-84 to win the Class 5A state basketball championship. It was Lincoln's first UIL state championship. And it was so much more. Coach James Gamble explains: "It was very important, not only to me and the kids and assistant coaches who participated, but it was important to our student body, it was important to the community that supports the school and it was important to the city. "It put us on the map. And it started a tradition for us. From that, our younger kids realized they could accomplish some things a lot of people just talk about and dream about." The 1981 Lincoln basketball team gave birth to a tradition. It was the first of four Gamble-coached teams to win state championships and it was the first of seven Lincoln state championship squads in a span of 15 years. Port Arthur, where high school football had long been king, gained a whole new place in the state's collective basketball consciousness. Regulars at the state tournament had to check the newspapers to see who Lincoln was going to play, but they could count, year after year, on Lincoln being there to play. Overall, the Bees made 10 state tournament appearances in 15 years, 11 in 19. Jones, a 5-foot, 4-1/2-inch point guard, and Michael "Juice" Jaco, a 6-1 forward, were the spiritual leaders on Gamble's 1981 team. The squad included 12 seniors and was led, physically, by the often dominating performances of 6-foot-9 center Leonard Allen. Other starters included 6-6 Barron Prevost and guard Darrell Thomas. Point guard Tracy Smith, 6-5 post Mecheal Jackson and off-guard Frank Neal were usually the first off the bench, and guard Terry Ceburn, a senior-year move-in from Houston also routinely saw a lot of action. Rounding out the team were seniors Warren Trahan, Nolan Nurse and Patrick Barnes, juniors Alvincent Comeaux, Tim McKyer and Greg Joubert and 6-6 sophomore R.C. Mullin. That squad, along with Gamble, assistant coaches James Knowles and Melvin Getwood, was honored at halftime of Saturday night's Class 5A state championship game on the 25th anniversary of their breakthrough win. Jones, the team captain, said the 1981 state championship team was created the night Houston Madison eliminated Lincoln's 1980 team from the Region III tournament. "After the 1980 team lost to Madison, on the bus going back home, we said 'We're going to win it next year. Next year is our year,' " Jones recalled. "We knew because of our past records from the eighth grade on up. In the eighth, ninth and 10th grade, we were undefeated. Our junior year (on the JV team), we lost one game. From winning, we knew we would go far." But Port Arthur's winning basketball tradition started much earlier. Gamble arrived in Port Arthur in 1962 and began to put his polish on a basketball program that had brought home the 1956 state title in the segregated Prairie View Interscholastic League. Six times he coached Bumblebee teams as far as the regional tournament. The 1981 players came from the "east side" and the "west side" of Lincoln's attendance zone, with Houston Street then the dividing line. Jones and his best friend Jaco lived on the east side, along with Smith, Trahan and Neal. "We were always together," Jaco recalls. "We played football, baseball, basketball games at the local park, 503 Park we called it, because that's the number on the railroad engine out in front." Nurse, a quarterback on Lincoln's football team, recalls that Thomas, Allen and Jackson lived on the west side. And because he lived so close - on 10th Street - he joined them in going to Lincoln in the ninth grade. The east side boys went to Woodrow Wilson in the ninth grade. "My bunch," says Comeaux, "was a little different, the underclassmen, Greg Joubert, Tim (McKyer), Mullin, people like that. One of the places everybody would go was right there at Lamar Elementary School. "Coach Gamble would open up the girls' gym every summer. It wasn't anything that was organized, but we played a ton of games in there during that time. That was one way we got to be real close. “When they said it was a team, it was actually a team in every sense of the word." Still is. Neal says those who remained or returned to Port Arthur passed into adulthood playing in rec leagues and pickup games at neighborhood gyms. "After we graduated, in the 80s and early 90s, we all just played together," he says. "We had a team and we went five or six years without losing a game in city league. We used to play against James Gulley and James Nance and those boys from Lamar. They ain't never beat us. "Now, probably Juice is the only one that's still playing. Everybody else got big. Huge." A huge decision was the one made by a core of the players during their ninth grade year to give up football and concentrate on hoops. "It didn't seem like the football athletes were focused like the basketball athletes," Jaco said. "We just decided to focus in." A lot of focus in Southeast Texas fell on Lincoln's 1980 Bumblebees. "Athletically, the '80 team was probably the best, but I think we had better basketball players on the '81 team," Gamble said. The 1980 team was built around 6-8 Rueben "Too Tall" Prevost and included standouts like Barry Ford, Bernard Whitaker, Milton Benson and Bonnie Hall. Michael Jaco was the only full-time underclassman starter. Darrell Thomas was a sometime starter at point guard. Barron Prevost and Leonard Allen logged a lot of minutes backing up in the post. The 1980 JV team featured a starting lineup of Kirk Jones, Tracy Smith, Warren Trahan, Frank Neal and Mecheal Jackson. Those players joined the varsity for tournaments and late-season action. Lincoln's 1981 season ended with a 36-3 record that included a 15-1 push to the District 22-5A championship. It included two close wins over Houston's Booker T. Washington (70-68 and 60-59), both won on late shots by Jaco; and it included no less than four meetings with longtime rival Beaumont Hebert. The Panthers, who would go on to win the 1981 Class 4A title, the centerpiece of three straight state titles for Hebert, split the 1981 games with Lincoln 2-2. The Bees won 72-62 on their homecourt, lost 57-54 in the YMBL tournament, won again (48-46) at the Nederland tournament and, lost 53-45 in the finals of the TJ tournament. "What really made that year special to me," says Andre Boutte, a two-time state champion coach at Lincoln who was on the 1981 Hebert team, "was we battled so many times that year. "To both end up in the state tournament, staying at same hotel, and both of us end up champions was pretty special." Lincoln's only other loss in 1981 came at the hands of West Orange-Stark, 72-68 in 22-5A play. The Bees swept two games each from Beaumont-Charlton-Pollard, Beaumont French, Beaumont Forest Park, Vidor, Port Neches-Groves, Nederland and Thomas Jefferson in district. They played several of the teams additional games in area tournaments, going 4-0 over PN-G that year. But the players respected their foes. "I remember one time I was supposed to be guarding Monte Wainwright and he hit a shot on me," Neal said, mentioning the PN-G star whose long curly hairstyle rivaled Neal's Afro for adding inches to his height. "They didn't have the three-point shot back then, but if they had, that would have been good for four." Lincoln played Aldine MacArthur in bidistrict and won easily 67-50 to qualify for the Region III tournament at the University of Houston's Hofheinz Pavilion. Hofheinz had become a graveyard for the state tournament ambitions of every good Southeast Texas team playing in the state's highest classification (Class 4A until 1981, when it became 5A). Beaumont South Park won the Class 4A state title in 1960, but after school integration in the late 1960s, Houston Wheatley and Houston Kashmere came to dominate the state tournament (winning five and three titles, respectively), and no team from the Triangle succeeded in getting "through Houston" to the state tourney in Austin. Making matters tougher was the fact that Lincoln, the No. 4-ranked team in the state, had to play No. 1-ranked Clear Lake in the regional tourney opener. The Falcons were coached by the legendary Bill Krueger, who already had 600 wins to his credit by then. Also, they had the advantages of being from a well-to-do Houston suburb, advantages that included wearing flashy new white leather Adidas shoes. "Clear Lake had those very nice sneakers, and we had (canvas) Chuck Taylors," Jaco recalls. "Someone wrote a story about (Clear Lake's shoes) and that got everybody's attention. I know they were really nice." A few years later, one of Spike Lee's TV commercials for Nike included the line "Must be the shoes." At Hofheinz that year, Chuck Taylor ruled. The Bees dispatched Clear Lake 78-63 and then blew out Madison 63-46 in the regional final. They beat the Hofheinz Curse and were headed for Austin. But it wasn't as simple as that. Jones recalls Gamble's speech at a pre-tournament pep rally in Lincoln's auditorium. "Coach Gamble said he was interviewed and a reporter asked him 'How was it to draw the No. 1 team in the state?' Coach Gamble's reply to him was 'I didn't draw the No. 1 team in the state. I coached the No. 1 team in the state.' "When he said that, we could have jumped to the moon. That set the tone." In the two regional games, Allen had combined for 32 points, 21 rebounds and 14 blocked shots. And the Bees' reward for finally getting past Hofheinz? A date with No. 2-ranked Fort Worth Dunbar in the state semifinals. Dallas Roosevelt played Marshall in the other semifinal. "I think they wanted Fort Worth Dunbar or Roosevelt for the finals," Neal said, "but we balled there. I think we were destined. It was coach Gamble's time." Comeaux said "Dunbar was the cockiest bunch of guys I ever saw in my life. They were talking a ton of trash. We just played the game." Lincoln beat Dunbar 60-59 in overtime. Jaco hit a free throw for the game-winner and finished with a game-high 27 points. The Bees had to sweat a last-second three-quarter shot by Robert Hughes, Jr., the son of the legendary Dunbar coach. "He threw the ball from the free throw line on the other end of the court and that ball almost went in," Prevost recalled Wednesday. "I would have died if it had gone in." In the championship game, Lincoln led by 12 points midway through the third period only to trail by four, 84-80, with 1:27 left in the game. In a 73-second span, Allen scored 11 consecutive points, grabbed two rebounds and blocked a shot as Lincoln outscored Marshall 13-0 down the stretch. Allen balked Saturday when asked to recall the big finish. “It was a blur, to be honest with you,†he said. “I didn't realize what happened.†None of the game's participants had any way of knowing the importance of their run to the top in 1981. But a quarter of a century of hindsight changes things. “I love the fact that I have kids that will share in this,†Jones said of Saturday's tribute. “I never thought it'd be this big. I thought it'd be something that was swept under the rug. I'm just so thankful.â€
  13. Yea they do as well, especially that night!
  14. John Cooper has some Bats!
  15. Central Heights 4 Newton 3 Corrigan Camden 13 Newton 4..Newton ran out of pitching for this game.
  16. Memorial 7.....Memorial wins Consolation Bracket New Waverely 1
  17. Kountze 7 HJ JV 3 for 3rd place
  18. Houston Westside 6 PN-G 1
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