Manchester Memories - Tri-County Tournament

During the years of the winning streak, we played in the oldest of all Georgia Invitational Basketball Tournaments - the Tri-County Tournament. This was a tournament held in Manchester. It was started in 1926 with Meriwether, Harris, and Talbot Counties playing in the first tournament. Basketball was about the only type of athletics at the smaller high schools. The only indoor playing court in the three counties was the one owned by the Manchester Mills, and they started playing it there. When Manchester High got a gym, the tournament was moved there.

Taylor County High School was invited to the tournament in 1968 and the girls won it the next five years in a row. The gym was always full of people, and it was just a great place to play.

Mr. Jim Woodall presented the trophies several years that I remember. He was referred to in the Manchester newspaper as "Talbot County's 'Grand Old Man' of sports, education, and just about everything else constructive and instructive to area youth." It was a tournament with a lot of history and it was always exciting to play there. I always felt like I had my best games there, and I looked forward to it every year.

The Lady Vikings won the tournament in 1968 over Harris County, in one of their many meetings that year. That's the year Taylor County beat Harris County five times - every time - all the way to the finals of state.

I especially remember the first game of the 1969 tournament - my freshman year. Sandra and I alternated starting by games that year, and it was my game to be the starter. The other forwards were Sissy and Judy Riley. Teams were always focusing on stopping the Riley phenom, and the first tournament game that year was no exception. For the first three minutes, every time down the court their guards would double team Sissy. Coach Carter had taught us to look at the defense and find out who was open. It didn't take a rocket scientist to realize that I had no guard; Judy would throw me the ball and I would shoot right under the goal. I scored the first six times down the floor - 12 points - and didn't think anything about it. It was automatic. Well, then it dawned on me that I had scored all the points that we had so far. I kind of got the "big head" and missed the next time down the floor! The other team called timeout and put a guard on me then. Sissy and Judy took over and scored 23 and 17 respectively. I ended that game with 18 points, and we won and moved on to win the tournament - the second time for the Lady Vikings.

In 1970, Jim Coger from Columbus WTVM came to our game and it was quite exciting when he and his camera crew interviewed Coach Carter with us watching after the game. I remember Coach threw a towel over Judy's head as the camera panned around the room of players.

Another exciting thing about the tournament was they named an All-Tourney team. Judy, Sandra, and I were so excited in 1970 when all three of us , the forwards on the Lady Vikings, made the All-Tourney team. We scored 201 points among the three of us during the tournament. We had five on the team that year - Denease McAbee and Patsy Ranow, two of our guards, were also honored.

The Tri-County tournament was split over two week-ends. In 1971 we won our tourney game the first week-end, then nearly lost our game on Tuesday in between when we beat Warner Robins after two overtimes. We were glad to return to Manchester with our winning streak still intact.

In 1972's tournament first round I remember being on the bench during the fourth quarter as our subs got a chance to play, and this guy coming over to Coach and saying, "Norman, put Fuller back in and let her get 50 points. It's been a long time since we had a player score 50 in this gym. " Coach just laughed, and said, "We aren't interested in that." I ended the game with 47 points, and didn't even play the whole game. The Manchester gym was one of my favorite places to play.

The Tri-County Tournament was just a lot of fun - a lot of good memories were made there!