CJ_56

I don't know what happened to the team at Greenup I knew. I know that was a LONG time ago but still. Before GCHS there was McKell and Wurtland. Wurtland struggled against Raceland but McKell didn't. They generally won in fact. And Wurtland had turned their program around. I played in several JV games at Wurtland against Raceland we won every one of them. Raceland kept their tradition going. So did Russell (and I really don't like that - I actually like Raceland) but there's no excuse for GC being so bad all the time. I guess no one gives a rat's rear about it or something. Sad.

Dang I can remember when we (Musketeers) never lost to Raceland. I wish GC had maintained the tradition of sports the way Raceland has.

Administration can certainly kill a team. It killed my team actually. We would have been much better if not for some really disturbing thinking by the administrators and the coaches. It hurt the program at Wurtland for many years too. Even if a kid from out in the county wanted to play, showed up for practice and was actually good he still had to deal with the boosters who cared more about seeing their kids on the team getting the glory. Just one man turned that around though. Too bad it didn't last because the guy that replaced him was a product of that same booster system. I don't want to say too much but there are things I'd like to say to certain coaches if I ever see them again. I had the chance to tell one but it was at a funeral so I pulled back. I'll get my shot some day maybe. Raceland was always the exact opposite of Wurtland when it came to things like that. If you were good they made sure you played. There's a reason Don Gullett chose to go to McKell when he was actually in the Wurtland district too. He went to Wurtland as a freshman and that was enough for him to open his eyes to what was going on. That was a staggering loss for Wurtland's sports programs (he was good at all of them). They actually killed the baseball team because they didn't want him showing up their pets. So you can figure what it was like at Wurtland for someone out in the county no matter how good they were. They don't come any better than Don and they essentially ran him off. What a world.

We probably know each other oldrambler. I spent a lot of time in Raceland. I think a lot of people that went to Wurtland just didn't like the idea of going to a bigger school so they went to Raceland. I could be wrong but that might have made the Raceland program stronger for a while. But it seems like I knew everyone on the Raceland team and in the school My dad worked at the shop track (behind the rail plant if you're looking from the Worthington side) and I guess I dated half the girls in my age group from that town. I had family playing football and basketball at Raceland around that time too (Howard brothers). I hate to say too much about names on a page like this but trust me I know a LOT of Raceland people. I even played for the Worthington Little League baseball team because the one at my school folded before I got to play there. But I lined up across from Lurch more than once. Of all the people I ever played against he's the only one that ever actually hurt me with a straight up hit. And remember that I played against that Boyd Co. team with Keelin and Chaney and several all state guys. I played end against one of those all state guys and we had ourselves a war. Too bad the score wasn't closer. Those guys were plumb good. But so was our 1974 basketball team. We made the final 4 that first year. I had quit playing basketball by then though. My parents got tired of driving to Wurtland to pick me up after practice every day. I was one of those guys that lived out in the county but not out to Leatherwood or anything. Just Argillite. Still it was a chore to pick me up every day I guess so they made me pick one sport and stay with it. Oh well.

I graduated from the first class ever at GCHS. I'd like to clear up a misconception or two here. First the early coaches at Greenup Co. were more from Wurtland than McKell. The politics of that actually became a problem but not for the reasons you might think. Those coaches favored McKell players in some ways thinking we would all be out to kill each other because of our past rivalry. That never played a part in what the players thought but the coaches and administration were scared to death it would. Almost all the players that had played the year before at Wurtland quit that first team for reasons you might guess. Having the coach's nephew as the star running back certainly didn't help. Putting in a quarterback from McKell simply because the coach was from Wurtland was another bad mistake. A high quality QB walked off the team and it was downhill from there. I played receiver on that team. The QB couldn't get the ball out to me on a 7 yard square out. It would bounce half way between us because he didn't have the arm to get it to me. They started the team off on a sour note because of this style of coaching. The team went 5-5 but they should have won 8 or 9 games. The JV team from Wurtland had lost just one game a year for 2 years. The varsity had been 6-3-1 playing pretty much the same schedule Greenup Co. played. Much of that team returned for the first year at GCHS but as said before almost all ended up quitting. BTW Wurtland had covered that huge area people talk about Greenup covering now. A coach took it on himself to recruit players from way out in the county. He drove them home every night on a bus. The coach paid for the gas himself. If you think Greenup went through a tough time Wurtland had it far, far worse. They didn't have the concentrated population of South Shore and the town of Greenup to get players. They had the town of Wurtland and areas so far out in the county that it took 45 minutes to drive there by car. That coach didn't get home until midnight every night after driving those players home all over the county. But he turned Wurtland's program around. They had gone decades without winning a game it was so bad. Bill Robinson, that coach, made Wurtland into a winning team although he actually left before they had their first winning season. Still he built the program and trained the players. He was a genius of a coach that took a better job because they offered him a bunch of money to do it. Greenup actually won a state at large championship just a few years after the school consolidated. The state put the Louisville teams in a division all their own because they were on a different level. No other teams in the state could compete with that. So they had a playoff for all the teams in the state which Greenup won. They got to play the Louisville team after that and they lost. Still it was called a state championship. So it can be done at Greenup Co.. Someone just has to make sports matter there again. The whole development program they had collapsed with the consolidation. Before elementary schools from the area played each other and it helped kids learn the game. But with consolidation that all ended. The schools were too far apart and they had consolidated too. The number of grade schools was reduced drastically. Someone can build a program at Greenup again. It won't be easy. I wish they had kept the old system myself because those rivalries drove competition and made players much better. But they aren't going back to that. I do hope they put a good team on the field again some day. Some good players have came up through the school. And many more came up through the old schools. Names like Don Gullett among many others.