What a difference a year makes. As 2003 winds down and 2004 gets cranked up, its become a natural point to look forward to what lies just over the horizon and also think back on what has shaped the last year.
A year ago, our sports department had one wooden desk, wedged against a printing machine in our very cramped old offices. Chris Silcox was the Sports Editor for our sole publication, the Seymour Herald. Chris had his hands full covering Seymour High and King’s Academy and the local college sports. Terry Smith was providing us with his outside view and the mysterious figure, Austin Rey was providing NASCAR coverage. The sports were three, sometimes four black and white pages towards the back of the paper.
Since then the expansions of the desk has been but one small change for us in 2003. We now have a row of sports desks and our own filing space. The addition of the Smoky Mountain Herald widened our coverage in April to include SCHS, Pigeon Forge and G-P. Somehow we ended up with our own separate section of the paper with two color pages. Our sports staff has grown and shrunk and grown again, and while a writer is never truly satisfied with any final product (that’s why we love erasers and the delete key) there hasn’t been a single week that I couldn’t smile and nod that once again we’d managed to get someone to every game we possibly could. Of course Terry picked up an award or two for his insights and the world was shocked when Buck Buckholtz finally raised his hand and admitted that he was in fact Austin Rey. Of course in doing so, he got talked in to writing a weekly racing column as well as his coverage of the men who drive very fast in a circle.
2003 has been a journey of changes for me as well. Having left sports management in the big cities behind for a slower-paced East Tennessee existence, I survived a whole 19 months before the calling got to be to much and I found myself once again making my schedules around trips to one sporting event or another. But then I found a lot more enjoyment out of watching teenagers play the game for their school and for fun rather than worrying about sponsors, contracts and dealing with the prima donnas who seem to multiply like cockroaches the farther up the professional sporting worlds ladder you look.
2003 saw a lot of hopes and dreams realized, though no one brought home any state titles, we saw some tremendous efforts and plays as our teams tried to get there.
Just as the weather was finally beginning to warm up Seymour and Sevier Co. High had their girls basketball teams in Murfreesboro for the state tournament. Brooke Johnson drained two free throws to get Seymour to the final four, but the Lady Eagles ran into a Martin Westview squad on a hot shooting night and fell one game short of the finals.
A few weeks later Spring Fling rolled athletes from across the county to the Spring Fling in Memphis. Who will ever forget Aaron Lambert’s seventh inning walk-off, game winning, grand slam home run against Greenbrier that took the Eagle’s to the state semi-finals? Or that all through the soccer season G-P and Pigeon Forge were waging a region and district war that carried over into the tournaments? That Pigeon Forge won the last of their four meetings to collect the school’s first region title plaque just added flavor to a rivalry that promises to be just as dramatic this spring. Local fans were ready to follow those two clubs to Memphis but were shocked when both lost their sub state games just 18 hours apart in the rainy spring.
Speaking of rain, parents at Pigeon Forge will surely long remember the flood waters that rose up and covered the baseball diamond in the middle of the district tournament, forcing the organizers to move the second round games and finals to Jefferson County and eliminating the home-field advantage for the Tigers. Looking to this spring, the Lady Tiger softball team will have a distinct advantage over the boys of summer; their new field sits on much higher ground than the baseball complex.
Seymour’s outfield got a slightly new look with the removal of the old football bleachers for the larger, modern seating over the summer months. Which leads us into football season.
Fulton ended up losing one game again this season, but it in the regular season to A-E instead of the championship game. Seymour gave the Falcons their toughest fight of the post season with a running game and hard hitting defense that had the Eagles ranked in the top five. Long will the stories be told of Seymour’s first win where Scott Thomas changed the game against Sevier Co. with his 88- yard fumble return, but just as resounding was the story of the last win against Kingston where Daniel Miles field goal attempt hit the cross-bar and bounced through to get SHS to the second round.
Pigeon Forge was the close game victim this season and was left to wonder along with any fan who saw the play, what might have been had the earth’s magnetic field not strangely shifted and bent the goal line three yards out of place just as the Tigers brought down the Sullivan North back for what should have been an overtime road winning stop.
Sevier Co. is left to wonder about the fate of fumbles inside the twenty. Their season started and ended with freakish fumbles returned for scores that reversed momentum of those games.
Then G-P, who dominated inside their region, they piled up yards and points only to have non-district teams find the kill-switch on their running game. The first round loss went down as one of the strangest upsets of the season.
It’s been a season of great thrills and high fives, a season of tears and hugs for what might have been, a year of cramped desks and a year of spacious comfort. The year we moved, the year we grew, the year things changed and the year that things really stayed the same. The year that started with anticipation and ended with the sports editor having a bit too much egg-nog before writing his last inside view of 2003.
Overdoses of eggnog on the verge of expiring always has made me a sentimental sports guy.

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