WILLIAM'S WINNING WONDERS

WILLIAMS' WINNING WONDERS
The '64-'65 Dublin High Boys Basketball Team

Add caption

Minton Williams announced that this would be his last season at Dublin High School.  As a young man in the early fifties, Williams was a top-notch basketball and football player at the University of Georgia.  Coach Williams, one of the most widely loved and respected coaches in Dublin High School history, had accepted an offer to become the athletic director and coach at Mark Smith High School in Macon.  In his eleven years in Dublin, he elevated the Irish football and basketball programs to the top of the state.  Williams coached the Dublin Irish football team to back to back State 1-A championships in 1959 and 1960.    Williams's success with the football team led to the construction of the Shamrock Bowl in 1962, still one of the finest stadiums in this part of Georgia.  The Irish players responded to their community-wide support with another state championship in 1963, the third in five years.  His last football team won ten straight before losing 7 to 0 to Cairo High School.  During his tenure as coach,  Williams' teams won fifty seven games while losing only nine and recording  three ties.

Minton Williams came to Dublin in 1954.  His first assignment was the girl's basketball team.  Williams inherited a team that was winless in 1953.  From 1960 on, the Irish were at the top of their region.  Tom Perry, one of Dublin's greatest basketball players, a high school All-American and a collegiate star at Auburn, led the 1964 team.  

Coach Williams’ last season at Dublin High was not expected to be his best.  Only two players, Charlie Harpe and Brant New, returned from the 1964 squad.   Both players saw limited action playing on the second team.   The main players in 1965 were Charlie Harpe, Lawrence Hall, Brant New, Vic Belote, Larry Harrison, and John Strickland.  Other players that year were Johnny Smyth, Jep Craig, Marcy Chambless, Earl Snipes, Mike Norman, Robbie Hahn, and Buddy Jones.  Sammy McLeod was the hustling manager of the team.   The boys lost their first three games in February.  Everything seemed to be falling apart.  The Irish slipped from the high ranking of earlier in the season.

Coach Williams announced his resignation on February 11 at the Touchdown Club Jamboree, which featured guest speaker and the new coach of the Georgia Bulldogs, Vince Dooley.  Coach Williams's last home game was set for Saturday night, the day before Valentine's day.  The players rose to the task - "win this one for Coach Williams!”  And win they did.  Center Charlie Harpe led the Irish with 47 points in defeating Wilkinson County by a score of 104 to 51. The Irish fell one point short of the all time team scoring record.  On Feb. 4, 1964, Tom Perry led with the Irish with 51 points in a 105 to 67 victory over the Cochran Royals. That scoring record stood until one of Coach Ron Riley's teams scored 113 points nearly a decade and a half later. The Irish ended the regular season with a 16 and 8 record.

The Dublin boys defeated Waycross, Jesup, and Ware County to capture the sub region championship.  Dublin defeated Thomasville to advance to the region finals.  In the 1-AA championship game the Irish had the difficult task of playing region rival Cairo.  By a score of 43 to 25, the Irish lost to Cairo in a poorly played game.  Despite the loss, the Irish got a break in the playoff bracketing avoiding the # 1 team from Newton County.  

The scene shifted to Alexander Memorial Coliseum in Atlanta.  In the first round of the playoffs, the Irish used a shuffle offense and a tough man-to-man defense to defeat Troup County by a score of 40 to 33.  Tucker High School was next.  Dublin’s defeat of Tucker by one point to capture the 1963 state football championship, created a strong intra-state rivalry.  The score was close during the entire game.  Center Charlie Harpe led the way with 26 points in a three point victory, with the final score of 59 to 56.  It was the first time that a Williams coached Irish team had won the second round of the state finals.  Charlie Harpe ran his season point total, including the playoffs, to 619, tying Tom Perry for the school season record.

Cass High School, on a high after defeating the powerful Newton High, was the opponent in the third and semi-final game.  The Irish played their vaunted slow-down offense in the first half.  In the second half,  Harpe, New, and Hall led the team as they pulled away from Cass.  The final score was 62 to 52.

The Irish made it, all the way to the state finals.  The team, with only two returning players, had defeated several of the Georgia's highest ranked teams.  Only their old nemeses, the Cairo Syrupmakers, stood in the way of a state championship.  The game was big, real big.  To this eight year old boy sitting in the upper levels, it was the biggest game I had ever seen.  It was Coach Williams's last game.  One more chance to defeat Cairo.  It was not the best game the team ever played.  The Syrupmakers were just too tough for the Irishmen.  The game ended with the final score: Cairo 52, Dublin 31.  

Charlie Harpe and Brant New were named to the Class AA All Star team.  Charlie Harpe, at six foot seven inches tall,  was a big man for his era.  Cairo's big man in the middle was named the most valuable player of the state tournament.  He was better known as a football player with the great Georgia Bulldog teams of the late sixties and the legendary Miami Dolphin teams of the seventies.  That young man was the celebrated Bill Stanfill.  (LEFT) 

The young Irish players came home that night with their heads  high.  The team with the big heart had gone as far as any Dublin High School basketball team had ever gone and would ever go in the playoffs. They played their hearts out for Coach Williams.   All of Dublin was proud of them, the last of Williams's Wonders. They just couldn't beat Cairo.  Lest you Dublin High fans get to bragging too much, the Irish lost two games that year to another team.  That team, a member of the supposed lowly Class C,  played a little closer to home.  They were the Dudley Cardinals, who defeated Dublin by two points at the Dublin gym and by twenty points at the Cardinal's gym in Dudley.