Big stage: Contest at Calhoun 35 years ago was a game changer

Feb. 28—The word "family" often comes up in team sports to describe a culture of success.

For the two area teams competing in the state basketball tournament today in Birmingham, the word "family" means a lot more.

Shane Childress is the Clements girls coach. His daughters Leah and Josie are two of the nine players on the team. Kelley Childress, Shane's wife and Leah and Josie's mother, is an assistant coach.

Terrie Nelson is the Priceville girls coach. Her daughter Carly Jo is on the team. Terrie's sister, Jeaniece Slater, is an assistant coach.

When you talk about Nelson and Slater, the family ties in basketball go deep. Their father, the late Larry Slater, and Jeaniece were involved in one of the most memorable girls championship games in this state's history.

It's been almost 35 years since Larry Slater coached his Pell City team to a 77-76 win over Hartselle for the Class 5A state championship. Jeaniece Slater was Hartselle's star player.

"We were just talking about that," Terrie Nelson said Monday before her team boarded a bus to Birmingham. "Jeaniece told my girls that the last time she participated in a state championship was against our dad."

The bizarre circumstances of that game brought a lot of attention across the state and gave girls basketball a needed publicity boost. The attention helped give the girls championships an elevated presence that eventually placed them on the same stage as the boys.

According to the Alabama High School Athletic Association, Alabama was the first state to adopt a high school basketball championship format that brings both girls and boys teams for all classifications to one site.

The AHSAA began sponsoring basketball state championships in 1922. It started as one class, expanded to two in 1948 and grew to four in 1964. In 1985, the format went to six and then seven in 2015.

Girls high school basketball in Alabama started, stopped and then restarted. In the 1940s, the state board of education shut it down completely. Some board members thought the game was not fit for females. The 1972 Title IX law brought it back. The game returned with a championship format in 1978 with the first title games played at Huntsville High. Calhoun hosted from 1986-92.

Larry Slater grew up playing basketball in Cotaco. After serving in the Army, he settled in Hartselle. He became a strong advocate for girls basketball when his oldest daughter Jeaniece wanted to play. He coached her AAU team to the national tournament.

The draw to coaching grew so strong that Slater got his teaching degree. He coached at Lawrence County and then landed at Pell City as one of the first coaches in the state dedicated to just girls basketball.

Slater was divorced from his daughters' mother. The girls lived with her in Hartselle. Jeaniece became a star on the basketball court for the Tigers. In her senior season in 1988, she was named the state's first Miss Basketball and the state's Gatorade Player of the Year.

The state playoff bracket for Class 5A happened to be laid out so that the only way Hartselle and Pell City could meet would be in the state championship game. That's exactly how it worked out.

A packed house of 4,000 filled Calhoun's Kelley Gymnasium on March 12, 1988, to see which Slater would go home a state champion.

"I was a ninth-grader that year and chose to be a cheerleader instead of playing basketball," Nelson said. "I was at Calhoun sitting on my sister's side and cheering against my dad's team."

The crowd expected a great game and did not leave disappointed. They saw a classic. Hartselle led by as many as 12 points in the third quarter. Pell City mounted a comeback and tied the game at 74-74 with 32 seconds left to play. Hartselle scored with 17 seconds left to make it 76-74. Pell City answered with star player Tonya Tice hitting a 3-point shot with three seconds left to win it, 77-76.

"I have to admit I was absolutely devastated for Jeaniece," Nelson said. "It was her senior year and last chance at a state championship. I was really mad at my dad."

"As I got older and moved into coaching I understood that my dad had a job to do. He had a lot of girls depending on him."

The success at Pell City worked to help Slater become the women's coach at Wallace State in Hanceville. Eventually, the girls state tournament moved from Calhoun to Wallace — and Jacksonville, too — before landing in Birmingham to be part of the basketball state finals.

"It was a great moment for my Dad," Jeaniece Slater said. "He was a great basketball coach. It was what he needed to give him a platform to promote the sport as a head coach at Wallace State."

Nelson's Priceville Bulldogs take the floor at 3 p.m. today in the Class 4A semifinals. Unlike it was 35 years ago, the girls from Priceville will be playing on the biggest basketball stage in the state.

Larry Slater was inducted into the Morgan County Sports Hall of Fame in 2016. Upon his induction, Slater looked back at the significance of that game at Calhoun.

"There's no doubt that game was a launching pad for girls basketball in the state," Slater said. "It's amazing how far the girls game has come. I've seen things happen that I never could have imagined."

— david.elwell@decaturdaily.com or 256-340-2395. Twitter @DD_DavidElwell.