Sunday, March 23, 1997

A little of this, a little of that

By Bill Hart

Sports smorgasboard, while wondering whatever happened to former Roby trackman Al Gonzales:

The Texas High School Coaches Association Clinic in Fort Worth July 27-30 will have a definite Abilene flavor. Randy Allen of Cooper will coach the North All-Stars in the annual football game on July 28.

Then at the Hall of Fame luncheon on July 30, former Abilene Woodson great, Louis Kelley, will be among the inductees. Also inducted will be Larry Dippel, who played high school football at Stamford. Kelley is now the coach at Lubbock Estacado and Dippel is at Amarillo High.

Other inductees are former Odessa High coach Dub Farris, former Hamilton coach Lloyd Parker, Richard Marler, who grew up at Floydada, and Amarillo sporting goods man Jim Mitchell, who is the recipient of the distinguished service award.

Another Abilenian to be honored at the luncheon is Richard, better known as Moose, Stovall, who is to receive the Curly Hays Officials Award, named after the late Abilene referee.

The teams for the all-star football and basketball games will be announced later. One of the footballers will be a Cooper player, yet to be selected, because the Cougars made it to the state finals, which gives a school an athlete automatically. Others from this area will probably be selected, too.

The other all-star football coach is Alan Weddell of LaMarque, while Goree Johnson of Dallas Kimball will handle the North basketball duties and Phil Eaton of Humble will coach the South...

-- Former McMurry basketball standout Rick Penny recently was asked to resign as Cypress-Fairbanks basketball coach, which rankled some people in the Houston area.

True, Rick's teams didn't win as many games as some parents reportedly wanted, but they didn't take into consideration that the talented athletes went to Cypress Falls, a new school in the district. The request for his job came after the school had its best record under Penny, 14-16.

Penny, who had coached at the school for five years, "resigned after receiving some anonymous phone calls and letters," but he plans to remain in coaching and would like to come back to this area. He got his head coaching start at Stamford.

A Houston sports writer said one of the reasons Penny was ousted was because of parents' pressure on the school principal. After one of the wins against Cypress Creek in a district game, a parent went to an administrator and complained because ol' sonny boy didn't get to play enough....

-- Talk about a dedicated coach. Jodi Gillespie, the girls softball coach at Stephenville High School, gave birth to a daughter, Chelsea, on March 3, two days after Jodi had coached the team in a tournament at Brownwood. Three games after the delivery, she was back at her coaching duties.

This was the second year in a row that she has had a child during the softball season. She's married to Joseph Gillespie, also a coach at Stephenville and her father-in-law is Joe Gillespie, a former coach at McMurry and Tarleton....

-- Amber Cooper, who played on the Angelo State women's basketball team this past season, has been diagnosed with throat and mouth cancer after a growth was found on her tongue.

She is currently in an Austin hospital, and her family doesn't have insurance to cover the medical bills, so donations may be made to the ASU Athletic Dept. by calling (915) 942-2264.

-- Darrell Tully, a longtime coaching legend in South Texas, died recently, but did you know that he graduated from high school at Eastland?

He played in the first coaching school all-star game in 1935, then spent most of his coaching career at Houston Spring Branch where he later served as athletic director....