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Smith, Thrash take top honors

By Lew Gilliland
The Times-Journal

Published April 3, 2009

There was a time last winter when the 2008-09 high school basketball season was starting to look like a lost cause for the Fort Payne boys.

The Wildcats had lost seven in a row to fall six games below .500. Scoring was a major issue, which meant Fort Payne had little room for error in other departments. In no way did the Cats look like a team capable of hanging around long once the playoffs arrived.

“We kind of got to the point where we said we needed to step it up,” senior forward Blake Smith said. “After that, we won something like five or six games against the hardest teams on our schedule. It showed me the heart everybody had. It will stick with me.”

With Smith leading the way, Fort Payne rallied to win eight of its last 10 games, claim area regular-season and tournament championships and advance to the Northeast Regional Tournament for the third time in team history.

For his efforts, Smith was selected Times-Journal’s 2008-09 DeKalb County Player of the Year. Fyffe’s Neal Thrash, who led the Red Devils to their best season in more than two decades, is Times-Journal’s Coach of the Year.

Smith averaged 21.7 points, eight rebounds and three steals for game for a club that finished 16-16. He scored 1,161 points for his two-year varsity career and had five games with 30 or more points this season.

Those totals included 34 points in a sub-region victory over Boaz, 32 against Arab in the area tournament championship game and a school-record 40 in a senior night win over Huntsville.

But, it’s what Fort Payne accomplished as a team that Smith is most proud of.

“We could have crumbled, and we fought back,” he said. “Not many people believed in us. Coach [Anthony] Reid talked to us and said it has to be us. After we started winning, we said, ‘We can do this.’ We got it going and didn’t need anyone to tell us we were doing well. It was kind of a team unity thing we had going on.”

Reid praised his standout, who was selected second team all-state by the Alabama Sports Writers Association.

“He meant a lot to us because he did a lot of different things,” the coach said. “He could score inside, shoot the 3-pointers. He could rebound, and he could handle the basketball.

“He was the go-to guy, the guy who got the big rebound, the guy who got the clutch basket when we needed it. He’s a winner. When we were 7-13 and it looked like things were really going south on us, he stepped up his game and got us going in the right direction.”

Coach of the Year

Thrash knew this could be a special season for the Red Devils.

Fyffe entered the campaign with five returning starters from a team that closed with 10 wins in its final 13 games in 2007-08.

“We had high expectation going in because we had everybody coming back,” Thrash said. “We fell short on a couple of our goals, such as winning the county tournament. As far as winning the area and getting to Jacksonville, those were also goals that we set and reached.”

The Red Devils finished 22-7, won area regular-season and tournament crowns and reached the Class 2A Northeast Regional Tournament championship game. It was the deepest Fyffe had ever advanced in the playoffs under the current format.

Fyffe rose to No. 2 in the state rankings at one point and showed plenty of grit in the postseason.

The Red Devils defeated Ider by two points in an area tournament semifinal, beat Geraldine in overtime in a sub-region game and rallied from 17 points back to down Vincent in a regional semifinal.

Thrash said the keys to Fyffe’s success included “our team play, our unselfishness, the willingness to sell out and play defense.”

The Red Devils will take a graduation hit in May, but with all-county selections Jesse Martin and Taylor Thrash coming back, the Red Devils could be strong again next winter.

“We lost five very valuable seniors … but we have a good nucleus returning,” Neal Thrash said.

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