Mashburn’s Phoenix; Cheeks sisters; Culberson coming home
Coach Brent Mashburn and his Phoenix Basketball team
Coach Brent Mashburn’s Sonoraville boys basketball team have experienced a start to the 2017 season which has to be both pleasing and exciting to the Phoenix supporters.
It isn’t easy to have an undefeated run early in the season. As I write with limited knowledge of the happenings over the weekend I do know the Phoenix were 7-0. Any way you look at it that number is impressive; it also contains promise of great things to come.
By the time one reads these words (written Monday morning) the record will have changed. Coach Mashburn is taking his team to the long and popular Rome Christmas tourna- outstanding applause for the great early-season start. The object of any tournament is to keep winning. Should Sonoraville continue to win and Calhoun boys win today ( Wednesday) and Thursday, the Phoenix would meet Coach Vince Layson’s Calhoun Jackets in the championship game on Friday at Berry College. It would provide great excitement for Calhoun and Gordon County fans for the two teams to meet on the “big stage.”
Coach Layson’s boys have won the past two championships in this most prestigious tournament which began over 60 years ago in 1954. That first tournament was won by Pepperell. The Gold Ball is one of the most desired prizes in Northwest Georgia Athletic Competition.
Carrie and Becca Cheeks
The more recent outstanding accomplishments of Carrie Cheeks of Lee University and her sister Becca Cheeks of Reinhardt were well documented in Alex Farrer’s informative Sports Section of last Wednesday’s Calhoun Times. This is a recommendation for everyone to find those articles and read them. The two Sonoraville graduates are simply adding to their extraordinary high school career with outstanding play at the college level.
My comments today are not about their great accomplishments. The remarks are to once again say that I never hear or read about those girls without thinking of my good friend, the late James “Taft” Taylor. Taylor tragically died in November of 1966 from an automobile accident. He was proud of his several children. He would be proud of Carrie and Becca and would be their biggest supporter.
James Taylor’s family lived in a section of Gordon County East of Red Bud and North of the Pleasant Hill Baptist Church. The section was appropriately and affectionately called Taylor Town. It was settled by Carrie and Becca’s ancestors of the Taylor family in earlier years of the settlement of Gordon County. Many of James Taylor’s family still live in that community.
My friend would be proud of those two girls and other grandchildren and great- grandchil- dren.
Charlie Culberson coming home
In Northwest Georgia the news has “spread like wildfire” with great interest and excitement: Former Calhoun High outstanding baseball player and more recently of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Charlie Culberson, is coming home to Georgia.
The Atlanta Braves traded for Culberson late last week and the news was more than exciting to this old writer. Charlie Culberson was a great high school player on Coach Chip Henderson’s State Championship Calhoun Yellow Jackets back in 2005 and State Runner-Up in 2007.