There was a time in Gaston County when young teenage boys from poor mill villages gathered on street corners after school. There we waited for a truck or a van or Coach Bennie Cunningham’s big station wagon to pick us up for football practice. We jostled and joked about our athletic skills, sometimes in the cold rain, usually not so well-clothed for the elements. We never complained. Cold and rain were minor barriers for boys like us. We just wanted to play football.
We packed ourselves into the arriving vehicles for our ride to the practice fields near Groves Threads on Ozark Avenue. Coaches Earl Groves and Joe Eller greeted and organized us for two hours of grueling practice. Every minute was planned and executed with precision. Coaches Lander Barnhill and Phil Stone ensured that we were properly equipped and focused on the work at hand. Coach Cunningham weighed us after practice and put those of us over the weight limit, which always included me, through additional physical torture. We loved it. We were playing for the YBMC Little Orangemen and on our way to another championship year.
Three years ago, a group of former players came together to organize an event to honor Coach Groves for his incredible accomplishments during his tenure as head coach of the YBMC Little Orangemen. On a memorable night at the Gaston County Conference Center, hundreds of former players and fans turned out for a program primarily organized by Phil Cherry and Art Shoemaker, two men who know how to plan and execute big events.
Not long after that night, Coach Groves and Steve Culbertson, a star halfback on the 1960 team, visited Art Shoemaker in his office in Mount Holly. Art had worked for Groves Threads and had also coached the Orangemen. Coach Groves told Art that he had written a book about his time as head coach of the YBMC football teams. He showed Art a thick sheaf of handwritten pages and asked Art if he could help turn the material into a book. Art suggested that he bring those pages to me, and he did.
For the past two years, as my schedule permitted, I have carefully edited the book. I have tried to be true to the voice of Coach Groves, expressing his thoughts in his words. The book is now in print and available at Amazon as a paperback and for download to Kindle devices. It’s called The Little Orangemen, An Account of the Most Dominant Football Team in America, 1959 – 1968.
During those years, the Orangemen teams won 121 games and lost just three. Most of the victories were lopsided affairs with YBMC outscoring their opponents by huge margins. Each of the three losses was by a single point. The teams’ records were amazing:
- 10 straight league championships in one of the toughest leagues in America
- 9 straight North Carolina State Championships
- 8 Bowl Victories
- 3 National and World Championships
As I read and edited the book there were four great superstars who stood out. Steve Culbertson, with whom I played, was the first truly great star halfback leading the 1960 team to a World Championship. Two years later, the great Billy Owensby broke all of Steve’s records, leading the 1962 team to a second World Championship. Later, Wade Frye emerged as one of the finest quarterbacks in the history of Pop Warner football. And finally, Mike Lineberger was the only player to clearly dominate and star for two consecutive seasons, 1967 and 1968. In the ’68 season, Mike played alongside quarterback Rufus Crawford who went on to play pro football and might have achieved superstar prominence for YB had Mike not already established himself as a profoundly gifted runner.
There were many other exceptional players during this ten-year period as the newspaper accounts of the games attest. Coach Groves laments the fact that the down linemen who made the blocks for the star running backs got little credit in the press. Great defensive players, like star linebacker Jim Cozart, were often mentioned for their efforts, but little detail is provided regarding the bone-crushing tackles and exceptional plays they made. The truth is that virtually every player for the Orangemen was a star at his position, did his job with great precision, and committed himself to excellence. This was the way of the Little Orangemen.
If you read Coach Groves’ book, you’ll come across the names of many men in the community who have led successful lives, too many to name in this column, but it’s clear that these business and community leaders were shaped by good experiences early in life, and most probably by the time they played for Coach Groves.
Earl Groves was a highly successful person. Soon after graduating first in his class at Davidson College, he faced the challenge of his father’s untimely death and took charge of the family business, Groves Threads, driving its growth and profits. He was a leader in the local business community and in local government, including serving as mayor of Gastonia. He was an accomplished turkey hunter and wrote two books on the subject. He helped coach local high school football teams and even coached at Wake Forest and Duke University. But his proudest memories were of his days as head coach of the YBMC Little Orangemen teams.
He ends his book with these words: “What a team!!! Who can ever forget the great YBMC Little Orangemen? They live in my heart forever.”
As a former player I speak for many when I say without doubt that Coach Earl Groves lives in our hearts still, and we are all grateful that we had the privilege of playing for the amazing Little Orangemen.
