Bill Carlyle can look back on an over 70-year involvement in the game of basketball, first as a player and later as a high school and college coach.

Just a few of his many career achievements include leading an underdog small town girls’ high school basketball team to become Tennessee’s State Championship team. He would go on to take a small college team to a Top 20 NCAA Division II level before turning the then young Walters State Community College basketball team into a formidable force.

During his more than 50-year college coaching career, Bill Carlyle has earned Tennessee’s coach of the year honors four times and is listed on five different Halls of Fame. He has met all the criteria at becoming an authentic living legend in his field and his work continues in the lives of his athletes. An involvement in sports is an important asset to a young person’s future life and success. A sports team creates an extended family which often lasts through a lifetime, along with building a stronger frame to carry throughout life.

We recently had a visit with Coach Carlyle, along with his wife Marcia, and Vicki Hodge Overholt, who had played on the Maury Lady Hornets State Championship girls’ basketball team. During our visit we would hear about the 60th reunion of that team which will be held at Kodak’s Chop House Restaurant on Friday July 10 at 1 p.m. We would hear the story of the 6’ 6” Coach Bill Carlyle, who at 86, is still in fine form.

Born at Mosheim in 1939, Bill was one of Robert and Libby Dixon’s three daughters and three sons. After two years of playing basketball, baseball and track at Bulls Gap High School, he would move to the then-Morristown High School to continue his athletics and graduate in 1958. His high school scoring record of 777 points would lead him to Cumberland Junior College where he would score another 668 points and on to Kentucky Wesleyan College, where he would score 47 points in one game and would be listed as the school’s top 50 athletes in 100 years.

While at Wesleyan he and a friend kept an eye open for incoming new girls, but that would end when young Marcia Lacy appeared.

Marcia was the daughter of Dr. Clint and Helen Mary Lacy and was one of their two sons and two daughters. She had been attending the University of Alabama where she had developed mononucleosis and had come to Kentucky to recover and take some classes before returning to Alabama. Bill would become smitten with Marcia and upon his graduation would take a coaching job at Sacramento, Kentucky, to stay closer to Marcia. They would be married while Bill was coaching in Kentucky.

That would be followed by Bill returning for a year at Bulls Gap before accepting a job at Maury High School in Dandridge. Arriving at Maury he would learn that he would be coaching both boys and girls teams. At the time a boys’ team included five players on the floor, while a girls’ team would feature three girls playing offense on half the court, with three other girls playing defense on the other half.

“I didn’t know anything about girls’ drills, so I gave them the same work as the boys,” he would tell. “When the girls mentioned the drills, I just told them that they wanted to win, didn’t they?”

Back in 1966 Maury High School served the then-smaller town of Dandridge and would have around 70 students in a graduating class. Even with their limited numbers, Maury had been producing a competitive Lady Hornets girls basketball team. Their 1961 and ’62 teams had made it to the state tournaments where they would compete against the powerhouse schools across the state. From 1963 through 1965 the team would lose a few games before being beaten in district or regional tournaments.

Upon his arrival at Maury in 1966, Bill would have a team consisting of players Jeannie Batson, Verolyn Gann, Peggy Hurst, Brenda McCoig, Jill Hodge, Carol Russell, Teresa Denton, Ella Hodgson, Ellen Smith, Pat Newman, Jane Hill, Margie Rutherford, Carol Russell and manager Jean Blackburn. Carlyle had attacked his new situation of coaching girls by rigorously getting them into physical shape along with pounding them with the game’s fundamentals. Although somewhat shorter in stature than many of the larger schools, the Lady Hornets were ready for the season to begin.

The girls would face a hardfought season with many close games often against tough and taller girls and would continue through the district and regional tournaments without a loss. That would place the Lady Hornets into the State Tournament at Murfreesboro where the Maury girls would warm up in a showy manner to the song “Sweet Georgia Brown.” After getting off to a bad start at the Lewisburg game, Maury would be behind 19 points at halftime, but would fight back to win the game 60-49 with Jane Hill scoring 43 points.

The next game would be against Sparta where Maury would never be behind in points and would win that game 55-41. In the following game Maury would go up against a Maplewood team that boasted a 28-game winning streak. The Maury girls would play a flawless game on both sides of the court with Jane Hill’s jump shot winning the game 43-41 with one second on the clock.

On the final night of the tournament, Maury would go up against a Friendsville team that had earlier beaten them in a Christmas tournament. With every player doing their part well and shooting only good shots and holding the ball during the second half led to Maury winning the game with the score 52-47. Friendsville’s star forward Julie Endsley had pumped in 27 points but Maury guard Jill Hodge had thrown her off her game during the last quarter. Maury’s balanced scoring would include Margie Rutherford’s 21 points and Jane Hill’s 20 points to win the game 48-43 where Hill would soon be named as the tournament’s Most Valuable Player.

Maury was now Tennessee’s 1966 girls’ high school state championship team. Bill Carlyle had done a premier job during his first year of ever coaching a girls’ basketball team. An enormous celebration would follow the Maury win with a state trooper escorting the team to Four-Way Inn where a parade of Maury supporters would take the team on in to Dandridge to a crowd of 4,000 welcoming the team back in the gym. A long-standing sign would note the team’s accomplishment.

Coach Carlyle would send the 1967 team back to the State Championship game leaving Dandridge a reputation as a girls’ basketball powerhouse. With the coming of a new Jefferson County High School, the historic Maury High School building is now a middle school. Bill would move on following that second year on his way to becoming a truly legendary basketball coach.

A job at East Tennessee State University in 1967 would find Bill serving as an assistant basketball coach where he and the other assistant would rotate each year at coaching the junior varsity teams. During that time, he and Marcia would become the parents of daughter Amy, who would later be married to Chuck James. The experience at ETSU would land Bill the job as head coach at Iowa’s Parsons College, where he would serve for three years and where daughter Lisa, now married to Kenneth Holt, would be born. Both daughters would go on to play basketball at Morristown-Hamblen West High School.

An offer from Oklahoma State would find the Carlyle’s moving again. After four years and experiencing tornados, Bill would be offered a job by Walters State Community College President Dr. Jack Campbell, which would see Bill returning to his homeland. He would serve at Walters State as the head basketball coach for 28 years, where he would build the school’s basketball team into a formidable group. Following his retirement, he would be rehired for a further 22 years as part-time coach.

Finally retiring in 2023, Bill could finally spend some time hunting and fishing, along with his growing family and keeping in contact with his former athletes. The Carlyle’s dote on their grandchildren Molly, Colt, Branson, Sara Grace, Will, and a new greatgrandson Lawson.

During his more than 50 years of coaching and as a later assistant coach Bill would win more than 1,300 games and would see the winning of 20 or more games in 32 seasons with only two losing seasons. He has collected enough state and national awards to cover a wall.

Bill’s advice to a new coach would be to “get everybody’s attention and do it the hard way, then to continue focus on the fundamentals of the game from the first day and on throughout the season, and finally to get the team to like you and each other.”