The town of Collinwood has been gearing up for months for a special celebration. This year marked 50 YEARS of Collinwood High School Trojan Football under the Friday night lights! The 50-Year Celebration coincided with this year’s Homecoming festivities, including a special Homecoming Parade featuring past and present players, cheerleaders, and supporters.
The first Collinwood Trojan Football Coach, Andy Hindman, has been instrumental in preparing the 50-Year Celebration, which brought back together many CHS alumni, including football team members from the early years up until the present. Coach Hindman’s book, “This is a Football,” chronicles the football program at Collinwood from the very beginning.
David Glovach, Sports Writer for the Florence Times Daily, recently did a special piece on Collinwood’s “Golden Jubilee,” the 50-Year Celebration. He accurately describes the town of Collinwood and Pat Brewer Stadium in the beginning paragraphs:
Pick any of the four roads that ultimately lead into — or out of — town. The lights, the assumption is, can be seen from miles away.
It might be a fairly accurate theory.
They sit atop what is essentially a bowl carved into the earth. It’s here, just across the parking lot from the entrance of Collinwood High School, the Trojans’ football field sits, nestled neatly at the bottom.
Before the stadium — named after former Wayne County Superintendent Pat Brewer who pushed for it to be built — hosted its first game in 1980, the area was covered in trees. It might best be described as an unusable piece of land that was essentially a ditch. Those practices in the mid to late ’70s took place in a cow pasture behind the school. Games on the baseball field.
“It’s not a big town. … There are a lot of schools that come from bigger cities to play against Collinwood,” former Trojans coach Michael Statom told Coach Andy Hindman.
“They think they are driving to the middle of nowhere.”
And nowhere is essentially where the football program at Collinwood began.
There were two failed attempts before the third, and finally successful one, to start up a football program at Collinwood. Before 1974, there were only two sports for boys at Collinwood, basketball and baseball. Some believed that a football program just wasn’t worth the time and trouble.
A group who ended up being the founding members of the Collinwood Quarterback Club, John D. Strickling, Odell Harper, Ancil Balentine, Billy Wade Lay, and Johnny Smith got together and started talking about what was needed to get a football program started.
There was equipment to get, uniforms to purchase, a schedule to make, and most importantly, the Trojans had to find a coach willing to take on the challenge. That might have been the most difficult part.
“I would go up to UT Martin with a friend of mine and we would ask around to see what kind of interest we could find for a coach,” Larry Wright, a member of the Collinwood Quarterback Club, told Hindman. “They would ask what kind of team we had and we said we didn’t have one. As soon as we said, ‘start a program’ that was pretty much the end of the conversation. Nobody wanted to start a program.”
Someone eventually did. And that someone was Andy Hindman. The rest, as they say, is history.
Tryouts were scheduled for August 8 and there was still the matter of whether Collinwood would have enough players show up. The school had 360 students, less than half were boys. Seventy-five showed up for the first week. Thirty-three were listed on the first roster. Eighteen ended up playing in games.
“The practices were very long and tough,” Gary Victory, a quarterback/defensive back from 1974-77, told Hindman. “… Not everyone could make it.”
It was an uncomfortable adjustment for the players. Many had never played football, let alone know what an organized practice was like or how to run plays. Learning how to react took time and there wasn’t always a lot of it.
It wasn’t uncommon for players to skip practice to go home to help haul hay, feed, or chop wood, whatever was required to help around the farm. Others had trouble getting to and from school due to the distance.
The 1974 Trojans lost their first eight games before beating Loretto 12-8. Junior Daniel rushed for 78 yards on five carries, Greg Risner had 58 rushing yards on 14 touches. Joe Ray tallied 12 tackles.
“I don’t think any of us knew what we were doing, and we were probably a major challenge to the patience of Coach Hindman,” Bill Sinclair, an offensive/defensive lineman from 1974-77, said in Hindman’s book. And that was okay.
The Trojans have made the TSSAA Class 1A playoffs 26 times since that first year starting in 1985, including most recently in 2020. In 1987, Darrin Ward was named the 1A Mr. Football. Blake Luker won the 2001 1A lineman of the year. Jonathan Ward was the 2002 1A back of the year.
All things that wouldn’t have been possible without that 1974 team.
“That first team, they probably had an ounce more courage than they had fear,” Hindman said. “And they sure showed it.”
“So, next time you drive through Collinwood on a Friday, look for those lights. They might not be hard to miss.”
