Hughes to be honored at Colquitt-Valdosta game

Published 1:25 pm Monday, October 23, 2023

MOULTRIE — Forty years ago, the Colquitt County school system hired Jim Hughes away from rival Thomasville High to become the head coach of its football team.

The Packers had won just 19 games over the previous five seasons — and just five over the previous two — and had never won a state championship nor played for one since 1963.

But Hughes would helm the Colquitt County program for the next 17 seasons, leading the Packers to a state runner-up finish in 1991 and a state Class AAAA championship in 1994.

He retired after the 1999 season with 140 wins at Colquitt County and is still the winningest coach in Packer history.

To commemorate the beginning his successful tenure in Moultrie, a number of his former assistant coaches have come together to bring Hughes back on Friday to Mack Tharpe Stadium, site of his signature accomplishment: the 24-10 victory over Valdosta in the 1994 Class AAAA state championship game.

A number of those coaches and their wives will meet in the Booster Club parking lot behind the field house at 6 p.m. Friday for some tail-gating before the Packers’ Region 1-7A game against, appropriately, Valdosta.

Hughes, wife Lillian, and a number of Packer coaches and their wives who were instrumental in those 17 seasons will be introduced on the field between the first and second quarters.

While the recognition clearly highlights the career of a man who has been inducted into the Thomas County Sports Hall of Fame in 1999, the Colquitt County Sports Hall of Fame in 2000, the Georgia Athletic Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2009 and Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 2014, Hughes clearly is enjoying the opportunity to spend some time with the assistants who played large roles in his success.

“I’m very flattered that the community is recognizing some of the coaches who helped turn this program around and get it on solid footing in the 1990s,” he said.

“I’m delighted to be in that group.”

And if Colquitt County can knock off Valdosta, it will serve to remind fans how successful his Packers were against the Wildcats in the 1990s.

In the last seven years of his career, the Packers and Wildcats met 10 times. Colquitt won nine of them, including the 1994 state championship game.

The Packers defeated the Wildcats twice in both the 1994 and 1997 seasons.

Hughes had a history with the Packers before he came to Moultrie in 1983.

He had been the head coach at Thomasville for 13 seasons and had won state championships in 1973 and 1974.

Among his more notable players while he was the head coach of the Bulldogs were future Secretary of Defense Gen. Lloyd Austin and future outstanding NFL players William Andrews and Guy McIntyre.

He had had some success against the Packers, going 11-2 in 13 meetings with program 25 miles to the north.

And the Bulldogs had just finished 7-4 when he agreed to come to Moultrie in the spring of 1983.

He brought four of his Thomasville assistant coaches — Brent Brock, Tim Kelshaw, Cliff Kerbo and Neil Roberts — with him to Colquitt County and they were crucial in turning the Packers program around.

“They were the nucleus of the staff for a number of years,” Hughes said.

James Stancil, Mike Horne and John Pilcher remained from Bill McCall’s final staff.

Stancil, a former Moultrie High fullback, continued on the Colquitt County staff throughout Hughes’s tenure.

“I had coached against him when he was a player and when he was coach,” said Hughes, who clearly relishes his professional and personal ties to Stancil. “He was right there by me the next 17 years.”

Two of Stancil’s sons — James III and Reggie — became outstanding players for the Packers and followed their father and their high school head coach into the Colquitt County Sports Hall of Fame.

Another coach Hughes inherited when he came to Moultrie was Roy Saturday, who led the eighth-grade football program for many years.

“I don’t think there was anyone who supported me more than Roy Saturday,” he said.

The Packers, who were 2-8 in 1982, won their first game of the Hughes era, defeating Westover High at Hugh Mills Stadium 27-13 in the 1983 season-opener.

The Packers went on to finish 4-6, but the groundwork had been laid for the resurgence of the program.

In 1984, Colquitt went 9-2-1 and produced the most wins since the 1975 team went 9-1.

That 1975 Packers team had been famously voted out of a playoff berth by the region principals after Moultrie, Thomasville and Valdosta each finished 9-1 that season.

The Packers only loss had been to the Hughes-coached Thomasville Bulldogs.

Among the leaders on the 1984 Packers team were quarterback Darrell Funderburk, who returned several years later to joined the coaching staff at his alma mater, Nate Lewis and T.J. Edwards.

All three went on to be inducted into the Colquitt County Sports Hall of Fame.

In 1991, with Hughes’s son Parks as the quarterback, the Packers, 7-3 in the regular season, got on a roll in the playoffs, winning at Tift County, Warner Robins, Bradwell Institute and Marietta before playing host to LaGrange at Mack Tharpe Stadium for the Class AAAA state championship.

The Grangers got a field goal with three seconds remaining to win 17-16, but Colquitt County had established itself as one of the the top programs in the state’s highest classification.

The 1991 team’s coaching staff included Brock, Kelshaw, Roberts, Stancil, Funderburk, Steve McDiffitt, Don Jarrett, Mike Singletary and Randy Gay.

But Brock left after the season to become the head coach at Worth County and Kelshaw and Roberts joined him in Sylvester.

The 1992 staff included Stancil, Funderburk, Singletary, Jimmy Francis, Tony Kirkland, John Redmond, Scott Rider, Max Milligan, Tom Martin and Keith Hall.

In 1994, the Packers went 15-0 and won the Class AAAA state championship.

For the second time in four years, the state championship game was played in front of the Packer faithful and this time they were rewarded with a 23-10 victory over Valdosta.

It was the second time the Packers defeated the Nick Hyder-coached Wildcats that season.

That season, Kevin Giddens joined the staff that also included Funderburk, Redmond, Stancil, Singletary, Francis, Kirkland, Rider and Keith Hall. Shannon Dean was the trainer.

One of the key players on the 1994 state championship team was defensive back Dextra Polite, who returned to coach at Colquitt County after Hughes had retired.

“I knew if I had stayed, I wanted him,” Hughes said.

Hughes coached the Packers for five more seasons, retiring after the Packers went 11-2 in 1999.

Singletary was named to replace him.

Funderburk was not the only former Packer player who returned to coach under Hughes. So did Ben Wiggins, currently the Colquitt County Superintendent of Schools, Darius Dawson and Daniel Dalton.

“We were always pleased when we could get any of those guys to come and work with us,” Hughes said.

“I think of those guys and what contributions they have made to the community. They have become so significant in the school system and have become great resources for Colquitt County.”

Roberts had played for Hughes at Thomasville High, as had Robin Hines, who coached at Colquitt County in the mid-1980s before going on to a head coaching career and, ultimately to become the current executive director of the Georgia High School Association.

Hughes said he was especially pleased at how many of his former assistants will attend and how many of their wives will join them.

“Lillian trained a lot of young wives over those 17 years,” Hughes joked.