Todd Smith, who coached the school’s boys’ teams to seven district titles in 16 years, is back coaching basketball at Montrose.

Smith was appointed as the head girls’ basketball coach during a June 12 school board meeting.

During recent seasons, Smith has been active coaching youth girls’ basketball and has two daughters that figure to be among his players in future seasons.

“I heard about it,” Smith said. “I thought about it and talked to my kids about it because the reasons I got out were all about my kids.”

Smith decided to pursue the job. He does not expect there to be a lot of difference in how he coaches in his return.

“It’s all fundamentals,” Smith said. “Even when I went back down and coached fifth and sixth grade, it was all about fundamentals. I think that’s the lacking part of our program right now.

“It’s fundamentals and defense. You have to play good defense, get the fundamentals down and get good shots. If you do that, I think you’ll be successful.”

Smith got a look at his players in two summer league games a week after being appointed.

Todd Smith replaces Al Smith, who coached the Lady Meteors to the 2012 Class 2A state semifinals. The team has slipped in recent seasons, going a combined 12-12 in division play and 15-29 overall in the last two seasons after winning its most recent Lackawanna League Division 4 title in 2015.

SCHOLAR-ATHLETES

Montrose senior Owen Brewer was named Male Scholar-Athlete of the Year by the Lackawanna Interscholastic Athletic Association.

The LIAA honored one senior boy and girl from each member school with its scholar-athlete program and chose two overall athletes from the entire league.

Lakeland’s Brooke Estadt was honored as the Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year.

Brewer, who plans to run at the Rochester Institute of Technology, has been a key runner on four straight unbeaten Lackawanna Track Conference Division 4 championship teams and two straight unbeaten Lackawanna League cross country teams.

As a senior, Brewer finished 13th in the state in Class A cross country. He finished third individually while helping the Meteors to the District 2 Class A team title.

In track season, Brewer finished fourth in District 2 Class 2A in the 3200-meter run and was a member of the third-place 3200 relay team.

Brewer also swam for Elk Lake as part of the cooperative sponsorship of the sport.

The top student-athletes from each of the other Susquehanna County schools were: Blue Ridge, Isabella Cosmello, Corbin French; Elk Lake, Justine Johns, Ben Woolcock; Forest City: Heather Agentovich, Jared Paulin; Montrose: Emily Stankiewicz, Brewer; Mountain View: Cailin Burney, Matthew Lavin; and Susquehanna, Jessica Lamb, Evan Haley.

EDITOR’S NOTE

Because of an early deadline for the Graduation Issue, the Field of Dreams high school baseball all-star game will be covered in next week’s issue.

TOM ROBINSON writes a weekly local sports column for the Susquehanna County Transcript. He can be reached online at RobbyTR@aol.com or followed on Twitter at @tomjrobinson.

NASCAR'S FIRST BIG BACKER

Pictured (L-R) are: Raymond Parks, mechanic Red Vogt, and 1949 NASCAR champ Red Byron. (Jimmy Mosteller Collection)

NASCAR Hall of Fame member Raymond Parks played a major role in NASCAR's formative years.

Today and in the recent past, NASCAR and its teams have had to rely on multi-million dollar sponsors in order to promote a race or field a car. In the early years there were very few sponsors, as we now call them. There would be a service station here and there, or a tire company, that would contribute. That was about it.

Racing money was scarce.

Bill France Sr. is credited with getting the organization off the ground and into the mainstream of American life, but without Raymond Parks, France might never have succeeded.

It was Parks' money that helped sustain the fledgling sport in the late 1940s and early '50s.

Born in Dawson County, Georgia, on June 5, 1914, Parks was the oldest of 16 children. Just 10 when his mother Leila died, his father Alfred married her sister Ila and bore another 10 kids to the family. They lived in Dawsonville, Georgia until he was two, and then moved to Brown’s Bridge Road in nearby Hall County.

“Daddy Operated ‘Five Mile Store’ (because it was five miles from Gainesville),” Raymond’s sister Lucille Shirley said. “As far as I know, the old home place and store remain there today. Other than farming and general stores, the mountains didn’t have much to offer.”

Unless you were in the whiskey business, which Raymond wasn’t…until he began his new life working at a still near Winder, Georgia for Walter Day.

“I met Walter Day in the Hall County jail,” Parks said. “I had gone up the road to get my daddy something to drink, but instead I got three months. If I had told them I was 14, I wouldn’t have been locked up. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I stuck to my story of being older.”

So with a little help from a hometown judge, within a year Raymond went from errand boy to whiskey maker.

 While making whiskey, Raymond earned enough money to buy two vehicles – a 1929 Chevrolet and a 1926 Ford T-Model.

“My uncle had a garage in Atlanta, and I decided to go to work for him,” said Parks. “I didn’t know how to get there from Winder, but he had left me directions to Sears Roebuck on Ponce de Leon Avenue, the most direct route. From there, I followed him to the station in my Ford. I went back later for my Chevy.”

Uncle Miller’s Garage, known as Northside Auto Service and gas station, known as Hemphill Service Station, were at Hemphill and Kontz Avenues (now Atlantic Drive) in northwest Atlanta. Raymond bought half interest in the business.

“The work was hard but honest,” Raymond joked.

However, come nighttime, the enterprising 16-year-old had his personal graveyard shift.

“I would head to Dawsonville right after we locked up, load 60 gallons in my T-Model, come back through Tate, Georgia on Highway 5,” he said. “At the creek I’d wash the dirt and mud off so not to attract attention, then drive to Marietta and blend with any morning traffic into Atlanta.”

By 1938 he expanded his ventures to include the “novelty” business, which included the placement of such things as pool tables, jukeboxes and cigarette machines throughout the metro area.

In November of 1938, Raymond went to his first race…because his cousin, Lloyd Seay of Dawsonville, talked him into it.

“He kept hanging around the station, pestering me about taking a car to Lakewood Fairgrounds,” he said. “I paid my friend Red Vogt to fix one up over at his garage on Spring Street (in Atlanta). I had never been to a race. If Lloyd had lost that day, I doubt I would have stayed in it.”

Famous entrants included all three of the former winners at Daytona; Smokey Purser, Dan Murphy and Bill France, Sr. Weyman Milam, open wheel racer, future flagman and later organizer of the National Stock Car Racing Association, also drove that day. His brother Bill Milam entered another car driven by Roy Hall.

The Atlanta paper noted that Lloyd Seay won the race and that this was his “first real oval dirt track experience.” Shortened because of darkness and due to inexperienced scorers, no one knew who finished second. The consensus put Joie Chitwood, then France, Murphy and Hall all finishing behind the popular Seay.

Raymond Parks’ racing career as car owner had ignited like a torch. He kept that first stock car trophy in his office until he died.

Roy Hall and Lloyd Seay scored more wins on the 1941 AAA stock car circuit than any other drivers. Combined victories included wins at the beach course, Langhorne and Allentown, Pennsylvania, and High Point, North Carolina. Roy finished ahead in points over Walt Keiper, Joe Purser and Bill France, Sr.

Raymond served in Europe during World War II and was honored for his bravery on the battlefield during the Battle of the Bulge..

With the war over, Bill France, Sr. and Raymond Parks renewed their friendship and a common alliance…stock car racing. The two had become acquainted through mutual friend Red Vogt years before.

Vogt and France had known each other when they were both mechanics in their hometown of Washington, D.C.  However, stability improved when Parks turned to Robert “Red” Byron.

As for Parks and Red Byron, the two found their work ethics a mutual constant. With parallel goals and the same age, they were en route to take the sport to the next level.

Bill France decided to try something different in 1949. Calling it NASCAR’s Strictly Stock division, the class evolved into the Grand Nationals, then eventually the Winston Cup Series, and into the present-day Monster Cup Series.

Driving a new “Parks” 1949 Oldsmobile 88, Red Byron beat out runner-up Lee Petty in the points title.  Included was Byron’s final win at Daytona Beach, and Raymond Parks’ fourth and final national championship.

It was time to put out the torch.

“Raymond asked me once if I knew how to create a small fortune,” Georgia Automobile Racing Hall of Fame Association (GARHOFA) member Grady Rogers said. “Then he told me, ‘you take a huge fortune and go racing.’”

“There were several of us (car owners) pumping money into the sport. I know it benefited racing, but I didn’t want to go broke,” he added with a laugh.

Once during the 1947 season, his drivers were quoted as saying they knew he had over $20,000 invested just halfway through the season.

“You can look at this through rose-colored glasses, but Bill France Sr. was about as unfinancially secure as most of the other stock car drivers of that early era,” said GARHOFA member Charlie Cross. “His personality and ambition carried him. I remember after one race he borrowed a couple of tires from my dad just so he could drive back home. But he brought an identity and management to the sport. Raymond Parks brought him first class race cars and a wallet. When Parks walked away from the game, Bill France and NASCAR were okay.”

Mr. Parks passed away on June 20, 2010.

You may contact the Racing Reporter at: hodges@race500.com.