by Christian Malone
He was undoubtably a coaching legend, to the folks in Valdosta and those around the state who knew about Valdosta High football.
Even now, over 33 years after he coached his final game, he inspires awe in those who knew him, those who saw him coach, and those who know just how good his teams were.
His name was Wright Bazemore, and he built a high school football team into a juggernaut.
His coaching ability and knowledge of the game were good enough to coach at the college level, and possibly the pros, but his heart was in Valdosta and the teams of teenagers he coached year after year.
He used to tell his players, “Always play to win.” His teams did just that — 268 times.
Bazemore was a head coach for 28 seasons. Half of them ended with his Wildcats winning a state championship.
When he took over the Valdosta program in 1941, the Wildcats had just won their first state championship, under Bobby Hooks (who’d hired Bazemore away from Waycross to be an assistant coach). Valdosta had a good, respectable program when Bazemore arrived. When he retired in 1971, the Wildcats were the country’s preeminent high school football program.
He dominated in the pre-integration era, and then once Georgia schools were forced to integrate, he openly welcomed black players to his team — and dominated even more.
In 2004, Florida State coach Bobby Bowden spoke of Bazemore with reverence and awe at an FCA banquet in Valdosta — high praise, considering Bowden is Division I college football’s winningest coach.
Bazemore coached Valdosta in 1941 and 1942, posting a 15-4-1 record, then spent three years in the Navy during World War II. Local folklore claims that he spent many a night on watch drawing up football plays and formations, getting ready for his return to the VHS sideline.
Once he got back to Valdosta in 1946, he really started winning. He won state championships in 1947, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1956, and 1957. Had those been the only state championships Valdosta won, it would still have more titles than all but a few schools. There was a lot more winning to come, of course.
In the summer of 1960, Bazemore was elected to the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame, the first coach ever to be elected while still active. It was a great honor, and one Bazemore had certainly earned, but there was irony in it: his best years were still yet to come.
From 1960 to 1971, Bazemore’s final 12 seasons, the Wildcats put together a run that may never be equaled by a Georgia prep football team. Eight state championships, three national championships, and numerous All-Americans and Division I signees.
Valdosta won back-to-back-to-back state championships from 1960-62, and the school’s first national championship in 1962. The Wildcats came back with consecutive titles in 1965 and 1966, then Bazemore finished his coaching career with state titles in three of his last four seasons (1968, 1969, 1971).
His 1969 team was chosen national champions after a season in which its defense posted 11 shutouts and allowed just seven points in its first 12 games.
In 2002, his 1971 team was selected the state’s greatest post-integration football team by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and those who saw it would have a hard time disagreeing with that.
That 1971 football team may have been the best Valdosta team ever, and maybe the best Georgia high school football team ever. Their defense was excellent, but it was their offense that made the headlines. That offense was a wide-open passing attack that was well ahead of its time. All-American wide receiver Stan Rome had 1,573 yards receiving that year, a state record that no one came within 300 yards of for 29 years, and quarterback Stan Bounds’ mark of 2,785 yards passing wasn’t surpassed for 18 years. This despite the first-teamers usually being taken out long before the game was over, because Valdosta was winning so badly.
The team’s closest game was a 42-21 victory over Moultrie. In the state championship game, the Wildcats defeated Avondale 62-12, even though Bazemore pulled his starters early in the second quarter. Had he left the starters in, the score really could have been ugly. His third string played most of the second half.
While many believe the 1971 team was Bazemore’s finest, it also was his last. He had reached the mountaintop many times — he pretty much owned that mountaintop — and there was nothing he could do that he hadn’t already done. He was ready to move on, and despite the pleas of his adopted hometown, he retired from football, still only 55 years old.
Valdosta would later try to bring him back, and both Lowndes and Valdosta State made attempts to get him. But he spent the next seven years as VHS athletic director, then went into full retirement.
But while he didn’t come back to coach, he did the next best thing. In 1974, he brought Nick Hyder to Valdosta to be the new football coach. Hyder became the second Valdosta coaching legend, and sustained the program’s greatness for over two more decades.
Today, the state of Georgia plays some of the best high school football in the country. And arguably no man has played a bigger part in that than Wright Bazemore. He raised the bar so high that it took years for anyone else to come close to it. Bazemore’s Valdosta teams set the standard for success in high school football in the state of Georgia.
His supporters will also point out that Bazemore didn’t just develop good football teams and good football players. He developed good young men.
“I used to come down to Valdosta occasionally, and I’d see him at Park Avenue Methodist Church,” the late Wally Colson, a former Atlanta-area attorney and a defensive end for Valdosta and the University of Florida in the 1960’s, told The Valdosta Daily Times in 2000. “He’d say, ‘Look at you, Colson, a lawyer.’ He was more proud of that than he was of anything I did playing for him.”
He was a disciplinarian, and very demanding of his players. But he got the best out of his players, and more often than not, he molded them into one of the best teams in the state. Most of the men who played for him loved him dearly, and maintain the utmost respect for him to this day.
He remains a legend to this day. In 1999, the Atlanta Touchdown Club began giving a coach of the year award. They named it the Wright Bazemore Award.
In 1996, Cleveland Field was renamed Cleveland Field at Bazemore-Hyder Stadium.
In 2001, the inaugural class of the Georgia Athletic Coaches Association Hall of Fame was announced. To no one’s surprise, Wright Bazemore was one of the members of the first class of inductees.
In 1998, the last football season of Bazemore’s life, his beloved Valdosta Wildcats sent him out the right way: with a state championship.
To this day, Valdosta follows those words of his every time they take the field: “Always play to win.”
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