Managers:

Terry Hollis

Harold Boswell

Ronnie Johnson

Eddie Rhyne

Jimmy Hoffman

Bucky Holland

Johnny McNamara

(Note:  parentheses indicate additional years played on conference champs)     

1964 Roster

Jimmy Bailey (65)   

Buddy Guin    

Ken Jones        

Gene Thompson     

Bruce Bolick          

Tony McConnell (65,66)    

Larry Hartsell (65,66)   

Jimmy Cook (65,66)     

Buddy Hart          

Tommy McConnell      

Bill Neely (65,66,67)

Harold Moore (65,66)

Jimmy Wilson            

Dewayne Moore (65,66)      

Blair Smith             

Mike Shelby (65,66)         

Steve Hansel (65,66,67)   

Jimmy Blackmon (65,66,67)    

Larry Horton (65)                            

Jerry Luckey   

Phil White (65,66)

Dean Auten (65)

Steve McCotter (65)

To the time when the Beatles were changing America’s music scene.

When the Vietnam War was in full force, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, the first Chevy Camaro and Ford Mustang hit the streets, Ozzie & Harriet were on TV and Roberto Clemente was showing the world how to play right field and win a dozen Golden Gloves.

In Mount Holly in the mid-1960s, 47 kids – 44 players and three managers – took that era and made it their own.

They played baseball for Coach Delmer Wiles, a Marine Corp. veteran, and formed unbreakable friendships while showing that nobody owned a baseball diamond like the Mount Holly High School Hawks.

The boys of 1964 through 1967 won 40 of 50 games, four consecutive Little 6 Conference championships, four-of-seven state tournament games and a roster spot in the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame. They continued the work of the 1950s teams, who were conference champs in 1954, 1955, 1957 and 1958. MHHS also won in 1971 and 1972.

“They set the bar high and expected every player to give his best every day,” says Eddie Wilson, a three-year starter from 1966-68. “The ’66 team was by far the best group of guys you could ask to play with.”

In 1964, with Buddy Guin on the mound and strong bats from shortstop Bruce Bolick, catcher Larry Hartsell, infielders Steve McCotter, Tommy McConnell and Buddy Hart, and outfielders Dean Auten, Phil White and Mike Shelby, the Hawks went 8-2 in the regular season and beat T.C. Robertson 8-6 in the playoffs’ first round. They lost 6-5 in the second round to East Wilkes after leading 5-1.

Tony Leroy McConnell (he goes by either name) and Dewayne Moore were the top pitchers in 1965 as the team went 10-0 in league play behind hitting from Jimmy Cook, Jimmy Blackmon, Tommy Foster, Hartsell, McCotter, Shelby, Auten and White and split two non-conference games with Hunter Huss. McConnell pitched a no-hit 2-0 victory over Clyde Erwin High in the first round of the playoffs, relying on his signature fastball. “I had no idea how fast I could throw. They didn’t clock it back then,” he says, “but I was fast enough to be slightly ahead of most high school baseball players. There was an article written about me and Dewayne Moore; they called us the Hawks’ M&M boys. We were a good combination.”

After the Erwin win, he says, “Coach Wiles thought I was the greatest thing since sliced bread, so he pitched me in the next game with only two days’ rest, and the ball felt like a grapefruit and we lost. He took me out about the fourth inning and Dewayne shut them out the rest of the way, but were already too far behind.”

“We knew how to get ‘em out,” Hartsell says, of catching McConnell. “I would make a target, and he would hit it. We played against these guys regular until we got to the playoffs, so we knew these guys in the regular season and he knew how to pitch them. I didn’t have to do anything but give him a target. Tony had the hard stuff, and Dewayne had the big curve.”

With McConnell and Moore handling pitching, and Bill Neely, Steve Hansel and Eddie Wilson joining the seniors as team leaders, Mount Holly had another 10-0 regular season in 1966 and won its first two post-season games. They lost 2-0 to North Davidson to end their season 12-1 after advancing to the Western NC finals, the furthest a MHHS team had gone since 1954, when the school was 1A state runners-up.