The day President John F. Kennedy was shot – Friday, November 22, 1963 – Tony McConnell was in Mrs. Miller’s geometry class at Mount Holly High School when news drifted down the hallway. “We were absolutely shocked,” he says.

It also was the day of the state championship football game and McConnell, the team’s offensive guard, wasn’t sure how the afternoon itinerary should go. “But North Davidson, who we were playing for the championship, was already on the bus on the way to Mount Holly when he was shot, so they decided to go ahead and play.

“We played through the shock and the sadness and the pain, and we made it. People stuck together, and there was tremendous attendance that day at a football game, despite the tragedy on a national level. People were able to muster the energy to support a football team.”

Sports is like that sometimes. A Band-Aid to cover the outside world for a few fleeting hours.

For athletes, McConnell knows, the most important thing about sports often is the camaraderie and daily sweat that bonds teammates who don’t always care about win-loss records but play because they truly love the game.

“You get to know people really well. And you get to the point where you don’t really want praise; you have mixed feelings about it,” he says. “To be part of something with a group of people can be unifying and gratifying. I’m glad to be able to be associated with the ballplayers and the town and the people who just came out and supported us by watching us play. It was a good time, the ‘60s, the time when we grew up.”

These are some of McConnell’s favorite stories, about the games that led to his spot in the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame as a standout pitcher for the 1965 and 1966 baseball teams. The ’65 team went 10-0 in league play and finished 12-2; the ’66 team went 12-1 and advanced to the Western NC tournament final.

About a baseball game with Asheville’s Clyde Erwin High, when he pitched a no-hitter, struck out 11 and walked two in the first round of the state playoffs:

“During batting practice, we were watching them hit, and they were good ol’ mountain boys, and they were hitting the ball out of the ballpark, and we thought we were probably going to have a tough game. Either their first or second batter, I threw a curve ball and he hit the ball about a mile, but he hit it about a foot foul. The catcher, Larry Hartsell, called time out and he comes to the mound and says, ‘Leroy, your curve ball looks like a grapefruit. It’s fat, it’s slow, and it’s hanging. If you throw any more of those, they’ll kill you. But your fastball is really strong, so I’m not even going to give you a signal. Just keep throwing a fastball until they hit it.’ They never hit it. They couldn’t get the ball out of the infield the rest of the game.”

About playing for Mount Holly Hall of Fame member Delmer Wiles, who coached football and baseball. Wiles played football at Wofford College before joining the Marine Corps. He coached baseball 12 years at MHHS, going 104-48 with six conference titles:

“Baseball was spring training for football, because we had to run sprints and he got us in shape in the spring for that fall’s football season. He used to do a lot of endurance things with us, for example we’d do a fireman’s carry where you throw somebody across your shoulders and carry them all the way around the football field, and in front of the stands, so it was larger than the football field. I hated to be carried. Then you had to swap and carry your buddy all the way around.”

Did Wiles’ conditioning regimen help?

“Yeah, it did. We were in such good shape that football was a cakewalk. We liked him. He brought winning ways to Mount Holly. As long as you’re winning, people are happy.”

About his best memory, and what it’s like to look really, really small:

“I guess the best is when you’re in a really critical situation and you strike a batter out, or in football when you get a good block and somebody gets a first down or has a good run. In a South Stanley game, when we got beat, I was about 165 pounds, not too big, and here was a guy in front of me that was 6-foot-4, 240. And he wasn’t fat. He looked at me on the first down we played and said, ‘Hey, boy, I’m gonna kill you.’ And that’s what he tried to do, and I tried everything to block him. But there was a play called where we double-teamed him, and I set him up and the other guy cleaned his clock. I got up and laughed at him.”

About growing up with his best friend/ cousin/ high school and college teammate Phil White:

“We lived close together and played together, and we were closer than brothers, really. We stayed together all the way through our first three years of college, and roomed together, and finally went our separate ways.”

McConnell was given the award for Most Desire at a MHHS football banquet, presented by Wiles, and the yearbook staff named him Most Likely to Succeed. He graduated from engineering school at the University of Tulsa, then worked at nuclear plants in North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas. In his last eight years with the McGuire Nuclear Plant, he was station manager. He retired in 2002 from Duke Energy.

“I worked at one plant for 18 years, and we kept it safe. I used to say you have to have a focus that out-trumps everything else. You can’t make mistakes.

“Like that foul ball that was almost in, you can’t make a mistake.”