Danny Hoard "Big "D"

The high school sports world lost a great fan last week. Dan Newton Hoard passed away at his home in Jackson surrounded by his loved ones. This is really not a place for an article like this, but Big “D” was a special person. He loved sports and he loved to see kids make it to the big time. I don’t know of any one who pulled for the Red Devils more than him.

On top of that he ribbed me every time I got around him about how I was shot in Vietnam, but we won’t go there. You will have to wait until you see Danny again or maybe Herman Waits, because he is the nut that started that joke. Herman, it really didn’t happen that way.

His obituary talked about his athletic achievements, but they did not tell you about the three region championships he helped bring back to Jackson as a player and a coach.

Back in the 1970’s the Jaycees started a basketball league. This was the idea of the Macon Jaycees, because they had an all state football and basketball superstar who would play for them. They were going to have a single elimination tournament and Danny got up a team from Jackson. Of course as things turned out the Macon team lost their second game to a team from Jones County, so the single elimination went to a double elimination tournament. It has been so long ago I really don’t remember everyone who played, but I do remember Danny Hoard, Charles Daniel, Mike Wise, Seabie Maddox and others on our team.

Any way we went down to Macon to take on this once defeated team. The superstar scored 23 points in the first half and they were beating us. This did not set well with Danny and he let us know about it at half time. As you all know, Danny stuttered and it took him the whole half to tell us that we would go to a box in one defense with Charles Daniel playing the super star one on one. The superstar did not score in the second half and we won the game and went on to win the tournament and the Region 18 Jaycee Championship. We did this again for the next two years and we never lost a game during those tournaments.

Thanks Danny for the memories and thanks for being a friend to us all. You will be missed! Rest in peace brother!

Mike Wise