Big accomplishments can come from small high schools, as Homer Hickam and his Rocket Boys from Big Creek High School in War, McDowell County, proved in winning the National Science Fair in 1960.
As alumni from Normantown High School, a like-sized, also-defunct school in Gilmer County at the other end of the state from War, gather for the Class of 1966's 50th reunion on Saturday, some will likely remember hearing their parents talk about the school's David versus Goliath championship season of 1945. The one when their 150-person student body produced a basketball team that captured the all-class state championship with a 50-49 win over Logan.
But in 1966, the tiny West Virginia high school produced a team that took top honors at an international competition in an event a bit slower-paced and lower-profile than basketball. In the process of doing so, the Normantown High team racked up a score that remains unbeaten today.
The event was the International Land and Range Judging Contest, held near Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. There, contestants determine soil types and their water absorbing properties, estimate slope and erosion potentials, and determine what crops, mechanical treatments and fertilizer applications are most appropriate for farming the land.
Contestants also pick out the best home site on the property being judged, identify rangeland plants,and determine how to best manage the rangeland for wildlife or livestock.
"Looking back, it seems like a very short time ago that we were taking this trip to Oklahoma City," said Kelley Sponaugle, one of four members of Normantown High's championship Future Farmers of America land judging team. "The one vivid memory is of the five of us (including FFA adviser and vo-ag teacher Everett "Casey" Mason) and our luggage packed in a Ford Falcon for two days each way.
"At that time it was my longest trip from Cedarville. I was amazed at the size of our country and the vast size of the cornfields of the Midwest."
Mason, who coached the land judging team, "was a wonderful teacher," recalled teammate Wesley Dobbins. "Through pure and simple hard, honest work, which he demanded, he was very successful in bringing the Normantown High School FFA chapter much recognition."
"Being his student is without a doubt the greatest educational experience in my life," Sponaugle said. "He truly believed success could be found through hard work and doing it right. Because of his encouragement, we believed we could win."
Sponaugle said Mason assembled a support team that included Soil Conservation Service staffers Junior Kennedy and Woodrow Beverage, who helped provide the Normantown FFA team with enhanced soil and conservation knowledge, and George Sharpe, a soils specialist with the WVU Extension Service, who made several trips to Gilmer County to help train the students and met the team in Oklahoma City to help its members get acquainted with the local terrain.
Dobbins, Sponaugle and teammates Kenneth Greenlief and Brock Stewart won the state land judging competition in the spring of 1965 to qualify for the trip to Oklahoma City the following spring.
"We were four country boys who had never been far from home," Dobbins said. "As we traveled, we kept seeing on the breakfast menu 'hash browns.' None of the four of us knew what they were. One morning, we decided to take a chance and order them. To our surprise, we got fried potatoes!"
"We arrived in Oklahoma City a couple days early," Sponaugle recalled. "Mr. Mason had arranged for us to practice at a local ranch and at the Oklahoma State University farms. We spent from daylight to dark looking at various soils in the area and going over study materials. Mr. Mason was a strong believer in work, so that's what we did.
"But we did go to a movie, Marilyn Monroe in 'Some Like it Hot.' That was my first trip to an indoor movie theater. The movie would probably be rated G or PG by today's standards, but we thought it was really hot and sexy."
The contest took place in a short grass prairie outside of Oklahoma City.
"The area had several large ravine-type gullies, and the soils there developed in windblown materials and were very erosive," Sponaugle recalled. "After the contest, the judges reviewed the fields with us. I remember telling Mr. Mason and Dr. Sharpe that I thought I had made a perfect score on all four fields. They both thought I was crazy, since nobody had come close to that in the 15-year history of the contest."
Teammate Brock Stewart also believed he had aced the contest, according to Sponaugle.
"At the banquet that night, I was so nervous I couldn't eat," he said. "The anticipation was intense."
The combined individual scores of the top three team members determined the team winners. The awards announcement began by naming the 10 highest-scoring individual land judges, starting with the 10th place finalist.
"By the time they got down to No. 3, none of us had been called and I thought we had blown it," Sponaugle recounted. "Then they announced Kenny Lee Greenlief from Normantown, West Virginia, at No. 3, with a score of 237 points, and finally, tied for individual high score, Brock Stewart and Kelley Sponaugle from Normantown with 240 points," both perfect scores, for the first time in contest history.
While other West Virginia FFA teams have since won the event - most recently, Tyler County High in 2011 and 2013 - the Normantown team was the first to score more than 700 points in the history of the contest, and the team score of 717 points out of a possible 720 remains the highest score in contest history.
Sponaugle went on to compete on WVU's soil judging team and pursued a career in soil science, recently retiring as assistant state conservationist for the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service.
Greenlief, who earned a master's degree in education administration at WVU and went on to become executive vice president and treasurer of Waco Oil & Gas, died in 2006.
Dobbins is a retired Braxton County elementary school principal and Stewart pursued a career in the natural gas business.
The team's victory at Oklahoma City 50 years ago "is a great example of a high school in West Virginia with fewer than 200 students doing something outstanding," said Dennis Bennett of Craigsville, president of Normantown High School Alumni Association.
Normantown High graduated its last class of seniors in 1968 and was converted into Normantown Elementary School, which in turn will be closed at the end of the current school year due to consolidation.
A 50th reunion celebration for the high school's Class of 1966 will take place Saturday at the school.
Reach Rick Steelhammer at
rsteelhammer@wvgazettemail.com,
304-348-5169 or follow @rsteelhammer on Twitter.