The Courant helps decide a water cooler bet involving happy meals

I enjoy receiving questions from The Courant’s readers, and “Steve” e-mailed me an outstanding sports-related question earlier this week.

Steve said that he has a couple of “happy meals” riding on a water cooler bet with one of his buddies and jokingly hoped that I’d be able to “help feed the kids.”

He wanted to know the answer to the following question: What Evergreen/Hillcrest football coach led the Aggies/Jaguars to the playoffs more times?

Many readers will probably be surprised to learn that Evergreen High School only made the state playoffs once in football. (With that said, readers should keep in mind that the state football playoffs as we have them today didn’t get their start until the 1966 season.)

The only season that Evergreen appeared in the playoffs was in 1979, and Guy Sawyer was Evergreen’s head coach that season. Evergreen went 7-4 that season and won the area title, including a monumental 16-14 win over T.R. Miller that is still talked about today. The Aggies lost to Jackson in the opening round of the playoffs, and Jackson went on to tie Colbert County, 0-0, in the 3A state championship game that year. (This was in the days before overtime play like we have today.)

Hillcrest has been to the playoffs eight times since its first football season in 1989. The Jags went twice under H.L. Watson in 1990 and 1991. They went once in 1995 under Dennis Anderson.

They went four years in a row under Arlton Hudson in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002. Under current head coach, Larry Boykin, the Jags have been once, that is, last year, the 2010 season.

The Jags have never been past the second round, but I look for that to change under Boykin.

In the end, the answer to Steve’s question is Arlton Hudson. Hudson coached at Hillcrest from 1999 to 2005 and posted an overall record of 37-38. His 2000 team was probably his best, going 9-3 overall and blasting Eufaula in the opening round of the playoffs.

(If you have a good sports-related question you’d like me to look into, e-mail it to me at courantsports@earthlink.net.)