4/7/23
By Kevin Taylor
Alma Schools
It’s hard to place value on a coaching staff.
But for about 20 years (the late 1980s through the late-2000s), Alma track coach Tom McMurray had it pretty good.
It’s equally as hard (maybe more) to put your brand on a program without a lot of dedicated athletes, too.
Thursday, with several former athletes cheering him on, Alma school officials rewarded McMurray for his effort by naming the Alma Intermediate School Track in his honor before the Leonard Daniel Relays.
By the time the spring of 2004 rolled around, things had fallen into place for McMurray and the Airedales...
Only, right before the state meet, no one seemed to notice.
In the spring of 2004, Alma won the first of three state track championships during a remarkable six-year reign that brought the program two runner-up finishes as well (2006 and 2008)...
Alma won back-to-back state track titles in 2004-05 and another in 2009. But the ‘04 group was special.
“That’s the first time we had won the conference since ‘93,” McMurray said.
A week later, as Alma athletes were milling around the hotel lobby the morning of the state meet, they scanned a copy of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper. They couldn’t find their name.
“No one really thought we had a chance,” McMurray said. “There was an article about the state meet being in Hot Springs and they listed all the schools that were favored, and we didn’t even sniff it. That kind of ticked the kids off a little bit.
“We get to going, and to be honest, I think we only won one event that day, but everything else was second, third, fourth, fifth… we were getting points in the field events, and I think Dexter (Pendergraft) even scored in the field events that year.”
By 2004, McMurray had figured out how to score points - especially from those kids who didn’t win but would place somewhere between fourth and eighth place.
"In the very beginning, we only scored six places, and it wasn't until '04 that they started scoring in eight places," McMurray said. "You had to get your points where you could get them up to that point. You had to put your studs out there the best could, if you had any, and if not you just tried to grab points the best you could.”
Back in 2004, McMurray didn’t just field a track team, he had an army of kids who may not break records but would score points.
“He took a few scrubs from Alma and built a legacy of greatness in each one of us,” Pendergraft said.
“That year is when I figured out this guy is going to be able to get us some points,” McMurray said. “We’re not going to win with him, but he’s going to be able to get us some points. That’s how, for better or worse, we stole that state championship.”
Alma scored well in the field events that day, was surprisingly strong in the distance races, and won the 4x800 relay. “That was probably our lowest point total for winning the state meet,” McMurray said.
Alma began to build its program with good coaches, too.
“Len Hall and David Hale, we knew that if we were ever going to compete on the state level, we were going to have to be good in the field events and have middle and long-distance runners - because we weren’t going to be the sprint capital of the world.
“David came up with a system for throwers that helped us develop some pretty good throwers.”
It wasn’t always a perfect system. But in the late 2000s, McMurray’s athletes knew how the point system worked, too.
“I was a bigger guy and I threw the shot and discus, and I was joking with coach Coach Mac about finding me another event so that I could try and get a couple more points each meet,” recalls John White, a two-sport standout in track and football. “In (typical) Coach Mac fashion he replied, ‘White, I guess I can saw down one of the light poles and let you pole vault.’
“I love Coach Mac and what he did for Alma, and what he did for me as an individual.”
White’s brother, Jordan, set the school record in the 12-pound shot put (60 feet, 10 inches) in mid-May of 2011 at the Meet of Champs.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
By the early 2000s, Tom McMurray had built a powerful program that included kids who couldn’t wait to be on the track... those who competed for him revere him to this very day.
“Coach Mac is the most influential teacher, coach, and mentor in my life,” Pendergraft said. “He held me accountable, spoke life into me, was always there, and pushed me to be great. I would not be who I am today without him.”
“My three years, my sophomore, junior and senior year, were all different in their unique way,” recalls former long-distance runner Brooks Blanton.
“My sophomore year (2008), we were in it (state meet) until the end with Magnolia; whoever won the 4X8(00) was going to win state,” Blanton explained. “Well, they beat us. We were crushed and really dejected. Coach Mac walked over and said, ‘Well, you did your best, now go over there and shake their hand.
“The next year, we won state, and he said the same thing after the last event - go shake their hand. That still sticks with me today. He always acted classy, no matter what. I took that with me.”
“He was an amazing track coach with an eye for athletes,” recalls Jesse Pennington, a former Airedale lineman, and discus and shot put thrower. “Most of us weren’t even planning to join (track). Coach Mac and Coach Hale came up to me in the seventh grade and was like, ‘I think you’d do well in track, so come on,’ and the next thing you knew you were on the team and winning meets.”
Through it all, McMurray’s steadfast leadership kept everyone engaged.
“He could relate to every kid on the team,” Blanton said. “You didn’t realize that until later in life.”
“Coach Mac is easily one of the greatest men I’ve ever known in my entire life,” V.C. Winters. “It’s difficult to sum up, (but) we never saw him have a bad day, and even if he was having a bad day, he wouldn’t bring it up.”
‘Gentle toughness’
The late David Hale is among a handful of coaches to come through Alma’s program both as a player and a coach. And, though he was beloved by those around him, he and former thrower Jesse Pennington weren’t always on the same page.
“I was a bit of a perfectionist when it came to my shot put form,” Pennington said. “If everything didn’t go perfectly I would get aggravated.”
“David was tough but it was a gentle toughness,” McMurray said. “Jesse Pennington, I don’t know how many times he would quit. He would say, ‘I just can’t go with Coach Hale anymore!’ I would say, Jesse, I’ll see you tomorrow!”
“Coach Hale wouldn’t let you quit and walk away, which now that I’m older, I’m extremely grateful for,” Pennington said. “But every time I would get frustrated with Coach Hale, Coach Mac would somehow be up by the shot ring instead of down on the track - like he could sense something was going down.
“I would be all worked up, but Coach Mac was always cool as a cucumber. He did the same thing when coaching football. You would get all worked up and somehow he would get you to match his cool energy and calm you down long enough to realize you were being a little unreasonable.”
With help from Hale and Hall, Alma set five school records in the field events between 2007-11 that still stand today. In fact, by the time McMurray retired in 2014, Alma had broken 21 school records - 13 of which still stand today.
The Airedales had a run of great throwers during a 10-year stretch between 2004-14, which included V.C. Winters, Deshun Whitby, Michael Phan, Biagio Tumminello, and the White brothers, Jordan and John.
They won with vaulters, too. In 2006, Jared Brooks broke Alma’s pole vault record with a leap of 13 feet, six inches.
Brent Sams demolished that mark a year later by two feet (15-8).
Sharing the love
Like Darren Simmons before him (a speedy receiver in football and track sprinter), McMurray learned to work with other coaches when it came to meshing with spring sports.
The aforementioned Pendergraft was a fleet-a-foot center fielder for Brooks Witherspoon’s Airedale baseball team and a sprinter for McMurray.
But he couldn’t do both at once.
“When you have a kid working in both sports, I’m going to give him the option - if both sports fall on the same day,” McMurray said. “Our rule was that if it was a regular (season) game and home meet, we’d do the home meet.”
In 2004, Witherspoon told Pendergraft to go to the conference track meet - and he missed the state tournament.
“Because I had only qualified for state in the relay and 200, I had to use the conference meet to qualify for the 100, 400, long jump, and triple jump,” Pendergraft said.
“If it wasn’t for Brooks, we probably wouldn’t have won the district meet,” McMurray said. “The state baseball tournament started the week we started conference, and that first day we were competing, we had a baseball game. Brooks said Dexter had a better chance at winning conference than we did at winning the baseball game. He let Dexter compete in the conference track meet.
Darren Simmons
McMurray replaced longtime Alma coach Jim Funderberg as the school’s track coach in 1987. “Mr. Dyer (former Alma Superintendent) elevated me to track and Brooks (Witherspoon) to coach baseball,” McMurray said.
By the early ‘90s, some of McMurray’s former junior high players started to take shape, headlined by Darren Simmons.
“His sophomore year, you could see he was going to be someone we could build around,” McMurray said. “Then his junior year, he became ineligible which set us back. When he got back his senior year, that’s the first time we won the conference championship.”
Simmons was McMurray’s first great track athlete.
“He was a good hurdler and a good sprinter, and a pretty good football player,” McMurray said. “He was beating everybody in the 110 hurdles except Russellville’s Shannon Sidney (‘93 state champ).”
Simmons might have been one of the first greats, but he wouldn’t be the last.
The bigger impact, say those who competed for him, was the way he treated people.
“When we lost Dustin Chitwood (accident), coach Mac sat us down and addressed us,” added Winters. “He was like a father figure.”
“One year we were at conference and the first day we didn’t do very well,” Blanton added. “I think we had won seven straight conference titles. He (McMurray) wasn’t big on speeches, but we got on the bus and he told us to quit slacking off. The next day we came out and just killed it.”