Carrollton High School officially closed its doors in 2006. It meant an end to the football legacy of the Carrollton High Indians. For 69-year-old Lewis Williams, it was like losing family.
“They were the Indians and that was my team.”
Williams served as the team’s official statistician starting back in 1962. Every time there was first-down, pass, fumble, rush and punt—he jotted it down. His love for football and the Indians started early
“Ever since I got big enough to even go to the games, and I just fell in love with them. All the other kids would be playing ball up behind the fence, I’d be watching the ball game. You know, I didn’t care nothing about that playing. I came to watch it – the game, not to play. If I wanted to play, I could play at home, you know. When I went to a game, I was dead serious.”
Williams can discuss decades’ worth of the Indians’ games from memory, all the way to his final day at Carrollton High in 1995. That includes the team’s state championships in 1974 and 1994 under late head coach Billy McGee.
Those memories include 1974, when the Indians overwhelmed the Zion Chapel High School Rebels from Coffee County 33-6. The Indians’ second state championship win came two decades after a 5-5 season in 1994. That’s when they managed to thwart the Addison High School Bulldogs from Winston County 21-14.
“I never dreamed I’d ever see Carrollton win a state championship. Winning that first one was really sweet, then come back 20 years later and win the second one after the year we’d had.”
Fans who could take their off the field might have seen William’s dedication in action, jotting down stats as fast as the players made them, play after play. .
“I’d take off running down the other end of the field, you know, when they came up to the line, so I’d be there wherever the guy caught the ball or a punt. Now if it got blocked, I had to depend on help or something from the other players about who did it or whatever happened, you know.”
Working from the sideline, Williams’s efforts were far from anonymous. The players knew he was there and what he was doing counted…
“Even still now, when I go out, older players that played back in them days remembered that I got their names in the paper, you know, and they’re always hollering at me, talking to me, and I don’t even have a clue who they are, you know. But they knew I kept up with their record and I was responsible for getting their names in the paper. They all appreciated that.”
Today, the Carrollton High Indians are a West Alabama memory. In Williams’s case, those who represented the team will forever remain family.
“We was like a family, really. I enjoyed being around them, they enjoyed being around me, and we’d carry on and pull jokes on each other. And it was just fun.”
And all captured in the stats on his beloved Indians.