Athletes and coaches who led their teams to 12 state championships in football, basketball, baseball, golf and gymnastics headline the 2024 list of inductees into the Big Country Athletic Hall of Fame.
The 23rd annual Big Country Athletic Hall of Fame induction banquet will be held April 29 at 6:30 p.m. at the Abilene Convention Center. The Big Country Athletic Hall of Fame is a 501c3 non-profit organization, and the banquet is the primary source of funding for not only the operation of the museum but also the scholarship program. The Hall of Fame has awarded more than $130,000 in college scholarships since 2012 to graduating Big Country student athletes.
Tickets are now on sale. Individual tickets are $75 each or $1,000 for a table of eight. Tickets can also be ordered online at bigcountryhalloffame.org or e-mail museum@bigcountryhalloffame.org. For more information, call (325) 704-1759. The Big Country Athletic Hall of Fame museum is open seven days a week in the Mall of Abilene.
Former Abilene Cooper football and baseball standout Cory Aldridge, former Colorado City Wallace and Cisco College basketball standout Frank Biggers, former Eastland and University of Iowa quarterback Jay Hess, former Abilene Wylie girls basketball player Peyton Little Decker, former Cooper gymnastics coach Jim McKinney and former Abilene High gymnastics coach Bob Sanderson will be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
They will be joined by the Estes family as the Legacy Award recipient. They contributed to five state championships for the Abilene Independent School District for over five decades in football, golf and baseball.
This year’s two Bill Hart Memorial Legend recipients both made their mark in baseball – former Major League outfielder Debs Garms (deceased) from Bangs and former Abilene High baseball standout Robert Carothers.
Here is a brief bio on the 2024 Big Country Athletic Hall of Fame class:
- Cory Aldridge was an outfielder for the Cooper baseball team and a tight end on the Cougars’ state runner-up football team in 1996. He enjoyed a remarkable 18-year career playing professional baseball from 1997-2014 for the Braves, Royals, Mets, White Sox, Angels and Blue Jays organizations. He also played in Korea and was the most valuable player in winter ball in Mexico and Venezuela. He was the 2009 Kansas City Royals Organizational Player of the Year and also played two years in the independent Atlantic League.
- Frank Biggers, a 6’3” forward, played basketball for the Wallace Wildcats, a small segregated African American school in Colorado City before integration. Wallace won five state championships from 1959 to 1966. Biggers was named all-state as a sophomore in 1962, leading Wallace to a 40-2 record and a state championship. The Wildcats won another state title in 1964, and Biggers was again selected all-state. He continued his basketball career at Cisco Junior College. In two years at Cisco, he averaged 32 points per game as the third-leading scorer in the nation. After serving in the Army during the Vietnam War, Biggers played with the Harlem Stars basketball team, which traveled through the Western United States and Mexico, sometimes playing seven games in one week.
- Jay Hess threw for a state-record 3,154 yards and 37 touchdowns to lead Eastland to an unbeaten season and the Class 2A state title in 1982. He was voted the Texas High School Player of the Year for all classifications, a first-team all-state selection for a second straight year and a Parade All-American as a senior. He ended his high school career with a state-record 5,771 passing yards and 63 touchdown passes, the fourth-highest total in Texas history at the time. A member of the Texas High School Football Hall of Fame, Hess went on to play football at Texas A&M and the University of Iowa.
- Peyton Little Decker was one of the top basketball prospects in the nation when she came out of Abilene Wylie High School. Little scored over 3,000 points in her high school career and led the Lady Bulldogs to the state tournament in 2010 and state championships in 2011 and 2012. In the 2012 state championship game, Little scored 33 points and was named the state tournament MVP. She averaged five points a game as a freshman at Texas A&M before transferring to the University of Oklahoma. She was the Big 12 Newcomer of Year and an all-Big 12 first team selection as a sophomore while averaging 13 points a game. Little became the 32nd player to score 1,000 points as a Sooner and finished her career wth 1,187 points during her three seasons at OU. Her father Richard and uncles David and Mike are previous Legacy Award inductees in the Big Country Athletic Hall of Fame.
- Jim McKinney was the head gymnastics coach at Cooper for 25 years. His teams won three state championships. He was named the Texas High School Gymnastics Coach of the Year five times and was twice named the National Gymnastics Coach the Year. McKinney has also judged 120 national championship gymnastics meets, including the US Olympic Trials, USA Nationals and the NCAA Championships. He has been inducted into the Texas High School Gymnastics Hall of Fame, the Gymnastics Association of Texas Hall of Fame and the National Judges Association Hall of Fame.
- Bob Sanderson was the head gymnastics coach at Abilene High 1983-99. His 1989 team won a state championship. The Eagles also finished second once and third twice at the state meet. He coached nine gymnasts who qualified for the National High School Championship Meet. Sanderson was twice named the Texas High School Gymnastics Coach of the Year and has been inducted into the Texas High School Gymnastics Hall of Fame.
- The Estes family is this year’s Legacy Award recipient. The legacy began with Bob Estes, who was a star running back on Abilene High’s first state championship football team in 1923. His son Tommy played football and basketball at Abilene High and became a basketball coach at Cooper, Abilene High, Graham and McMurry University. He coached the McMurry men’s golf team to four conference championship from 1977-81 and was an assistant basketball coach at McMurry on three straight conference champion basketball teams from 1979-81. He then moved to Cooper where he led the Cougars’ to three straight 5A state golf championships in 1982, ’83 and ’84. Those teams were led by his son Bob, who is already a member of the Big Country Athletic Hall of Fame. An all-American at the University of Texas, Bob is a four-time winner on the PGA Tour and is still playing on the PGA’s Champion Tour. Tommy’s youngest son Jay played basketball and baseball at Cooper. He was a starting outfielder for Cooper’s 1987 state championship baseball team and went on to play baseball at Hardin-Simmons University and Texas A&M.
- Robert Carothers was the all-state starting shortstop for Abilene High’s baseball team that was state runner-up in 1955 and won back-to-back state championships in 1956 and 1957. He batted .333 as a sophomore and led the district in home runs as a junior and senior. Carothers signed a letter-of-intent with Baylor, but, after the sudden death of Baylor’s coach, he signed a three-year bonus contract in excess of $20,000 with the Kansas City Athletics scout Buster Mills, a Ranger native who is also a member of the Big Country Athletic Hall of Fame. He saw 30 innings with the major leaguers as an 18-year-old during spring training in West Palm Beach, but he was sent to the minors after suffering a knee injury. In 1959, Carothers led the Alabama Florida League in RBIs, batting average, home runs, hits and doubles and had the top fielding percentage of any of the league shortstops. He played for Albuquerque in California State League in 1960. In his final game with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Carothers hit two home runs against the Dodgers’ top AAA club Omaha, but decided to retire from baseball and returned to Baylor to finish his degree.
- The late Debs Garms was born in Bangs in 1907. He made his Major League debut with the St. Louis Browns on August 10, 1932 and played 12 seasons as an outfielder and third baseman for the Browns, Boston Braves, Pittsburgh Pirates and St. Louis Cardinals. Garms broke up Johnny Vander Meer’s streak of hitless innings in 1938 after Vander Meer had pitched back-to-back no-hitters. In 1940, Garms won the National League batting title with a .355 average. In 1941, he set a then-major league record for consecutive pinch hits with seven. In 1,010 games over 12 seasons, Garms hit .293 with 438 runs scored, 141 doubles, 39 triples, seven home runs and 328 RBIs. He played in the 1943 and 1944 World Series and made the last out in the 1943 World Series when he grounded out to Yankees second baseman Joe Gordon. Garms was inducted into the Texas Baseball Hall of Fame in 2004.