Chattahoochee High's "Whack" Hyder Died The Other Day

There was a time, back before Hall County's high schools were consolidated, when the name Chattahoochee High School was known for its academics, and its basketball teams. Chattahoochee High was located in Clermont. Now, some of you folks from historic Dip help me out here ... wasn't that historic school located just North of town, and isn't the only thing standing on that location right now a gymnasium? And haven't I heard that Chattahoochee High was once called Chattahoochee Academy? Whatever it was called at any given time, it turned out a great number of students who turned out well in life.

And that's what brought all this to mind, a famous graduate of Chattahoochee High. John Hyder died the other day, better known to the sports and college worlds as "Whack" Hyder. Whack Hyder was a native of Lula, and was good enough as a high school basketball player that Georgia Tech gave him a football scholarship. Now, you've got to understand that Chattahoochee High did not have a football program, but then Tech didn't give basketball scholarships at that time, either. So, Whack Hyder did football at Tech so he could play basketball, and he was good enough so he came back to Tech after graduation and ended up as that school's head basketball coach. He was head coach at Tech for 22 years, and is credited with making basketball a highly regarded sport at the Flats. He took the Yellow Jackets to their first NCAA tournament in 1960, and compiled a record of 292 wins against 271 losses in one of the country's toughest college basketball territories. He was a legend at Georgia Tech; he was a member of the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame, and he was known at the kind of a coach you would like to have your son play under.

Whack Hyder was in his 90's when he died the other day, so a generation or so of Tech fans (and Dawg fans, too) had no idea who coached at Tech before Bobby Cremins ... and before Tech basketball was televised. But just so we will all be reminded, that coach was from Hall County, a Lula native, a graduate of Chattahoochee High School in Clermont, and one of the nicest guys you could ever know.

This is Gordon Sawyer, from a window on historic Green Street.

http://accesswdun.com/article/2003/2/183125