Hoops & Rattlesnake Meat: The Legacy Of Northside's Steve Deavours

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As Jones told this reporter and fellow Northside graduate, his career path could be credited, in no small part, to Coach Deavours. This anecdote, however, proves only one example of the coach’s far-reaching impact.

“I went to see him about a week ago as he was going into hospice and I talked to him for over an hour,” Jones told Patch. “My only regret is I didn’t grab his hand and say a prayer, because we are both Christians and men of God. I know that doesn’t matter and he’s in a better place, but I still prayed after I got home. I can’t say enough about his wisdom and kindness. Even when you could tell he was not going to be with us much longer, he never complained.”

Ray Steven Deavours died Monday at the age of 76, leaving behind an enduring legacy that impressed upon multiple generations of those he taught and coached.

In those bygone years, well before the rapid commercial development in the north end of the county that recently saw Northside High move up to AHSAA Class 5A, redneck kids like your narrator were raised by people who played for the same coaches us youngsters were expected to one day compete for.

It was an honor and we didn’t know anything different.

Coach Steve Deavours Scholarship

Before we dive into the life and times of Coach Deavours, it’s worth noting as early as possible in this story that his daughter, Lane Wiggins, posted to social media to inform those in the community that before her father died, he wanted family and friends to donate to a “Coach Steve Deavours Scholarship.”

Deavours wanted to encourage and aid students on their journey to become positive role models and teachers, with Wiggins saying the scholarship would be given to a graduating senior from Berry High School and Northside High School who is choosing to become an educator.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made here:

The Recipe For A Winner

Raised just across the Fayette County line, Deavours was a 1965 graduate of Berry High School, where he shined on the basketball court and, funny enough, as a center and kicker on the Wildcats’ pretty competitive football team.

Deavours was also quite studious by all accounts and active in the school’s 4-H Club — an award-winner, even. The year after graduating high school, Deavours married his sweetheart Amelia in a small ceremony at Berry Baptist Church with his father, Buford, serving as the best man.

He then earned his college degree without delay in four years from the University of Alabama, graduating in 1969, and embarked on his life’s work in Samantha, whether he realized it at the time or not.

There were plenty of struggles and tears along the way, too, as he tried to turn the small rural school into a winner just down the road from his true hometown. In those days, Northside was much smaller and the two rival schools were on a much more even footing in all sports when compared to the present.

Those years also saw Deavours, a father of two, suffer through the heartbreaking death of Amelia in a car accident in 1986.

Despite such a crushing blow that was mourned across the area and beyond, Deavours somehow still managed to hold his family together while maintaining his devout faith as he became a father figure to an entire community — at times even taking in kids from troubled homes and giving them the support and direction they needed to thrive.

And, boy, did they.

“He just gave a lot of love for a lot of kids and those kids saw that when someone cares about them, they realized ‘this man isn’t just my coach, he’s trying to help me,'” Steven Deavours, his son and former NHS athletic standout, told Patch. “He just cared about the kids and loved them and in return they loved him.”

The younger Deavours followed in his father’s footsteps as a coach early on in his career as an educator, before becoming a longtime school administrator. He even faced off against the man who raised him when Steven was the head basketball coach at Cordova High School in 1992.

“I was telling some folks that most coaches will scout your games to see how you play,” the elder Deavours told the Tuscaloosa News following the game. “But Steven has been coming to my practices for years. He knew what I was going to do.”

The Rams won that one, 70-56, but the legendary coach was no doubt proud of his son and Steven Deavours was proud of the opportunity to coach against the man who taught him so much about sports and life.

“It was pretty neat,” Steven Deavours recalled more than 30 years later. “We got to share that one game against each other and, of course, he won. It was tied at halftime, though, and maybe had we made a few more shots we might have had it.”

Over 32 years, Deavours coached the Rams on his way to a 465-340 career record — a mark that is unlikely to ever be touched in the school’s history. He never won a state championship, no, but none of that matters when taking into account the incalculable number of lives he influenced.

That’s where one can truly find his impact.

“He was hard but fair,” former Northside three-sport star Rodney Lunceford told Patch with a hearty laugh after saying he remained close with Coach Deavours up until his death. “He loved to win and did whatever it took. That was all so long ago, though, that I don’t really remember much about individual games or anything. But what I will always remember is the time we spent together and little things, like having a fish fry with him. He was well-respected and never had any pressure on him [as a coach] but was a great community leader up there. He was always around.”

The Man

When telling the story of such a well-respected coach like Steve Deavours, it’s easy for a reporter on deadline to just focus on the wins, losses and little more.

But one humorous yarn that lends insight into the man as he was away from high school sports caught this reporter’s attention after it originally appeared in the Tuscaloosa News in 1980.

Known for his love of the outdoors, especially fishing, Deavours bested 40 other anglers in a bass fishing tournament on Lake Tuscaloosa sponsored by Woods & Water and WJRD.

“I was down to $2 in my pocket and I decided to borrow $25 to enter the tournament,” Deavours told the newspaper. “It was probably one of the best moves I have made in quite some time.”

He entered on a whim, sure, but that small investment of somebody else’s cash and Deavours’ luck on the water that weekend paid out a return of $1,000 in first-place prize money.

“He loved the school, loved the kids and loved where he was living,” Steven Deavours said. “He was a Christian man and loved Lake Tuscaloosa, loved the outdoors, loved the school and the type of kids that were there. He didn’t have any real interest in moving [to another job].”

A beloved member of Cleveland Church of Christ in Bankston, Deavours was a soft-spoken man of faith who several of his players said represented an uplifting contrast when compared to other frothing, hot-headed coaches of that era.
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“He was a solid spiritual man and when I got to college and start talking to folks about other coaches they had, you realize how special the coaches you had were,” former Northside three-sport star Greg Long told Patch. “He didn’t holler and cuss at us, but I knew friends in school and their coaches dog-cussed them and he didn’t do that. One of the takeaways as a player for him was how to really treat people. He was just a fine man and touched me in a special way, especially after you get older and begin to reflect on how to treat people and he made us feel worth something.”

Few people in Samantha likely knew it at the time, but retired FBI agent Greg Jones was one such talented athlete who Deavours went the extra mile for.

Following a stellar basketball career at Northside and against his own better judgment, Jones told Patch that he first took his talents to Wallace Community College, which went about as well as he had been told it would.

Chasing his hoop dreams but in need of a welcoming place to do it, Deavours then put his own reputation on the line by driving the young man to Jasper to meet with Walker College basketball coach Glen R. Clem — a legend of the sport credited as the father of junior college basketball in Alabama.

With a recommendation from Deavours, Clem offered Jones a scholarship and what would become an opportunity that set him on a course for success few others from Samantha can claim.

From Walker College, Jones went to study at Montevallo and then found his passion for law enforcement after graduation.

“All that was just based on Coach Deavours,” Jones said. “People truly respected his thoughts and opinions.”

And when Jones retired from the FBI in 2016 as a supervisory special agent after 21 years of service to the bureau, Deavours and his wife flew to Washington, D.C., for the ceremony.

“There was a room full of people and they asked if anyone wanted to say anything about me and he was the first one at the podium,” Jones remembered fondly. “We had dinner together and I told him I really appreciated everything. I was able to work for the FBI, became an NCIS agent and uniformed Secret Service. All of those things happened because Coach Deavours pushed me in the right direction.”

If Greg Jones was the single-greatest basketball player in school history, then it’s probably pretty fair to say longtime Northside High baseball coach Larry Mims was the single-greatest athlete to ever come out of the little rural school. Good luck getting him to admit it, though.

And as I told Mims in working on this tribute story, it wouldn’t be right to pen it without his input and perspective.

Indeed, when asked by the author of this story — one of his former baseball players, no less —he deadpanned that the eye-popping newspaper clippings showing him averaging 28 points and 16 rebounds a game was likely embellished.

Mims knew Deavours on a personal level few others did thanks to their decades of coaching and friendship and told Patch that he and Greg Long paid a visit to Deavours shortly before he died.

True to his storytelling ability, the tale ended with a humorous, yet heartfelt, punchline.

“When me and Greg got ready to leave, he looked at us and said ‘I’m gonna tell y’all what, y’all are two of the top-five athletes I ever coached,'” Mims recalled. “After we left, I looked at Greg and told him ‘I don’t wanna bust your bubble, but he tells that to everybody’ … but that’s who he was. He’s laying here knowing he isn’t gonna get better and you walk out of his house and you feel better.”

A three-sport star who played on one of the best football teams in school history, Mims would go on to play baseball and football at Marion Military Institute before setting out on a commendable baseball career at the University of Alabama. To this day, this reporter would argue he is the only Northside graduate to play at the level he did on the baseball diamond at Alabama.

He also starred on the basketball court when Deavours was a young man just starting his own coaching career.

In May 1971, though, Mims was a senior and awarded the football team’s Most Valuable Player award during the school’s annual athletic banquet, which featured a keynote address from a little-known University of Alabama assistant football coach named Pat Dye.

Mims also won just about every other piece of hardware available that night.

According to a story in the Tuscaloosa News, Rams football coach Bruce Kimbrell was unable to attend the event and emcee duties were passed down to Deavours. Mims received awards for all three sports, but when talk turned to football, Deavours offered up high praise for a man who would go on to spend the next several decades as a fellow coach and dear friend.

“Larry made some of the best catches last season I’ve ever seen anywhere, high school, college or pro,” Deavours said. “He has about the best pair of hands I’ve ever seen on a high school player.”

Like Deavours, Mims more than left his mark on Northside by the time he retired in 2014 — winning the school’s first state championship in any sport in 2001 after coaching two other teams to the state finals. His name also graces the baseball field that made him a legend in Samatha.

When asked what goes into the makeup of two coaches who stuck around the same school for so long, even when they clearly had other opportunities, Mims said it all boiled down to earning the respect of those in the community and valuing the people around you that play a part in the success of an athletic program, which was something Deavours had a special talent for.

“I think you get committed once you’re there for a while and people get to trusting you and knowing what you’re doing and know you’re just trying to be fair with everybody,” Mims said.

Instead of reflecting on the wins and losses in both of their careers, though, the outwardly gruff retired baseball coach reflected fondly on the laughs the two men shared. Never mind that this investigative reporter and Northside High graduate couldn’t find a single picture of the two coaches together where either of them are even smiling.

The author of this story wasn’t much of an athlete, no, but did play baseball for Mims and had him as an assistant coach in football. That being said, those with the benefit of hindsight can see through the steely exterior and appreciate his sense of humor — even if it comes at your expense.

Indeed, the two longtime friends had a mutual love of practical jokes, with the two working incessantly to get the upper hand on the other.

For instance, Mims reflected on one pep rally in particular where the cheerleaders convinced the coaches to have a blindfolded banana-eating contest. Mims, ever the competitor, reluctantly agreed and decided that if he was going to do it, then he was going to win it.

“I was young and dumb, so I figured I’d do it and we would have fun,” he said. “So they get us blindfolded and hollered ‘go!’ and I’m eating that banana as fast as I can. When I took the blindfold off, all the coaches and everybody else were standing around me laughing.”

The Legacy

Steve Deavours was a thoughtful man who embraced tradition and school spirit.

For instance, he is credited with starting the annual Northside High Christmas basketball tournament that is still played to this day and has become a popular and enduring event for the small unincorporated community.

But perhaps no tradition in school history is as well-known as Deavours having the idea to feed Northside football players rattlesnake meat before its rivalry game with his alma mater, Berry High School.

Serving as offensive coordinator for the Rams when he conceived the idea, Deavours told an Associated Press reporter in 1994 that he came up with the idea 15 years before as a way to motivate his guys, who had struggled with the Berry Wildcats.

“We hoped it would put a little of the rattlesnake’s venom in our players,” Deavours said, telling the wire service scribe that he would catch and kill most of the dangerous vipers on his 3,000-acre hunting reserve. He also said he tanned the skins on boards that were kept outside of the coach’s office in the school gym — now Northside Middle School.

Indeed, as the AP reporter noted at the time, Berry had never beaten Northside in years when the Rams players were fed fried rattlesnake meat before the big rivalry game. And that year, the Rams beat the Wildcats 20-19.

More than a decade later and well after Deavours retired from Northside, the very author of this story had the honor of participating in the long-discarded tradition when it was resurrected for our home matchup with Berry to start the 2006 season. It was my senior year of high school and shows how Coach Deavours influenced the school, the community and all of us redneck kids in the years after he left.

Maybe the magic in the concept had run out, though, by 2006?

Maybe it was because Deavours wasn’t the one feeding us the bits of fried rattlesnake?

Or maybe, just maybe, it was because we weren’t very good and had slow, pencil-thin defensive backs with bad hands like me trying, in vain, to tackle studs like Central High running back Demario Pippen — now the head football coach of the Falcons and a friend.

Regardless, we lost to our much-smaller rivals from Berry, 22-12, to open the season on our way to a dismal 0-10 campaign I try not to think about.

Still, the pregame meal was documented by Michael E. Palmer of the Tuscaloosa News, who wrote:

Northside cheerleader Whitney Phillips, left, tries rattlesnake for the first time as football player Ryan Phillips (5) indicates he will eat it if she doesn’t like it in the cafeteria of Northside High School. Northside head football coach Allen Brackin revived the old Northside tradition of eating rattlesnake before their game against Berry. “Some of the players wanted to revive the tradition, so I said that would be fine,” he said. Northside 10th graders Jake Galloway and Daniel Hall procured the snake from near Hall’s home on Springhill Church Road. Coaching staff and cafeteria workers prepared the snake then deep fried it in the lunch room. “It tastes like chicken,” Whitney said. “Mine was all bones.”

Tuscaloosa County School System Deputy Superintendent David Patrick was the principal at Northside High at the time and had worked with Deavours for years, giving the administrator an up-close perspective concerning the legacy of the beloved coach.

“Steve had opportunities to go other places and was recruited for other jobs,” my former high school principal told me. “I think he really loved the Northside community. He loved the parents, too, and he felt at home there. When he got where he was supposed to be, he knew it. There was no other opportunity that interested him.”

I had just started high school and Northside was still a 7th-12th school when Deavours cited his health and retired in the spring of 2001. It was only fitting, too, that his very last win in the old gym came against the Berry Wildcats.

This wouldn’t be his final chapter, though.

Instead, Berry High School found itself without the necessary teaching units the following year to hire a basketball coach, so Deavours — true to his character — stepped in as a volunteer.

At this point in the story, it will come as no surprise dear reader that the final win of his coaching career would see Berry defeat Northside in the same gym where Deavours had paced the sidelines for over three decades.

“I didn’t like seeing him on the wrong sideline but we had good times that year and it was good that he got to do that,” Patrick recalled. “When it was all said and done, we were shaking hands and he said, ‘you know I really wanted to win my last game in this gym.'”

The next year, Northside High School moved to a new building with a new gymnasium, seemingly closing the book on the Steve Deavours Era in Samantha.

Roughly two decades later, though, on April 25, 2021, Deavours returned to that same gym for a ceremony to see the new basketball court at Northside Middle School named in his honor.

“I think that was a great tribute,” Patrick said. “He really appreciated it and he was so grateful and that’s the kind of guy he was. He appreciated those kinds of things in life and was proud of the fact he had such a legacy that will last in that community.”

More tributes are sure to come, though, with the “Coach Steve Deavours Scholarship” to benefit students at both Northside and Berry.

What’s more, State Sen. Gerald Allen, a Republican from Tuscaloosa, told Patch that he plans to sponsor a Senate Joint Resolution to honor the life and legacy of Coach Deavours.

“The Senate Joint Resolution goes in the history books, basically,” Allen explained when I asked him of the significance of such a gesture. “We want to make sure his legacy is protected for years and generations to come. Think about it: if people are doing research on who influenced the community 50 years from now, Steve will be there.”

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