John Grammer Quotations

Some of it was nerves. It's happened before. We missed our first couple of shots and they made theirs. But we hung in there. I felt like at halftime we had the momentum.

One of our keys was to limit the 3-point shooting. They didn't make a 3 in the first half. That's what we wanted to do. I don't think they've seen a team that plays as hard as we do.

Franklin County as a whole is really my home, ... I was born in Benton and attended grade schools in Benton, Rend City, and up at the old Mt. Pleasant school house. When I went to school in Rend City it was a bustling little mining town. My grandfather, Herman Bradford was a hoisting engineer at the mine there until the mine closed.

He was this big kid, ... who didn't show up on time, which really frustrated Jimmy. He asked me if I would be willing to play on the show, because he was letting Clark go. Years earlier, I had helped Jimmy get into a USO tour I was doing with Connie B. Gay, a disc jockey friend of mine at WARL radio out of Arlington, Va.

We've got to take care of business at home. It would be a neat thing to happen. It would be great for the kids to win district with the up-and-down season they've had.

We made some 3s and that's what kept us in the game. In spurts we played great and we had some spurts where we turned the ball over and that get us into trouble.

I went to high school in Sesser, in Royalton, and then graduated from Valier. My dad was a miner, and we lived wherever he was working. That meant a lot of moving. That's why I don't feel like I am from any one town; just call me a Franklin County native. In fact, I joke and say sometimes that both Benton and Sesser claim me -- Benton claims that I'm from Sesser, and Sesser claims that I'm from Benton,

We never went hungry, and we never had bills. In fact, we always paid cash for everything except a car or two through the years. You have to understand that during those first years of our marriage, my radio appearances meant a week to week pay for us. We got by just fine, and then when I got on CBS's Jimmy Dean Show, the real money started coming in. That good fortune was followed by hit records and concerts, so we always had plenty, but the key was that we always lived within our means and Ruth was an excellent money manager,

We executed our game plan defensively. They just hit some downtown threes. It was just one of those nights when they shot the ball real well.

We played three good quarters. We had a good first half. We had 40 at halftime and only 46 for the whole game (against Ray) last Friday night. We executed well.

We hit that dry spell to start the third quarter. That's happened to us before. We always talk about that being the most important segment of the game. It seemed like we went 41/2 to 51/2 minutes there with two points. You can't do that against a good team.

I've been a member of the Kentucky Thumb Pickers Hall of Fame for some time now,

Ruth did an excellent job bringing up our kids. I say that because she did the lion's share of raising them. They were all great kids, never sassed us, and they've turned out real good. I sometimes joke that it's a good thing we didn't have a fourth child or that one might have been a maverick,

Ruth and I knew we would come back to live here some day, ... When my eyes got too bad for me to drive in 1988, and my not being able to see made it harder to perform on a regular basis, we decided it was time to come home. I pulled in my horns and we moved up here because of my eye condition. I didn't exactly retire; I'm still a member of the Opry and still do an occasional concert now and then.

As coaches, we tell the players to make plays and that's what they did. We made some big plays to win at the end, especially Derek Carver.

All my friends were in the Army. Everyone wanted to do their part, and I had thought I could pull it off without anyone realizing I had a problem seeing in the dark, ... but it wasn't meant to be.

A bunch of us who are members get together every year at Eddie Pennington's Campground, in Crofton, Kentucky. We call it the Goat Ropin' Festival. It began 10 years ago on my 70th birthday, and this year they plan to celebrate my turning eighty. I've been blessed with good friends.

It's a milestone. But it's not near as important as winning the game. That would make us district champions and make it extra special.

It was a barn-burner. What we did the most outstanding tonight was just battle because Miller has a very talented team.

I'm interested to see if they're going to try to alter their style. I wonder if they'll try to slow the pace and pack in a zone because they've seen Ray and Moody have success against us by slowing it down. But that would be totally against their nature.

I had excellent daytime vision and was in great physical condition, having played varsity football at Valier High School, ... Things went along just fine until one day during my training. I accidentally bumped into a second lieutenant, which was not the thing to do.

For some people, the grass is always greener somewhere else. In my mind, there's not a better place to coach than Victoria.

The kids battled hard. But it just comes down to who makes shots.

This has been one of my most challenging years. We had to play a completely different style. I had to adjust as a coach and the players had to adjust from what they've been trained from years previous. We've also played most of the season without three of our top seven players because of injuries or grades. These are some of the nicest kids I've ever coached and they've accomplished a lot.