Mountain Sports Hall of Fame

06/20/2026

Curtis Crye of 16th Region History has been doing great things for years in the sports history of the 16th Region. Here is another. The All East Ky Conference team of 1965. Three of the guys from Blaine were in a photo we posted a few weeks ago about their Blaine PTA junior high tournament all tourney team.

06/20/2026

State tournament championship game, 1951. Cuba vs. Clark County of the 16th Region. Clark County won that State championship game, 69-44. The man on the right is Linville Puckett who scored 17 in that game for Clark County. He made the all tournament team and was an All State player that season for the second time. He would later play for UK for a while before a disagreement led him to transfer to Ky Wesleyan. Linville appears to be holding the scorebook from tha championship game. He is standing beside Michael Lane “ Bear” Rogers, Clark County sports historian extraordinaire and one of our advisory board members. Photo from spring, 2023 in Wi******er. Linville Puckett promised his older brother Billy he would do as well as Billy had in basketball. He actually one-upped Billy. At MSHOF we have a great photo of that 1951 State champion Clark County team in our displays. Names like Snowden and Puckett just jump out from the photo to me as if to say “ What a great team we were.”

06/20/2026

06/20/2026

Wallins High School Entrance

06/20/2026

Our friend, contributor and 16th Region advisory board member Ron Osborne sent us this five years ago. They tore the old Wallins High School down last month. It supposedly was the last school in the state still using a coal furnace.

06/20/2026

Just a few years ago during Covid, a similar thing as the following story took place. Ashland was considered a favorite to win the State basketball championship but the Sweet 16 was called off.

06/20/2026

Last cheerleaders at Wallins High School 1965-66. Photo by Ron Osborne on Wallins Purple Devils page

06/20/2026

Mountain Sports Hall of Fame Published by Doug Kretzer • February 25, 2019
WILLARD PARTIN Harlan High School
Willard Partin made the All State Honorable Mention list at the end of the 1958-59 season for Harlan High School along with teammate Jimmy Adams, and they took the Green Dragons to a 21-9 season under coach Joe Gilly. It was Gilly’s last season as head coach there after 16 yrs. He had a tremendously successful career coaching the Green Dragons , going 302-179 with but four losing seasons, and seven seasons of 20 or more wins, two of which were seasons of 34-6 and 36-7, a State championship in his first year at the helm with Wah Wah Jones, Carl Eagle and Earl Bradford and a 3rd place finish in the State Tournament in his second season with Jones, Billy Rice and Jack Thompson. In his final season of 1958-59 he led the Green Dragons to a Regional appearance but fell to Corbin in the opener. His star that last season of coaching there was Willard Partin.
Partin had been an All State Honorable Mention selection in his junior year for the Green Dragons when they won the District Tournament. They did it by defeating Evarts, Cumberland, Loyall and Benham. But Corbin deflated the balloon by defeating the Green Dragons in the 1st round of Regional play.
In Willard Partin’s senior season of 1959-60 he had a new coach. Doyle Troutman had become their new leader for two seasons going 18-7 and 16-14. He would come back as their coach in the 1978-79 season and stay five more seasons, supplanted by Billy Hicks in the 1983-84 season.
In the 1959-60 season the Green Dragons could not make it out of a tough 52nd District that had the following teams: Harlan, Harlan Rosenwald, Benham, East Benham, Wallins, Lynch, Lynch West Main, Loyall, Hall, Black Star, Cumberland and Evarts. Twelve teams in that District made it mighty tough to survive a tournament, no doubt. After an opening round victory over Wallins and a two point win over Harlan Rosenwald where Partin scored 39 of the team’s 53 points, Harlan fell to Black Star in a squeaker 53-52 in a semifinal match. Willard Partin would be selected to the All State 2nd Team that season. That ended the season for Harlan at 18-7.
Two guys were chosen as All State players from the 13th Region that 1960 season, Partin and Raymond Meredith of Redbird.
Partin went on to play collegiately at Cumberland which was a two year college at the time.

06/20/2026

HUMSEY YESSIN
Clarence Greene was the sports editor for the Harlan Daily Enterprise in the 1940’s. In 1944 he wrote about how high school baseball got its start in Harlan County. It was called “The Harlan County Experiment”.
In the spring of 1944 The Harlan County Conference adopted the sport of baseball. There were six teams that first season- Harlan, Loyall, Hall, Evarts, Wallins and Black Star. They all played a full schedule with Loyall winning the title. Then came the Regional Tournament play termed the Southeastern Kentucky Regional Tourney. Harlan won it and was slated to play in the State Tournament.
It being the first season for the Harlan County teams there was a bit of scarcity of equipment but that got compensated for as there were many independent teams in the area.
Three of the county high school players were called to Louisville, a minor league team of the Boston Red Sox at the time. Only one of the three went to that tryout. Harlan’s great little basketball guard Humsey Yessin was also a great shortstop. Of 309 total players at that tryout for the Red Sox, only six made the grade. Yessin was one of the six.
In the fall meeting of the Cumberland Valley Conference a unanimous vote by the body accepted baseball as a high school sport. The CVC was comprised of a large body of schools more than Harlan County schools so that is how the wonderful sport of high school baseball began in the area.
Now let’s look at one of the great baseballers of Harlan High during that time, Like Carl Eagle, Wah Wah Jones and their other great basketball players this guy also was a star on the baseball diamond.
Huimsey Yessin was born in Williamson, WV to Syrian immigrant parents. His dad was a peddler in the coal fields. At age 15 Humsey and the family moved to Harlan County where his dad opened up a dry goods store. That gave Harlan High School a couple of good athletes in Humsey and his older brother Rudy. Rudy had played basketball at UK one year before joining the service. He came back to be a very successful attorney.
Humsey Yessin had played basketball and baseball at Harlan High and went on to UK along with Harlan teammate and the all time national scoring leader at the time, Wallace “Wah Wah” Jones. Yessin was a starting guard on the 1944 State champions Harlan Dragons basketball team. He and Jones graduated from Harlan in 1945.Both went on to the University of KY.
Humsey Yessin gave up a very promising professional baseball career to play at UK. The 5ft. 8 in. Yessin never made the basketball team at UK as Jones did. Instead of playing, Humsey became the basketball team manager at UK for four years. He also would be possibly the best student manager in University of Ky basketball history. He also did scouting duties for Adolph Rupp.
Yessin was an outstanding member of the Wildcat baseball team. He was there at a time when UK had Rupp as basketball coach and when they got Paul “Bear” Bryant as football coach. He later played in the semipro baseball Bluegrass League for Versailles.
Yessin later would coach baseball and basketball at Georgetown College for a couple of years. The scouting that Rupp had taught him came in handy as coach. In basketball at Georgetown he was the head coach. In football he was assistant to former UK player Leo Yarutis. His replacement as basketball coach there was a great one-Bob Davis.
Humsey became a Class A PGA golf pro and director of golf for the Kentucky Department of Parks. He also was a basketball official.
His stories of the days at UK and other subjects are priceless. One story came in an interview when he was talking about Rupp. Rupp was notorious for getting by on the cheap, much like entertainer Jack Benny who would always “Forget” taking his wallet with him when inviting friends to dinner. Yessin described Rupp as having "deep pockets but short arms".
Humsey Yessin- was another legend from Harlan.