Foster “Sid” Meade
Foster “Sid” Meade coached high school basketball in addition to being a referee. He coached at Flat Gap beginning in the 1946-47 season through the 1949-50 season. His record there was 51-59. However, the 1948-49 season was 25-8. If my math is correct that leaves a record of 26-51 for the other years. They were runners-up to Inez in the 59th District Tournament, held at Louisa in that winning season of 1949, losing 43-39. The lost in a regional semifinal game to eventual regional champs Pikeville, 60-40.
After the regular season ended, Meade coached the Johnson County All-Stars against the Floyd County All-Stars in a game played at Flat Gap in which Johnson County prevailed 53-52. He reappeared as the coach of the South Portsmouth Tigers in the 1954-55 season, when they went 16-11. Meade ended a series of one-year coaches at South Portsmouth, staying for the 1959-60 season when his Tigers went 12-14.
It is in officiating that Meade is noted, for better and worse. He called games up and down the Big Sandy area, across several regions as well as in the State Tournament. The KHSAA rated him as a good official for the 1959-60 season. The following is an excerpt from one of their magazines:
The following ratings were received on basketball officials registered with the KHSAA during 1958-59. The numbers following represent respectively the number of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor ratings given to the official.
Referee: Meade, Foster “Sid,” 25-22-9-2
So of 58 who rated him, 25 rated Meade as an excellent referee, 22 rated him good. Nine rated him fair, and two rated him poor. Those numbers are only for the 1958-59 season.
It is in one game in the Kentucky Boys High School Tournament that some really took notice. Billy Reed, on September 1, 2010, writing for Louisville Catholic Sports, wrote in a tribute to Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s great coach S.T. Roach about a game in the State Tournament.
The coach who did the most to help Dunbar – and to promote race relations in high school basketball – was John Bill Trivette of Pikeville. Seeing how black players would change the game long before anybody else, Trivette knew that his boys were going to have to learn to play against them if they were to have any chance at future state championships. So he invited Roache’s teams to Pikeville and he reciprocated by playing them in Lexington, either at the Dunbar gym or in the University of Kentucky’s Memorial Coliseum as part of double- or triple-headers. Roach once said he got treated better in Eastern Kentucky than he did in Lexington.
Unfortunately for Dunbar, not everyone was as color-blind as Trivette.
In 1961, when Dunbar became the first all-black school to make the quarterfinals of the State Tournament, a couple of good-ol’-boy referees, Foster “Sid” Meade and Milford “Toodles” Wells, decided there was no way a black school was going to win the state title while they had anything to say about it.
So when the Bearcats went up against Breathitt County, they stiffed Roach’s team so blatantly that the Memorial Coliseum crowd, which was mostly pulling for Breathitt County at the tipoff, did an about-face and was rooting for the Bearcats at the end.
At the buzzer, Dunbar’s Austin Dumas threw up a prayer from midcourt. When it swished through the nets to give the Bearcats the victory, it touched off an incredible celebration. The Bearcat fans chanted, “Dun-bar did it again … Dunbar did it again.” For one brief shining moment, justice had prevailed.
