After 25 years ‘the numbers man’ is capping his pen

October 17, 2018

Clinton CPA Dale Isabell loves football and the game’s statistics.

During the past 25 years, Isabell and a crew of five, have kept statistics at every Anderson County High School football game – home and away – out of their love for the game and without pay. As computer technology enabled football game statistics to be kept on computer 20 years ago, Isabell purchased special software to track play-by-play of football games and all the numbers that go along with them.

“I love to do this and our crew has a lot of fun,” Isabell said last week as he was getting ready to work the AC-Chattanooga Central game at Maverick Stadium. “I couldn’t do all of this without their help.”

The crew includes Jim Ed Wallace, Charlie Durham, Knox County Chancellor John Weaver, and Christi Ellis, who is Isabell’s daughter.

Isabell, who served 20 years as Anderson County’s director of accounts and budgets, began keeping the Mavericks’ stats in 1993 when Coach Larry Kerr became head coach after he left Halls.

“Larry and I played football together at Lees-McRae College in North Carolina and became good friends,” said Isabell, who was a wide receiver. “Larry went on to Carson-Newman and I went to Tennessee Tech. When Larry came to Anderson County, I wanted to be helpful and decided I would start keeping game stats. We still did things by hand at the beginning, but when football software became available, I immediately switched over.”

Isabell’s crew keep statistics on offense and defense. Very few high school programs’ statisticians keep as concise a record of each game and individual performances as the AC crew.

“Each person has their job and they all do it well,” said Isabell, noting his daughter became involved with the effort in 2013 and has taken on more of a role during the past couple of years. “Our crew can do it all.”

A change of jobs in 1999 taking Isabell out of Anderson County and into Chattanooga did not stop him from continuing with the Mavs.

“I worked eight years in Chattanooga as the chief finance officer for the Hamilton County Schools and was living there durjng the week,” said Isabell, noting he was the first CFO of the merged Hamilton County and Chattanooga city school systems. “I’d leave Friday afternoons and head to wherever the Mavericks were playing that night.”

Isabell has witnessed the peaks and valleys of AC football during the past quarter century.

AC reaching the quarterfinals in the playoffs last season and the undefeated record and No. 2 ranking the Mavs have achieved so far this season are just some of the highlights Isabell has watched through the years.

“One of my best memories was when we knocked off an undefeated Cleveland team in the quarterfinals here in 1996,” Isabell recalled. “Cleveland had a 54-game winning streak and it was the longest high school football winning streak in the country at that point. Cleveland had a lot of speed, but we were very physical. We had a number of players who could bench press 300 and even 400 pounds and that made a difference. That game was won in the weight room during the previous off-season with the way our players worked to get stronger.”

Isabell also recalls the ’98 Mavs who had to forfeit a number of wins, but still managed to make the playoffs and eventually went to Cleveland for a contest that became an offensive slugfest.

“Each team kept scoring and the lead changed a number of times,” Isabell said. “We had to play all of our playoff games on the road and it had been a tough season in so many ways.

“That night was a wild game with both teams giving all they had. Cleveland eventually won the game by a score of something like 52-48.”

A game against Powell also is etched in Isabell’s memory.

“We were losing by 20 points over there heading into the fourth quarter, but (quarterback) Jamey Chadwell engineered a big comeback and we won the game,” Isabell recalled.

“Jamey was a successful head coach at Charleston Southern and is now doing a good job as associate head coach at Coastal Carolina and the experience he gained with moments like that have helped shape him as a coach.”

Isabell, along with Wallace and Durham, have been honored in recent years by the East Tennessee Chapter of the National Football Foundation for their efforts on behalf of high school athletics.

“We’re all proud of having each been honored with this award,” said Isabell of the annual presentation made annually in the spring on the eve of the University of Tennessee’s Orange and White game.

Isabell was a starting wide receiver at Clinton High School from 1965-67. He caught six touchdown passes during a game at Lenoir City in 1966, which may be a school record.

Isabell, who was a teammate at Tennessee Tech of future NFL players Jim Youngblood (Rams) and Elois Grooms (Saints, Cardinals, Eagles) is a great believer in the positives of high school athletics – particularly football – an its benefit to youth.

“When you get right down to it, what we do here is primarily for the kids,” Isabell said.

“They are the focus of what all this is about. Our crew wants to see the kids become successful in athletics, the classroom, as parents, in their careers and in life general. Our crew is happy to have hopefully played a small role in that process.”