GIRL TALENT - Zelma Dykes, Flora Mack, Annie Bell Wesley led Aycock to unparalleled success in the 1950s.
Hall of Honor: Glorious decade for Aycock girls Dykes, Mack, Wesley led Tigerettes to 50s athletic heights
BY Mike Brown
Reporter Editor
(Editor’s note: On Friday, Nov. 17, the next 16 honorees will be inducted into the Rockdale Sports Hall of Fame. This year’s “class” represents athletes or coaches who played or began their coaching careers at Rockdale High School or Aycock High School before 1965. This is the second of a five-part series.)
Most Rockdale sports fans know about the golden age of Aycock High School’s boys teams.
The Tigers dominated the 1950s, winning a state football title in 1955 and state basketball championship in 1956.
Aycock’s girls sports teams were equally as dominant in that era.
In fact, longtime sports fans believe Aycock would have added several girls basketball titles to the school’s trophy case but there was no girls basketball past the district level in that era.
Two coaches and one player from that era will be inducted into the RHS Hall of Honor on Nov. 7.
Zelma Dykes coached AHS to numerous district titles in the 1950s.
Flora Mack was also a girls coach at AHS during the era, helping guide the Tigerettes to near-total dominance.
Annie Bell Page Wesley was the top scorer on the legendary AHS girls basketball team which went undefeated in 1955-56.
Zelma Lee Hill Dykes returned to Aycock High School and coached AHS girls basketball teams to five straight district titles, including a legendary undefeated team in 1955-56.
She graduated AHS in 1924 and went to Paul Quinn College in Waco where she earned her bachelors degree and teaching certificate.
Her teaching career began in Davilla. She then went on to the Liberty Hill school of Milam County.
When that school merged into the Rockdale ISD she came to Aycock.
Between the 1951-52 and 1955-56 seasons Dykes’s teams won five consecutive district titles and did not lost a district game in any of those seasons.
The 1956 team was 21-0. the Tigerettes hosted, and won, a blue ribbon post season tourney that included two other undefeated teams.
Mrs. Dykes died Oct 8, 1998.
Flora Juanita Fair Mack coached basketball and track at AHS in the early to mid-1950s.
Her track teams produced numerous district winners and state qualifiers.
Mack excelled in athletics and academics during her middle school and high school years. She was also a member of the school choir and quartet.
She was the 1948 Aycock High School valedictorian, going on to earn a bachelor of arts degree in Tillotson College in Austin in 1951 and doing one year of post-graduate work at Prairie View A&M University.
Mack made history of a different kind after her coaching career was over.
In 1961 she became the first African-American teacher in the Rockdale ISD, teaching English at Rockdale Junior-High School in the first phase of the desegregation plan which resulted in the closing of Aycock.
Mrs. Mack died Dec. 29, 2004.
Annie Bell Page Wesley
(1956)
Annie Bell Page Wesley was one of Aycock High School’s outstanding female athletes in AHS’s golden age of athletics in the mid-1950’s.
Described as a “speedy, snappy-shooting forward” on the Tigerette basketball team, Aycock won district every year in which Wesley was a team member.
The Aycock girls went 21-0 and won a blue-ribbon post season tourney, which they hosted, that also included two other undefeated teams.
Wesley scored 335 points that season, almost half the team’s offensive output. She averaged 16 points per game.
She also ran track. Wesley was second at state in the baseball throw.
She married Charles C. Wesley and the couple had seven boys and one girl, all of whom went on to standout athletic careers at Rockdale High School.
They are Lawrence, Darin, Dexter, Cedric, Anthony, Leonard and Roderick Wesley and Barbara Ann Grayson.
Mrs. Wesley died Oct. 28, 1997.
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Comments
Lawrence Wesley
lflct@aol.com
The article is awesome,but where are the pictures of the beautiful, outstanding ladies of Aycock High. Thanks Mike for this amazing tribute to my mother.
Roderick Wesley
rodwes@sbcglobal.net
Thanks for doing this story. The only thing I wish is that were some film, so that I could get to see for myself and enjoy a visual. I can only imagine. She would always tell me the stories about her teams. The thing about she would tell me how well they did, but never boasted on herself. She told me that she could really shoot the ball, however she never said she was the high point scorer. She would come out in the backyard with us on our dirt court and show us her funny looking high knee shot and her famous hook shot. It looked funny to me, but she would make those shots.I think Kareem sponged off her hookshot technique. LOL Thanks again for printing these stories.
