When you got to seventh grade in Heber you finally got into Mr. Capps room. You were one of the “big people” in school. Mr. Capps was a very tall man with a very dark complexion. He also had a very loud, deep voice that could strike fear into the hearts of all school children. When you finally got into seventh grade, you discovered that Mr. Capps was really a fun guy who wasn’t nearly as scary as everyone thought. He was also a good teacher and didn’t put up with much in the way of poor work or laziness. Mr. Capps was the principal of the school and he was the one who rang the recess bell or rang the bell to announce school was starting. He had a bell on a handle and he would walk out into the main hall connecting the three classrooms and ring the bell for school to start. For recess, he would just raise the window at the back of his room and put his hand out and ring the bell to end recess. I don’t think the school ever had an electric bell system when I was attending there.
Mr. Capps was also the coach for all the sports played by the “upper classmen” in seventh and eighth grades. He coached basketball, softball, and track. Those were the sports we could compete in and we tried. I don’t think Heber had a mascot that I can remember. We were just “Heber.” We would have softball practice during recess and after school sometimes. We played the elementary schools in Pinedale, Clay Springs, and Show Low and the Jr. High in Snowflake. I don’t remember that we ever beat the Jr. High in Snowflake because it had all the kids from both Snowflake and Taylor and some of them were pretty good. We could beat some of the teams from the smaller towns.
Because we didn’t have a full-sized gym, we always had to travel to play basketball. We would load up in Mr. Capps’ car and he would drive us to the games. I guess sometimes some of the parents must have helped with the transportation. The yearly track meet was always held in Snowflake. I can remember that, by default, I got the job of throwing shotput one year. We decided who would throw shotput by tryouts. We didn’t have a real shotput so we just found a big rock and everyone threw it. I guess I threw it about as far as anyone and since I wasn’t in the running events, I got to throw the shotput. I was pretty proud of myself until I got to the track meet and lifted a real shotput. I don’t think I even threw it far enough to get to where they began measuring the distance. Oh well!! I got to go to the track meet with the others.
We had a similar problem in basketball. Because our half of a gym didn’t have an extended backboard—or any backboard for that matter—we learned to run up and stop when shooting lay ups so that we didn’t kill ourselves on the wall. When we went to play at other schools, they had the extended backboards and their guys would run fast at the basket and shoot those lay ups and we would run up and slow down before we got to the basket and they would usually catch up with us. Needless to say, our fast break left something to be desired. Shooting at a basket with a backboard was a new experience, too. Oh well!! We had fun playing.
When it carne to softball we could play with anyone. Softball was a “Heber sport.” We had a ball, and a bat, and we had bases, and we had gloves and cleats and we could beat most other teams. I suppose the fact that we spent nine months a year playing softball could have had something to do with it. We did love our softball and the girls were almost as good as the boys.