Tyrone Stephens, leader on ’79 Clarke Central basketball team, remembered for his ’heart and love for the game’

Tyrone L. Stephens, who was a rebounding force on the 1979 Clarke Central High School regional championship basketball team and later played at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, died Sept. 10 in Atlanta. He was 60.

Stephens, the tallest player on the Gladiators squad, played center on a team that became Region AAAA champions before falling in the state playoffs. The 1979 squad was the last Clarke Central team to make the state playoffs until the 1990 team earned a region championship.

Stephens, who lived in Lithonia, had just left work at Andrews Executive Car in Atlanta when he succumbed to a massive heart attack, according to his wife, Angelia Stephens.

Stephens, born on Nov. 18, 1960, was raised by his mother, Lillie Mae Stephens, in the Broad Acres Apartments on West Broad Street. She died in 1993.

“He was an only child. Humble and real quiet. He had a heart and love for the game,” recalled classmate Stanley Evans, who graduated in 1979 with Stephens and was a member of the basketball team.

Today, Evans lives in Waycross and is pastor of a Pentecostal church in the town of Nahunta. When he learned of his former teammate’s death, Evans said he retrieved his high school yearbook and reminisced about those youthful days on the hardwood court.

Evans said that after ball practices, Stephens didn’t linger around the neighborhood as many kids do.

“After practice he went home,” Evans recalled.

At 6 feet 5 inches tall, Stephens played center on the 1979 squad, where he shared the round ball with the other starters including Evans, who played guard, Charles Jones at number two guard, Larry Sheats at power forward and Doug Foster at small forward.

The team finished 19-4 that year under the guidance of coach James Crawford, for whom the school’s basketball arena is now named.

Stephens played well all season, enough to attract college recruiters, according to Evans, but there was something special about one game that seemed to give the tall youth some extra fire.

“There was something about our arch rival when we played Cedar Shoals,” Evans said. He recalled the away game that ‘79 season in “the pit” at Cedar Shoals High where the crowd became especially intimidating.

“We played there and we were in a slouch, but Tyrone took it over,” he said.

They beat Cedar Shoals twice that season.

Evans said that after high school he would eventually make his way to south Georgia and Stephens moved on to attend college in Charlotte, N.C. The two men, who became friends when they were in the sixth grade at Burney Harris Middle School, lost contact as each ventured to find their own paths in life.

At UNCC, Stephens, who graduated with a degree in criminal justice, lettered three years from 1980 to 1983. He played in 74 games, according to UNCC 49ers statistics.

Stephens redshirted his first season, but in the next three seasons he forged a reputation as an aggressive defensive player and rebounder, according to his roommate and teammate Irvin Williamson.

“You had to work on offense if he was guarding you, even in practice,” Williamson said.

And his teammates absolutely knew he was from Athens, Ga.

“I heard ‘Go Dawgs’ so much. I heard it all the time,” Williamson said.

“He was full of life, always the jokester who kept us laughing,” said Williamson, who recently moved back to Charlotte from the Greensboro, N.C., area.

Stephens gave himself the nickname “TST,” meaning Tyrone Stephens Time.

“That’s what we all knew him by,” said Williamson, who notified other former teammates of Stephens’ death.

Stephens, Williamson and teammate Harrison Finklea set the tone for team workouts.

“The three of us could run the conditioning and set the time for everybody else. We set the standards,” he said. “I really remember that.”

While at the university, Stephens would meet his future wife in a most unusual way.

“I have a twin sister,” Angelia Stephens said, explaining that her future husband met her sister first and he arranged a visit.

“When he came to our dorm, I was at the elevator and he thought I was my sister. We started talking,” the North Carolina native said.

Later she and her sister went to a 49ers basketball game and her sister pointed out Stephens.

“That guy was supposed to come and see me and I said, ‘Oh really,’” she recalled with a chuckle.

“He would always tell people, I didn’t know there were two of them,” she said.

That chance meeting led to their marriage in 1987. Stephens worked variously in the Atlanta area at a prison, as a probation officer and as an alcohol and drug counselor. Most recently, he was working as a chauffeur, where he would transport people to the airport and even to his hometown of Athens.

“Most of his clients said he knew so much about the area and neighborhoods they would request that he pick them up,” his wife said.

The couple settled in Lithonia and raised two sons, Omari and Kareem.

When his college days ended, basketball finally took a backseat, or in his case it went to the yard.

“He would get out and play with the boys when they were younger and kind of coach them,” she said about their sons. Both played basketball through high school.

Stephens exemplified more than being an athlete, according to his childhood friend.

“He was a role model. I tell people, I’d rather for you to see my sermon than to hear my sermon. That’s the kind of person he was,” Evans said.

“He was a great person. My heart is heavy,” Evans said as he discussed old memories from a bygone time.