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Darrell Stein starred in two sports at Centralia Township High School under one coach in Hall of Famer Jim Evers.
Now the 1963 CTHS graduate is joining his coach in the ranks of the Hall of Fame as an inductee in the Veterans category.
"His values, just the way he was a person," Stein said of Evers for whom he played football and ran track. "I respected him very much and felt I coached the way he would have coached.
"As a player, you wanted to give him your best every time and didn't want to let him down."
At Centralia High, Stein was a four-year letterman in track and lettered three years in both football and basketball.
But it was in football and basketball where he made his mark, especially at the start of his senior year in the fall of 1962.
Running out of the single-wing formation, he was named Most Valuable Player in the South Seven Conference in helping the Orphans to the league title.
"I was running, basically running, wide sweeps," said Stein who had closed out his junior season with a big game versus Staunton in which he racked up 166 yards on 12 carries and scored on runs of 52 and 85 yards.
That led into his senior year where his 544 yards rushing were second in the conference and 65 points scored topped the South 7 in scoring.
At the end of the season, Stein was First Team All-Southern Illinois while also earning Honorable Mention All-State from the Chicago Tribune and was named All-State by the Chicago American News.
"I really didn't pay any attention to that," he said of the honors. "What it came down to was that in getting honorable mention you lost out by one vote. But at the time, it didn't mean much to me.
"It was all the good players I was lucky enough to be around that made the difference."
After having played on the 1962 Orphans basketball team that reached the Elite Eight under coach Bill Davies, he was a stalwart track performer under Evers both his junior and senior seasons.
Running in the sprints, he had a best of 10.15 seconds in the 100-yard dash and 22.9 in the 220, and teamed with Don Duncan, Wayne Knicker and Mike Ford for a relay record.
He excelled as well in the long jump where he established a record at the long-running Mineral Area Meet in the spring of 1963 at 22 1/2.
"I could always jump well and had been doing it since I was in grade school," said Stein.
A month later, Stein broke a 15-year old mark of 21-11 1/2 at the South 7 Conference meet by going 22-1 with his best jumps yet to come.
In the District held at Parsons Field in East St. Louis, his season best of 22-3 1/2 won the meet against a top-notch field of competitors from the host Flyers and Alton.
"Those teams were always tough but we felt we could compete with them," said Stein. "With Centralia, tradition was everything."
At the state meet in Champaign, he matched his District distance and finished sixth in another top-notch field. That mark stood as a Centralia record for over a decade and still ranks seventh on the Orphans' all-time list.
Following his graduation from CTHS, Stein had planned to play football collegiately, but wound up at Centralia Junior College instead and played on the Blue Devils' 1964 team that took eighth in the NJCAA National Tournament and led the nation in scoring, averaging 117 points per game.
He then went to Southern Illinois University at Carbondale where he majored in physical education and was persuaded to come out for track by one of his instructors, who was also a coach.
"I ran one year (at SIU), and they had a national champ in from England in the long jump and another from Australia, and both of them could beat me," said Stein who did have marks of 23-6 in the long jump and 46-feet in the triple while at Southern.
As a senior, Stein didn't run track but he did finish school and student taught under Jim Evers.
"He built into me discipline and many other different aspects," Stein said of his high school coach. "I don't know of anyone who didn't have respect for him."
Looking for a job in the area, Stein first went to Salem where he taught PE and science at the elementary school level for two years while coaching basketball and track. Following that, he began a career of over three decades of coaching and teaching at Salem Community High School, and in four seasons as head football coach, split four meetings with his alma mater in the Shrine Bowl.
"Centralia was a great place to grow up," said Stein who played on a Centralia Tigers basketball team that won a Southern Illinois Junior High School Athletic Association title. "I enjoyed sports ever since grade and I had some good coaches in Coach (Bob) McCall and Coach (Bob) Schmidt. I learned something from all of them."
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