‘Major, major strides in 50 years’: Looking back five decades of Barren County High School

By MICHAEL CRIMMINS
Glasgow News 1

For five decades Barren County High School has been a staple of the community, with its iconic sports rivalry with the Glasgow Scotties and its unique curriculum.

Much like BAVEL — which is celebrating its 20th anniversary — the high school is celebrating its 50th anniversary with an itinerary full of events and special items the whole school year long, said Jackie Nuckols, Barren County alumni coordinator.

“We want to celebrate the whole school year long, between fall semester and spring semester,” Nuckols said. “It’s going to be a lot of fun.”

This 2023-24 school year began with a specialized anniversary T-shirt, and it was recognized at the beginning of the year pep rally by high school principal Amy Irwin. The alumni association also went through and digitized old yearbooks, which “began the reminiscing” among the alumni.

The 50th anniversary will be kicked off by the “Tops on Trojan Trail,” a free event on Oct. 12, in the BCHS gymnasium. The event begins at 5:30 p.m. The first 500 guests will receive free hot dogs and snow cones.

“Tours visiting both the past and future of BCHS are on the schedule, along with a night full of basketball, food” and more, a Facebook post states.

Though that’s when the anniversary begins, Nuckols said the whole school year thus far, and in the future, are tinted with the important celebration.

“It seems like everything that is happening between now and next year will have a 50th anniversary tie in,” Nuckols said. “By the end of this year everyone is going to know we had our 50th.”

According to her, there is not a definite agenda for future events. She mentioned potentially recognizing past homecoming queens, recognizing the 1973 football team, cheerleaders, the band, the coaches and other such occasions.

“There’s a lot of things in the making,” Nuckols said. “We’re not just targeting alumni, we want everyone to be involved.”

The “reminiscing” led Nuckols, who was a part of the first class in 1973, to reflect on all the changes that the high school has undergone since its construction.

“We came a long way since then,” she said. “When we started school that first day we didn’t have a floor in the cafeteria, no gym, no auditorium [and] the school size was about half what it is.”

“We’ve made major, major strides in 50 years,” she added.

Brad Groce, who went to the high school in 1978, the first year of the gym and first class that saw BCHS become a four-year institution, agreed with Nuckols that there have been plenty of changes, both in the curriculum and in attitude.

“There’s been a lot of changes,” Groce said. “Back in my day I can still remember when they let kids go outside to smoke and the school now offers so many more selection of classes then we were out there”

Even though the first Barren County High School classes began on Sept. 4, 1974, the journey to get the school built actually started in the mid-1960s with the Kentucky Department of Education pushing districts to consolidate their one-room schoolhouses. Prior to this push, and for quite a few years after, there were four separate educational facilities in the county — Austin Tracy, Temple Hill, Park City and Hiseville.

According to a video entitled “The Consolidation History and How BCHS Came to be,” narrated by the late Helen Russell, who was inducted into the Teacher Hall of Fame this year, the four schools were “all old and needed renovations” or else they would be forced to close.

It was with this information that the board of education members began searching for property on which to build a new high school. In total the board looked at 12 possible sites, and each were approved by the department. Eventually they bought the property, prior to 1973, where BCHS stands today.

To fund the construction the board put a bond issue on the November ballot in 1968, which failed with 2,240 votes against and 1,680 votes in favor. This failure did not deter the board who put the bond issue  on the ballot again in 1970. The issue failed again — this time by a smaller margin.

This second failure lead a pro-consolation group to gather hundreds of signatures that got the bond issue voted on again the following year. This, too, did not pass.

The issue of a new high school was further complicated by the district getting wind that they would be one of the few Kentucky schools to receive a vocational school. The stipulation on the vocation school was that it had to be built at a high school. Without a centralized high school, and with the repeated failure of the bond issue, the board members assumed the vocational school idea was dead as well.

This was until the board pulled, what Russell called, a “Quarterback sneak” and voted, on May 5, 1971, to build the high school with funds they had on hand and that could be raised without the bond issue. Obviously, without the bond issue the new high school was not as grand as the original architectural drawings showed; Russell recalls not having front doors but rather “plyboards” to cover the entrance for the first week or so.

“They kind of went out on a limb to build this school,” Nuckols said.

Originally, only Austin Tracy and Temple Hill were consolidated into the new high school. It wasn’t until 1974 that all four schools were a part of BCHS.

The decision to build a new high school was not a popular one; people were concerned that this new school would raise and people in the four county schools “clung” to their respective schools and their identities. As an example in a 10-year period, from 1965-1975, Barren County Schools had seven superintendents.

“Parents and kids alike still thought of themselves as Bulldogs, Cardinals, Eagles or Bears instead of Trojans,” Groce said.

To solve this identity crisis the superintendent at the time held a “big committee” comprised of 36 students to pick the Trojan colors, mascot and class ring design.

Nuckols recalls going to the high school a few days early, while construction was still underway, because she was so nervous about moving to this much bigger school.

“We were so anxious,” Nuckols said. “It felt so big. I mean we were coming from a school with 50 students in our class to a school with 250.”

“It was a new experience, it was new to us,” Groce added.

Groce said there were “pros and cons” of coming to BCHS, one of which was the curriculum, which was greatly expanded with new math and science classes.

There were definitely “growing pains,” Nuckols said, especially in the athletics department. For one, when students started at BCHS in September they did not have a football field. They played home games on a field at Metcalfe County and practiced where the baseball fields are today.

Beside the athletic issues, there was also traffic issues that needed to be addressed. When it was built Trojan Trail did not have an outlet to 31-E, but only had the Roseville Road entrance. The gravel road that was Trojan Trail had a one-lane iron bridge that would often flood trapping students in the high school until the water receded, or sometime cancelling school outright.

Nuckols said she is excited to see what the future holds for the district and for all the festivities that comes with this important milestone.