Two standout baseball players and their coach will be inducted into the Russellville Alumni Association Athletic Hall of Fame Friday. Yet despite their success on the diamond, the trio is also well known for other sports and activities.
The honorees are Coach Lou Kendall and athletes T.C. Thomason (Class of 2005) and D.K. Quarles (Class of 2011).
The ceremony will take place between the girls and boys games of a district doubleheader against Todd Central in Jim young Gymnasium where Quarles and Thomason had long and successful Panther basketball careers.
Here’s a look at the honorees:
Coach Lou Kendall
Coach of Russellville baseball for 37 seasons, Kendall’s teams recorded 482 wins on the way to four district championships and two berths in the regional finals, those coming in 2088 and ’98. They fared well against schools their own size, winning All A Fourth Region championships in 2007, ’08, and ’10 and reaching the state semifinals in both ‘07’ and’10.
His first team had a number of outstanding athletes as witnessed by the Panther football team winning the state and the basketball team being one of the region’s best while Logan County was winning the state. One of them was one of Russellville’s greatest-ever baseball players, Clay Parrish.
His 1988 team set a school record with 33 wins. Team members John Markham, P.J. Jones, Gary Gettings, Darwin Washington, Bobby Blackford, Michael Sanders, and Nelson Cundiff were among the members of the team who played college sports. Jones was drafted by the Baltimore Orioles organization in professional baseball. Markham pitched NCAA Division I baseball for WKU.
Among the young stars of that 1998 team were Jesse Wright, Matthew Humble, Jeryn Lee, Matthew Croslin, Nathan Thompson, Michael Walker, and Eric Flory.
Quarles was a starter on Kendall’s last championship team along with Darren Murphy, Corey Wright, Thomas Shifflett, Andre Edmonds, Seth Washington, Caleb Wills, Dudley Bouldin, D.J. Watkins and Layton Bush.
Lou Kendall was named to the Kentucky High School Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006.
In his final season six years later, he was named Fourth Region Coach of the Year as his Panthers won a game at region against Glasgow before falling to South Warren in the semifinals to finish 29-10.
Shifflett, Wills, Washington and Wright were among the players still on his final team in 2012. They were joined by the three Russellville players who had been on the World Series Little League team three years earlier—Barrett Croslin, Zach Denney and Desmon Quarles—along with Crewdon Kemp, Drew Hayes, Jacob Proctor, Tyler Hall, Wes Stratton and Colbie Nichols.
Lou Kendall has other impressive credentials. He was an assistant varsity football coach under the late Ken Barrett from 1983-97. During those years, the Panthers won two state championships and were state runner-up another season.
He was an assistant basketball coach from 1982-87, starting under the late Don Burton. The Panthers won the district championship in 1985-87.
But it was in what had been a rare physical activity that Kendall may have entertained more viewers than his baseball teams did. He and his late wife Brenda, who was also a teacher, established the Stevenson Elementary Power Jumpers in 1997, and they were a delight to watch.
Over the years, they performed at the State School Board Conference in Louisville, college games at Western and Austin Peay, at two Harlem Globetrotter games, and 25 schools in Kentucky and Tennessee, including all five elementary schools in the Logan County system.
T.C. Thomason
T.C. was a good baseball player but an even better basketball player. He was a three-year starter in basketball for coaches Phil Todd and Dennis Pardue. After leading his freshman team to a 16-0 record, he started three years for the varsity and scored 1,288 points in his career.
As a junior, he was All-District both for the season and the tournament and was second team All-Region for the season. As a senior, he made all-district season and tournament and was chosen first team All-Region.
Pardue’s Panthers won the district championship in both his junior and senior seasons.
He played varsity baseball for six seasons, beginning as a seventh grader. He started at shortstop all four years he was in high school. His senior season saw him bat .385.
In 2003 and ‘04, he was a Kentucky Nike HoopStar under Coach Eddie Ford.
He spent his college years at the academically prestigious Centre College, where he not only got a great education but also played top flight basketball for the Colonels. He was a three-year starter and was named All-Conference twice.
T.C. came ever-so-close to being a thousand-point scorer in college, too, finishing with 996 career points.
The Colonels averaged only 4 losses a season during his three years as a starter.
D.J. Quarles
D.J. not only donned his Panther uniform in three different sports, but he played them all well, piling up honors in each of them. He was a starter on 11 teams, four each in football and baseball and three in basketball. Those teams won four district championships, earning him seven All-District honors, two All-Region berths, two All-SKY berths, and an Honorable Mention All-State designation.
In football, he was the starting quarterback for three years with the Panthers going 26-12 in the process and winning the district championship all three seasons. His total offense statistic is an eye-popping.5,306 yards and 57 touchdowns. He did that by passing for 3,190 yards and 30 touchdowns and rushing for 2,116 yards and 27 TDs.
In 2010, he became the first Panther to rush for over 1,000 yards and pass for 1,000 yards in the same season.
In basketball, he was a four-year starter, earning all-district honors three years and all-region twice. Pardue’s Panthers won the 2010 district championship.
In baseball, he was on the team six years, the last four as a starter. He was all0district all four of those years. He fashioned a career batting average of .310.
As previously mentioned, three of those Lou Kendall-coached roundball teams on which he started won the regional All-A championship. In his freshman and senior seasons, Kendall’s teams reached the All-A Final Four, and D.J. Quarles was a big reason why that happened.
After all these accomplishments as a high school athlete, D.J. earned a spot on the University of Kentucky roster as a wide receiver under Coach Joker Phillips.