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The Charlie Daniels Band song “South’s Gonna Do It Again” played at the start of many South Stanly baseball games for close to two decades.

The second line of the song’s first stanza, “Tucker boys are cookin’ down in Carolina,” could well have been applied since 2008 to the Rebel Bulls program because of the team’s coaching staff.

Terry Tucker and his brother, assistant coach Mark Tucker, built a high school baseball dynasty from their first season with the program, securing a legacy both in conference play and statewide.

The 2025 high school baseball season is Tuckers’ last one. Both have stated their plans to retire from coaching high school baseball.

“My mind has always been set that when my son, Trevor, graduated in 2022, that was probably going to be it,” Terry said. “I gave up football when he left, and I was just going to totally get out of coaching, but I told this group of seniors, who were freshmen at the time, ‘I will stay all the way through you.’ It would give me time to get somebody in place to take it over.”

The choice to retire, he added, was a feeling “when you get to the point that you feel like you are not doing what you need to do to reach the kid to get them to perform. I think that has always been my thing. If I feel like I can’t get them to really achieve what I want to achieve under the way I want to coach, then it’s time to pass the torch on to someone else.”

Terry played shortstop for the Colts before graduating West Stanly in 1986. He played college baseball at Campbell. He was coached in college by Mike Caldwell, who pitched in the majors for the San Diego Padres, San Francisco Giants, Cincinnati Reds and Milwaukee Brewers. Stanly County Sports Hall of Fame Member Tommy Smith also helped coach Terry in hitting clinics for Caldwell.

After college, Terry worked for 15 years with First Citizens Bank before contacting Scott Barringer, who was the athletic director for Cabarrus County Schools. The future South baseball coach was working at the Concord Mills office and asked Barringer about coaching opportunities.

Barringer said the head coach at Jay M. Robinson left the team midway through the 2005 season and asked if Tucker wanted to finish the season out, which he did.

His next opportunity came after sitting down and deciding he wanted to work with kids, being heavily involved in church youth activities as well.

Tucker said he “thought he could make an impact on kids in the classroom with my knowledge outside of the schools.”

Later on, David Wright, the head coach at Concord High School, told Tucker there was an open spot in either the business or career and technical education (CTE) departments.

Tucker coached two seasons at Concord where one of his coaching influences was someone he had grown up watching on high school football sports highlights shows: legendary football coach E.Z. Smith.

“E.Z. Smith is the most family-oriented man that there has ever been,” Tucker said.

Tucker was an assistant coach for Smith when the Spiders won a state football title in 2006.

However, Tucker said he saw quickly Concord was more of a football school than baseball, and he started talking with South Stanly athletic director Luke Little in the spring of 2008.

Little told Tucker the school’s previous head coach, Jeff Lamb, had left to start a team at Stanly Community College, and asked if he would like to come teach and coach for the Rebel Bulls, which he did starting in the fall of 2008.

“I always knew that the baseball was rich down here. I never thought in a million years I’d ever coach baseball down here,” Tucker said.

Tucker said he talked with some parents of seniors on the 2009 team, including David Poplin, the current softball head coach who himself has two state titles, and was the father of Ryne “Chuck” Poplin. He also mentioned speaking with future Charlotte 49er Wes Hatley’s father, Mike.

“I said, ‘We’ve got some players, but I didn’t think we had the players to win a state championship,’ ” Tucker said. “The biggest thing with those kids was that they bought into what we were doing, and they believed in themselves to do what it took to win it.”

With his brother Mark as an assistant coach and Derek Barringer as pitching coach, South Stanly went from a 13-11 record to a 25-6 mark and the school’s first 1A baseball state championship, sweeping the Topsail Pirates in the finals. Wes Hatley was named the series’ Most Valuable Player.

The 2009 team got contributions from every position in the lineup in some facet of the game, Tucker said.

South won back-to-back 1A state titles in 2012 and 2013, appearing in the state finals series five times in the seven-year span between 2009 and 2015.

“It was all about taking it one step at a time,” the South head coach said. “Think about the big picture.”

Tucker said it was important to bring members of the JV team along for the playoff runs “to see what it’s like to be at that level and play like that.”

He credits the support of many fathers of the players like Steve Wallace, Joel Starnes, Roger Ford and others, along with local coach and former minor league pitcher Paul Poplin, for working with the kids.

“Paul worked out a lot of those guys in the offseason…they would do weights. He worked with the pitchers to have them prepared,” Tucker said.

Regarding the parents, he credits them with many donations of both money and time to improve the baseball facility.

Working with his brother as an assistant coach, Terry said, has never been difficult at all, and added many people did not understand why he let Mark coach third base while he stayed in the dugout.

“I don’t give him signals. He knows my thinking in the situations that we get in, what I would do. We’ve always been on the same page, and that makes it a whole lot easier,” Terry said.

Mark Tucker said joining the South program in 2009 was “walking into a dream job that had athletes who were baseball athletes. They loved the game, and they put the time in. We just took what we had learned over the years…it was an amazing transition.”

Mark, who graduated from West in 1992, said he always told the players he was a ring chaser, adding, “once you win one ring, you want more rings. It’s tough because we’ve done this regiment for so long. It’s time to turn it over to someone else and take this new generation to a different level.”

As more of an outspoken coach, Mark said he always tells the players, “I’ll fight for you no matter what. I just want the fight out of you for me.”

The proof of the success of South Stanly Baseball during the Tuckers’ time with the program can be found in many spots in the state baseball record book.

South is one of only 15 schools who have won 30 or more games in a season, with back-to-back 30-win campaigns in 2012 and 2013.

South Stanly pitcher Russ Weiker, who pitched and was an assistant coach later at Catawba College, is tied for eighth all-time with 14 wins going 14-0 in the 2011 season. Weiker was named the MVP of the 2012 state series.

Another pitcher who played for the Tuckers, Sawyer Lee, ranks 24th all time in earned-run average for a season, 0.38 in 2015.

South Stanly has several individuals in the top 50 all-time in hits in a season, all coached by the Tuckers: Stephen Wallace in 2011 (tied for 22nd, 51 hits), Landon Fraley in 2011 (tied for 35th, 48 hits) and Poplin (tied for 47th, 47 hits). Wallace and Poplin also ranked tied for 13th and 18th in runs scored in a season with 49 (in 2011) and 48 (in 2009), respectively. Poplin was also named the MVP in the 2013 series.

Vance Deese, who played catcher for South from 2013 to 2016, is tied for 20th overall in the state with 31 career doubles.

But beyond titles and numbers, the Tuckers’ impact on the lives of the young men who have walked in and out of the South Stanly dugout can not be measured.

“We did not only talk baseball on the field. We talked a lot about life and choices. Still to this day, on the Friday before the prom, I always tell the kids to make a smart choice,” Mark Tucker said. “If they ever get in a situation anytime, not just prom, we are a phone call away…anytime in a situation where they need someone to understand, we’re there, but we’re going to hold them accountable.”

Not every child makes good choices, he added, and those “had to pay the price, but that’s just part of it. Kids have to learn, but we hold our kids to a high standard. When they wear South Stanly across their chest, they’re not just representing their family name. They represent their school, their community and Norwood. They’re representing a lot.”

The Tuckers are about family and those who played for them, including the current pitching coach, Bryan, a cousin to Terry and Mark.

JP Lisk, who currently works with the Bulls’ infielders, was on the 2009 championship team with his older brother, Matt, and was on the teams which reached the finals in 2011 and won in 2012.

Lisk was a freshman in 2009 and said he and his fellow freshmen in their four years did not really have to be fully coached.

“Ever since we played Dixie Youth (Baseball), we started there and we consistently worked together offseason, behind the scenes, and in season. The best thing I loved was we would come in during this season, throw the lights on and just hit in the cage,” Lisk said.

Lisk said his group was not one who had to be told to be somewhere in practice, adding, “we wanted to be somewhere. We knew what we wanted to do. We knew what we wanted to accomplish.”

Being a part of the team was not just about game uniforms either, Lisk said. He said the Tuckers wanted players to look alike in practice attire as well, the same cleats, etc.

“It was all centered around the team. I always took that from him; I know it’s old school, but I still preach that,” Lisk said.

Lisk also said players had their roles on the team, like Austin Smith, who filled in for him when Lisk took a ball to the face.

“If there was something that needed to help make the team better, we did that as a complete unit,” Lisk said. “If I took anything away from the Tuckers, it was the importance of team.”

The Tuckers donned the uniform for their last home regular-season game April 15 against Union Academy.

“It’s going to be tough for us. We have put so much time into it. A lot of people don’t see everything that goes into it. A lot of people just see the physical things when they walk up,” Mark Tucker said. “They don’t see how much time is put into developing a program and to keep it up, to keep it as successful as possible. But it will be tough to walk away…it will be hard.”