They never cursed unless “shoot,” “dang,” “dadgummit” or “sapsucker” are considered vulgarities.

“I might throw a headset every now and then,” former Foley High School head football coach Lester Smith mused.

Smith — who quarterbacked the Lions’ 1961 undefeated state championship team with Kenny Stabler as his backup — was also known to hurl stingers at his longtime defensive coordinator Bud Pigott. Once during a locker room victory celebration, Smith awarded Pigott the game ball by delivering a projectile in close quarters. To Smith it was a completion but to Pigott it was an interception inches from his face.

“I had good hands,” said a grinning Pigott, who didn’t want to disappoint Smith by dropping the ball.

Neither dropped the ball during a remarkable 17-year span together, including the winningest 10-year era in a program that produced NFL superstars Stabler before them and Julio Jones after them.

Smith, 78, and Pigott, 80, will be honored Friday when the field at Foley’s Ivan Jones Stadium is named Lester Smith and Bud Pigott Field in a ceremony before a home game against Daphne. Smith is the all-time leader in wins at the school (127) and Jones, his high school coach who passed away last year at the age of 94, is second (108).

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“They say the guy who follows a legend usually doesn’t last, but we lasted,” Smith said. “I didn’t replace coach Jones, but I’m happy and proud of what we did. Of course, you’re never satisfied. You think you should win them all.”

Smith and Pigott never filled fields with raw talent they could shape into a juggernaut — just 21 of their players got football scholarships in 17 seasons, only three in the SEC — yet they routinely harvested bountiful victories in the highest class of Alabama high school football. They were 119-53-2 against a demanding schedule; their opponents had a cumulative .520 winning percentage.

Smith and Pigott weren’t ruthless unless you counted their impeccable film study. They extracted the tiniest flaws of their opponents, then Pigott instructed his players where plays would go and have them there to stop it and Smith would have them ready to run through spaces created by his machinations.

“It was almost written in stone how it was going to happen in a game just by how they broke down the film,” former defensive lineman Larry Blackmon said. “They were larger than life.”

“Made you want to play”

The soft-spoken and deeply religious Smith relished preparation and took pride in frustrating opposing coaches with play calls reminiscent of death by a thousand cuts. His planning was as precise as his arm — Smith habitually walked into the coaches’ office and hurled a pass from across the room through a crack in the back of a chair.

One sample of his cunning came in a 1983 game against B.C. Rain, which finished 8-2. Smith saw on film the Red Raiders’ defensive end and cornerback did not honor plays coming to the back side, then boldly proclaimed to his players moments before the game they would score on the second play. They did when quarterback Lewis Wilson faked a power to the play side, then bootlegged the other way 75 yards for a touchdown in a 14-7 victory.

“He’d cut their hearts out,” Pigott said of Smith.

Opponents not only dreaded facing the Smith-Pigott combination but also the generations of players who gave those coaches everything they had.

“A friend of mine from another school once told me, ‘The difference between playing at our school and playing at Foley is our coaches made us play. Your coaches made you want to play,’” former Lions defensive back Arties Roper said.

While their players respected their credentials — Smith was inducted into the Alabama High School Sports Hall of Fame in 2011 and Pigott played on national championship teams at Pearl River Junior College and Southern Miss — they responded just as well to how they were treated.

“We never cussed them and it was even a rarity to yell,” Smith said. “We treated them the way we would treat our own kids. They knew we were not phony. We wanted to get them to play to a certain standard. They wanted to win every game and they thought they could.”

But the players were made aware when they had not performed to those standards. Quarterback Anthony Kaiser said after a 38-13 loss to Enterprise in 1973, Smith made the team practice in full pads the next morning instead of watching the film.

“We went out and scrimmaged and everybody had to be in the pile at the end of each play,” Kaiser said. “One play, I saw coach Pigott pick up a 300-pound guy and put him in the pile.”

Doubts before success

Smith conceded he wasn’t mature enough for the Foley job when he was hired at the age of 25 in 1969 to succeed the iconic Jones, who won state championships in 1961 and 1962 with Smith and then Stabler at quarterback. Smith took a $500 pay cut in 1967 to leave his first coaching job in Hammond, La., and come home to join Jones’ staff. It was there that he met Pigott, a native of Picayune, Miss., who came to Foley in 1968 from a coaching job in Niceville, Fla.

After a mediocre 24-24-2 record in his first five years, Smith began doubting he could handle the task, particularly after 2-8 finishes in 1970 and 1973 (the only other 2-8 season in school history was in 1952).

“I was discouraged and didn’t know if I was going to make it here,” Smith said. “I was too young for the job and not ready. It was a scary time, an anxious time. But coach Jones and our principal (Oscar Rich) believed I could do it.”

After Wolfe City, Texas, High School courted Smith for two years, he accepted a second offer to coach there in 1975 while on the way back home from a trip to California.

“I should have waited until I got back home,” Smith said. “I made a mistake and I called them and told them we had changed our minds.”

A brush with history

Foley’s program under Smith and Pigott was boosted by two major changes — a switch to the 5-3 defense in 1971 and the wishbone offense in 1972 — and the Lions went on to go 84-20 between 1974-1983, the best 10-year era in school history.

Smith’s three SEC prospects in 17 years — Louis Dean (Alabama), Wilson (who had an offer from Auburn but went to East Carolina) and Herbert Casey (Auburn) — were all wishbone quarterbacks, although Casey was also a receiver.

The wishbone fit the Lions’ quickness in the backfield and didn’t require the offensive linemen to be overpowering, just effective. Smith was introduced to the wishbone when he and Pigott attended a 1971 clinic in Tuscaloosa that went down in history for what happened off stage.

Texas assistant coach Emory Bellard, considered the father of the wishbone, was the guest speaker and mesmerized Smith with its concepts. At the same time, Alabama coach Paul “Bear” Bryant was privately meeting with other Texas coaches about changing to the new offense.

“Unbeknownst to us, coach Bryant and his staff were huddled up with the Texas staff learning about the wishbone,” Smith said.

The wishbone launched Foley on an unprecedented era of success, although it required a couple of years for the changes to grow roots.

While the Lions’ wishbone wasn’t prolific — it averaged 20.7 points per game from 1972 to 1983 — it perplexed opposing defenses, usually got early leads and effectively controlled the tempo and the ball.

“I knew he was going to score,” Pigott said. “I knew (opponents) couldn’t defend that slant pass and the option.”

And Smith was confident Pigott’s defense could protect those leads.

“Bud Pigott felt talk was cheap,” Smith said. “There were a lot of 7-6 and 14-13 type of games and if we could hold them down like that, we’d score enough and you’re going to win a lot.”

In fact, Foley was 34-25-2 in games decided by one score or less during Smith’s and Pigott’s 17 seasons.

Master of defense

Pigott, who struck an intimidating presence but had a calm demeanor, excelled in creating leverage, mismatches, confusion and containment on defense.

“I grew up on a small farm in Mississippi and in grade school, before school, one of my jobs was to get the cows out of the field,” he said. “I wanted to give them only one way to go and it’s the same with leverage on defense. It’s basic football.

“People don’t contain any more, even in the pros, and it aggravates me. We worked on form tackling every day. We worked on keeping leverage. We would always come on an angle and give him only one way to go.”

In 17 seasons, Pigott’s defenses had 42 shutouts, at least one every year except 1973, and allowed 10.5 points per game. In nine of the years, the Lions allowed only single digits.

“Bud became a master of that defense,” Smith said.

Pigott used preparation and an ability to outnumber opponents at the point of attack to prevent cheap touchdowns. The center often had to choose to block up to three defenders.

“That center’s got a tough job,” Pigott said. “We’re going to take his confidence away. When he was challenged, we’d have a chance. Our defense had a little different flavor and we’d make small changes week to week. All the stunting and shifting, they couldn’t just fire off and hit us.”

Defining a player

All the years Smith and Pigott devoted to Foley football were not resented by their families. Smith’s wife Elaine and their children Keith, Kim, Jill and Leigh, and Pigott, his wife Claudia and their children Rusty and Rickey loved what their husbands and fathers did, even if it often caused anxiety.

“We’d go to games and me and my sisters would be cutting up in the back seat and my mother would say, ‘Get quiet, I need to think about the game. I’m nervous,’” Keith Smith remembered. “When we did lose, it always seemed like a death in the family. It’s because he worked so hard at it. He had no hobbies.”

But there was usually no need to worry because of how Lester Smith defined a Foley football player.

“Someone with a lot of heart who doesn’t necessarily have great ability but is hard-nosed and believes he can win any battle,” Smith said. “He’s confident and extremely tough, aggressive and never quits. He plays with tremendous heart and desire.”