By: Mike Harper
In the game of football, the dream of every lineman is to score a touchdown. 2025 Fannin County Sports Hall of Fame (FCSHOF) inductee, David “Chip” Nichols toiled in the trenches for the East Fannin High School (EFHS) Wildcats from his freshman season in the fall of 1962 until completing his eligibility in the autumn of 1965. He realized a lineman’s dream on the evening of August 27, 1965, when he tackled a Hayesville, North Carolina, running back with such force that the runner coughed up the football in his own end zone. Chip pounced on the pigskin for a touchdown helping East Fannin earn an 18-7 victory. Chip made more than 15 tackles in the game that he remembers as “the best game of my career.”
Chip says that “football at East Fannin my four years was somewhat disappointing.” EFHS was a small school with generally around 200 students in grades nine through 12. Finding enough bodies to field a football team was always a challenge. The won-loss records reflect that difficulty.
During Chip’s four-year career, the Wildcats only tasted victory five times. Chip Nichols, however, was an outstanding athlete who could compete with the best opposition around.
Chip grew up in Mineral Bluff and attended elementary school there. Mineral Bluff did not sponsor a football team, so Chip donned football pads for the first time when he arrived at EFHS. Playing the game was a learning experience for him, and he learned quickly. He was named the team’s Most Improved Player as a sophomore, Best Lineman as a junior and Most Valuable Player as a senior. Following his senior season, he was named to the Atlanta Journal Constitution Class B All-State Honorable Mention team, and Copperhill radio station WLSB honored him as the Most Valuable Football Player at EFHS. Chip says that “being named all anything was a huge accomplishment from a team without a winning record.”
The absence of team success for Chip in football, however, did not carry over to his basketball career. He began playing basketball at Mineral Bluff Elementary School and, at the beginning of his seventh grade season, Kenneth Wood came to the school to teach and coach the basketball team.
Chip describes Wood as “a young, energetic, athletic coach who enjoyed playing, teaching and coaching young men and women how to play the game of basketball. He enjoyed playing himself, and the gym seemed to always be open.”
Chip was joined on the roster by fellow Hall of Fame member Morgan Arp, Johnny Rogers and Dale Buchanan, and these four young men would play together throughout their elementary and high school careers.
During his eighth grade year, Mineral Bluff had an undefeated season. They defeated teams from Epworth, Blue Ridge, Colwell, Morganton and perennial power McCaysville by lop-sided scores. The McCaysville teams were coached by the legendary Clyde Henry, another member of the FCSHOF. The exclamation point of the season came in the county tournament championship game with a resounding 53-17 thumping of McCaysville. The future of EFHS basketball was bright as the four Mineral Bluff boys arrived there to start their next-level careers in the autumn of 1962.
Chip and his Mineral Bluff teammates were met at EFHS by first-year coach Ron Ely. Chip describes Ely as “another young, energetic, passionate coach who had a stellar career as a player at Tennessee Wesleyan College.” Ely would stay at EFHS for three seasons that were the halcyon days for boy’s basketball there. His first two teams, 1962-’63 and 1963-’64, produced win totals of 15 and 18 games, setting the stage for great things in 1964-’65, the junior season for Chip.
He had good size, standing 6 feet 1 inches and weighing a solid 185 pounds. He played inside leading his teams in rebounds and scoring at an eight points per game clip. He counts the 1965 victory over archrival West Fannin as the biggest thrill of his basketball career.
On the night of January 15, 1965, the EFHS Wildcats dominated West Fannin to the tune of 65-41, snapping a nine-game losing streak to the Yellow Jackets dating back to the 1959-1960 season. EFHS went on to finish the season with 22 victories and only five defeats. A loss to North Gwinnett in the Region 4B tournament denied the boys their first trip to the state tournament.
Ron Ely moved on to Sylva-Webster before the 1965-’66 season and was replaced by veteran Coach Jack Myers, another member of the FCSHOF. Chip describes the coaching change as follows: “A comparison would be like taking Tom Foster, the great West Fannin coach away from his 1963 to ’64 region championship team. Jack Myers, a great man himself, was named head coach. There was the normal adjustment to coaching philosophy and with running a different offense and defense. Myers was a good replacement in an unusual, last-minute hire.”
The 1965-’66 EFHS team, led by the Mineral Bluff foursome of Nichols, Arp, Rogers and Buchanan, split the regular season games against West Fannin and went on to win the Region 4B Sub-Region title with a victory over Towns County in the tournament. In the overall Region 4B tournament, the Wildcats defeated Jefferson and Lithonia before dropping the championship game to Oconee County in a game played at the Oconee County gym. The runner-up finish propelled EFHS to their first, and only appearance in the state tournament. The team finished with an overall record of 25-7. This team was inducted into the FCSHOF in 2023.
Chip was elected as the Most Athletic senior boy in the EFHS graduating class of 1966. He was a student leader, serving as a class officer each year and holding membership in the Key Club and Big E Club.
Chip went on to graduate from the University of Georgia earning a BBA in Management. While in Athens he met his wife of 54 years, Nancy Carroll Nichols. He was introduced to Nancy by his friend Don Clement, another EFHS graduate and charter member of the FCSHOF board. He worked with the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a district director in Commerce, Georgia, for 40 years. He and Nancy continue to make Commerce their home. They have two grown children, Brent and Ashley, and five grandchildren.
Chip and Nancy love spending time with their children and grandchildren and are avid Georgia Bulldogs football fans. They also spend a lot of time traveling, Chip can boast of having visited all 50 states with North Dakota as the last state visited. Before COVID-19 travel restrictions, his travels took him to Argentina, Italy, France, Scotland, Costa Rica and Africa–pretty heady stuff for a country boy from Mineral Bluff.