The astonishing 131-game winning streak established by the Wayland Baptist Flying Queens from 1953-57 was made possible by such players as Ruth Cannon, Lometa Odom, twins Faye and Raye Wilson, Rita Alexander Colman and Alice “Cookie” Barron, among others. Legendary coach Harley Redin also has been deservedly credited for overseeing much of that record-breaking streak. However, one person who hasn’t always garnered his due accolades for the Flying Queens’ incredible run of success during the program’s early years is Coach Caddo Matthews.
 
Matthews was coach of the Hutcherson Flying Queens when the first of those 131 victories – a 51-31 win over Dowell’s Dolls – was recorded in the 1953-54 season-opener. Matthews went on to coach the Flying Queens to 52 victories without a single loss over the next two seasons as the Flying Queens recorded the first two of an eventual 10 Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) championships.
 
Redin, who was coaching Wayland’s men’s basketball team at the time before later leading the Flying Queens for 18 seasons, remembers Matthews arriving at WBU “from a fairly small high school in the Panhandle.”
 
“He had been coaching in high school and did well,” Redin said.
 
Matthews’ teams continued to do well – very well, in fact – at Wayland.
 
It’s not as if the Flying Queens weren’t having success before Matthews came aboard. The year before his arrival, the 1952-53 Flying Queens went 34-4 under Coach Sam Allen and finished as AAU national runner-up, falling to Hanes Hosiery in their final game, 36-28. The Flying Queens also finished second in the AAU in 1950-51.
 
But the Flying Queens began to take it to a whole other level with Matthews’ hiring.
 
Matthews’ first season was just the sixth in Flying Queens’ program history. The team won all 29 of their games that season, the last a close 39-38 victory over the K.C. Dons. That game preceded four exhibition contests – three wins and a loss – that did not count on the team’s official win-loss record.
 
“He got along with the players real well,” Redin recalled of Matthews, who also served as a preacher in addition to his basketball coaching duties. Redin said Matthews stressed fundamentals. “He made sure they knew how to dribble, pass and shoot. He was a stickler for that.”
 
Redin said Matthews also emphasized playing as a team.
“He had good team spirit and taught them to work together. The players liked him,” Redin said. “He just did a good job and was a likeable person.”
 
Alice “Cookie” Barron, an all-American for the Flying Queens in 1957, played one season under Matthews.
 
“Caddo was my coach the first year I arrived at Wayland in the fall of 1954-55,” she said. “We had two sets of twins on the squad that year, the Cannons (Ruth & Ruby) and the Wilsons (Faye & Raye).”
 
Barron didn’t get to play as much as she hoped she would as a freshman…at least not early in games.
 
“I rode the bench the first year, as did the other two newcomers. We always told the starters to hurry and run up the score so we could play, and they did just that,” Barron said.
 
Playing teams such as Clarendon Junior College, Texarkana Junior College, the Atlanta Crosbyettes and then-rival Nashville Business College (the team that eventually ended the Flying Queens’ 131-game winning streak in 1958), the Flying Queens won almost all of their games by convincing margins, including a lopsided 102-20 victory over Cadenhead in the first contest in which the Flying Queens reached the century mark.
 
During Matthews’ initial season at Wayland, the Flying Queens faced competition from teams including the Woodward Motorettes, Denver Chevrolet and the Tandy Leatherettes. Their most lopsided victory that season was a 71-12 thumping of Graham-Hoeme.
 
“I can only think of one quote from Caddo that we all never forgot and quoted him quite often,” Barron recalls. “Caddo had some team meetings in a classroom and his quote was, ‘I feel just like the gunslinger (because) everybody is after us.’ We all frequently called ourselves ‘the gunslinger.’ We sure spun off that and had fun with it.”
 
Matthews left Wayland after just two seasons. Redin believed he went to coach at “a small school in the San Angelo area. I think he had a church down there, too.”