Founding Citizens
Piggs helped put MHS basketball on map

Stacy Barnes

Not all of the people who have made an impact on Mustang have been here since the Land Run. In fact, Bob and Mona Pigg have lived in town a relatively short time compared to some of our other featured founding citizens.

The couple moved to Mustang in June of 1974 when Bob took a job as a teacher and coach at the Mustang High School. Bob had retired as a Master Sergeant from the Air Force after 20 years in the service and was ready to start his second career. Up until that time he and his family were living in Del City while he worked at Tinker Air Force base.

Mona was a teacher at the Mid-Del schools and she wanted to stay, but Bob said there were no positions available for an inexperienced coach, so they made the decision to leave. Mona was able to get a job in Mustang teaching sixth grade math at Mustang Middle School, which was the only middle school in town at that time.

“They used to call us ‘Happy Land’,” she said. “Because it was a wonderful place. We had a wonderful principal (Mr. Berry) and I’d never been in a school system where everything was for the kids. If there was anything that you wanted to enhance your teaching for the kids—someone saw to it that you had it.

“That kind of support makes for everyone being happy in their job. Really it was the most wonderful experience I’d had.”

The Piggs said the town looked much different when they first moved into their house in the Lakehoma Addition.

“They had just gotten in the Dairy Queen,” Mona said. “The building that used to be a Chinese Restaurant (on Highway 152 - it is currently vacant) was it. That was the big deal to get the Dairy Queen. And everything was in the shopping center behind there.”

She and Bob remember the post office and a grocery store being in the strip shopping center behind the Dairy Queen and vacant fields across the street with just a couple of single houses. Up the road where the tag agency is now was a dress shop and in the eighties, a sporting goods store was somewhere close to the old Larry’s store.

“Mustang Road was a dirt road when we moved here we had to come up Morgan or Highway 92 into town,” Bob said. “It was very difficult to tell people how to get to Mustang if you didn’t send them on a dirt road.”

Bob says his first impression of the town was that it was a “real nice bedroom community”. Their son Keith might have thought differently when he saw the size of their new yard.

“When we moved out here we had bought the house and he hadn’t seen it and I said, ‘Keith, you’re not going to believe how big the yard is’,” Mona said. “We had a push mower and when opened that gate he couldn’t believe it. I’ll never forget the expression on his face. And as long as he was here and mowed the lawn it was a push mower, when he graduated and Bob mowed, he got a riding lawn mower.”

The yard not withstanding, Keith had been one of the reasons the Piggs moved out to the area.

“The big thing wasn’t just Bob’s employment,” Mona said. “Keith was looking forward to coming out here and playing at a smaller school, and they had basketball all the time whereas in the larger schools they just had basketball during basketball season, no opening the gym and all that. Here it was a year around thing, they would have games on Sundays.”

“We were kind of two on one on Mona there,” Bob added.

“Yes, I was outnumbered, but it was the best thing that ever happened to us because it has been a wonderful ride,” she said.

Keith attended MHS his junior and senior years and graduated from MHS in 1976.

In 1974, both the Pigg’s first year to teach in Mustang, the school was ranked 2A, and by the time they retired in 1991 it was 5A. There were four schools in the district, Mustang Elementary, Mustang Valley, Mustang Middle School, and Mustang High School in 1974.

Bob started out with a variety of coaching positions.

“That first year I was a 40-year old rookie and I coached ninth grade football, ninth grade girls and boys basketball and ninth grade baseball, and scouted for high school football,” he said.

“I used to say that first year I’d have to go on these scouting trips to see him he was gone so much,” Mona added.

“After the first year the high school girls basketball job came open and they’d had five different coaches in six years and Mona Rae said ‘Don’t you dare take that. We want to live here a while’.”

It’s a good thing for Mustang that he didn’t listen, as he went on to lead the Mustang Lady Broncos to win several State Championships.

“It turned into a wonderful job for me,” Bob said. “I coached them for 16 years. The ten years of the 1980’s was a great time for us. We played in the state finals seven out of the ten years, won four state championships and three runners-up.”

“They used to call him ‘the coach of the eighties’,” Mona said. “Because we were always there, either winning the state championship or getting to play in it. When we won the first state championship that was the million-dollar thing. We won it two years running too.”

People in Mustang have always supported their sports teams and getting into a state tournament was a big deal around town.

“My second year I qualified for the state tournament we were getting ready to go and we have a police escort to take us to the state tournament,” Bob said. “And one of the girl’s on the bus said, ‘Oh my gosh, we are important!’ So Mustang girl’s basketball became important in 1977.”

Pigg’s teams were state champions in 1980, 81, 86, and 88. Both Bob and Mona retired in 1991 and that summer, Bob was named National Girls High School Coach of the Year at a presentation in North Dakota.

“It was really a big deal because he hadn’t been in it as long as most. It was his second career,” said Mona. “We were stunned and elated. That was the climatic ending to our teaching and coaching careers.”

During all the years her husband coached, Mona said she only missed one game.

“I taught at MMS, so I went to all the middle school games and our son played and I went to all of his games, so it really was a family affair,” she said. “The only game I didn’t go to was after Keith went on to be a coach, one of his first jobs was to coach the girls at McGuiness, and they played each other in a tournament and I drew the line on that. I could not go sit through that.”

Bob’s team won that game and Keith eventually quit coaching after 15 years. He is currently a teacher at Norman North.

Bob’s coaching experience isn’t limited to high school teams, after he retired, he also coached several Amateur Athlete Union (AAU) teams, which were summer league teams made up of girls from all over the state.

“I started the first team in ninth grade and went all the way through - when they went off to college, I started another one and coached them 3 years,” he said. “We won a National AAU and two BCI National Championships. And I got to coach the junior Olympics one year.”

Bob and his team traveled to Cleveland where they represented the state of Oklahoma in the junior Olympic competition.

The Piggs saw a lot of growth in the school system over the years. Bob said Mustang went from a 2A ranking to 5A between 1975 and 1986. He said people moved out to the area because Oklahoma City was busing students and because Mustang schools had a great reputation.

“We had a utility in our district that gave us additional funding to where we had the best teachers and the best facilities,” he said.

Bob and Mona celebrated their 49th anniversary August 3. Since retiring the couple say they are trying to see the world from a cruise ship as they have taken six cruises so far and are planning more in the future. They have seen a lot of changes in both the school and the community. Mona remembers that when they first arrived in town, the high school auditorium had just been completed and her first impression of the school.

“When we came out here it looked like a mini college campus,” she said.

Bob said they had the central, south, and PE buildings, and also the auditorium and covered walkways connecting some of the buildings. It was the second year for Mustang Middle School to be open. It was housed in what is currently Mustang Mid High School, or the ninth grade center. Middle schoolers had previously gone to the high school.

Mona remembers what it was like when industry started moving in close to their neighborhood.

“When we first got the 7-11 I mean the kids in the neighborhood just kept it hot walking down there. You couldn’t get out because they were going to the 7-11,” she said. “I mean that was a big deal for Lakehoma because if they had to walk, they had to walk to town.

“The closest thing was Curt’s. It has been there every since we have, and it was just kind of stuck off there by itself. I always thought it was kind of funny - the town didn’t come out that far and that (Curt’s) was just right there.”

Bob and Mona are charter members of the Mustang Christian Church. They helped organize the church after moving to the area. They said the church met in people’s homes at first, beginning in 1975 and then at the Lions Club building until they were able to build a church building.

Bob belongs to the Kiwanis and one of the past presidents, and Mona has served on the Character Education Board and the special committee that was formed to draft the Mustang School District’s religious policy following the nativity scene incident last year.

The couple said they have seen quite a few changes in the past 31 years in Mustang. Bob said the biggest one he has noticed is in the conveniences offered close by now.

“You don’t have to leave town to purchase something. We have a variety here now. The first year we had to go to Oklahoma City, even Yukon didn’t have much. The only thing you could get here was gas and groceries,” he said. “It’s grown up but it’s still a small town atmosphere.”

For Mona, the construction along the highway is what she notices.

“When I used to go down (Highway) 92 you were out in the country until I-40 and the biggest change for me is going down that highway and seeing all that construction and all that at the corner,” she said. “But the best thing out here moving from the city is the quiet and even though we have a lot more people, it is still very quiet. It was the best thing we ever did in our lives was move out here.”

Bob has been inducted to several Halls of Fame, including, the City of Mustang Hall of Fame, The Oklahoma Coaches Association Hall of Fame, and The Oklahoma Girl’s Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame.