COLONELS FOOTBALL – Building a Dynasty

As I have said, Rolling Fork was a football school.  We were very successful.   We were the smallest school in the Delta Valley Conference.  How could we be so successful given our size?  We didn't win the conference every year, but we were close to the top every year.  During many games there would be more players suited up on the opposing sidelines than we had boys in the entire student body.   Our coaches always reminded us that it didn't matter how many players our opponent had in uniform, they could only put eleven on the field at a time. We could put eleven on the field, too.  If our eleven were better than their eleven, we would win.  And, win we did on a regular basis.  Other schools held tryouts for the football team.  We didn't have that problem in Rolling Fork. Any boy who was academically eligible, wanted to be on the team, and would dedicate himself to being the best he could be was welcomed as a Colonel.  This was a good thing for me.  I was not very good and would have been cut as a sophomore at any other school.

I often wonder what it was like in the first year or two of building the dynasty. Although the yearbooks from 1958 and 1959 show the football schedule, neither scores nor wins/losses are given.  I know that in 1960, the Colonels won eight games and lost to Leland in a championship game for the DVC title.  We had beaten Leland in the regular season, but lost this game 7 - 6.   We won eight games again in 1961 and went to our first bowl game played as Colonels, the Shrine Bowl. The Colonels made the whole community proud on that trip to Clarksdale by beating West Tallahatchie.

Things began to change as Coaches Dunaway and Mullins joined the staff in 1960.   I believe it was when they arrived that Coach Cain began to focus on coaching the junior high team and developing Colonels. As I look back, I’m reminded of players like the captains in 1960, Larry Jenkins and Eddie Touchberry.  Wayne Gardner, Don Windham, Bill Rochele and Don Hogue were some of the senior lettermen that year. This was their third year in the new school and they had an admirable season. There were others that helped to make football so memorable. The Colonels Band was led by Drum Major Joe Griffin. He was the only male to lead the Colonels band, and it was only that one year. Of course, he had majorettes like Grace Anna Moore, Cheryl Blanchard, and Ann Rodgers that added glamour to the band. And, how could you play football without cheerleaders like Ebbie Freeney, Sue Rodgers, and Sue Bonds? It was fitting that the Homecoming Queen was Lynda Cain, Coach Cain’s daughter.

As an elementary student, I always looked up to the big kids. Captains of the 1961 team were Howard Stokes, Owen Hoffman and Billy Adams.  I remember them and many others. There were thirteen senior lettermen on that team including Eddie Strickland, Kenner Day, Tommy Shropshire, and William Joe. This was their fourth year on the team. The Colonels Band was led by Drum Majorette Chris Lynch. I remember thinking it odd that there were two majorettes named Patsy -- Patsy Perry and Patsy Kiska.  The cheerleaders like Vicki Wade, Jane Bennett, and Lynn Schabillion had a new challenge this year. For the first time, they were joined by a Colonel mascot, Ken DeCell.  The Homecoming Queen that year was Sue Bonds.  

In less than four years, the new school was becoming a powerhouse.  One of the keys to the Colonels’ success was Coach Cain.  Coach Cain was not the head coach during my years.  He did not coach the high school team at all from about 1960.  He took 7th, 8th and 9th graders and prepared them to become Colonels.  Our junior high teams were even more dominant than our high school team.  We played Vicksburg and Yazoo City junior high teams, both much bigger schools.  When they came to Our Field, we won.  We may have lost to Vicksburg or Yazoo City on their field, but never on Our Field.  

Coach Cain was a father figure to many of us.  He was a man we could look up to.  He instilled discipline in unruly 12 and 13 year-old boys.  Coach Cain made us work.   He made us want to work.  He made us want to be better.  He instilled pride in us.  We were being groomed to be Colonels.  We wanted to be Colonels.  We wanted to be the best Colonels we could be because of Coach Cain.  We wanted him to be proud of us.  We grew up under Coach Cain's influence and watchful eye.  We were becoming men.  We would become better men because of Coach Cain.  When we became 9th graders we were a team that could take on bigger schools and take them to the wood shed.  We were dominant and ready to move on.  This is why Colonels were winners.

Another key to victory for the Colonels was the dedication of the players during the off season.  We had a fabulous weight room and used it to become better.  If you did not play other sports like basketball or baseball, your P.E. class would often consist of lifting weights and cross-country running during the off season.  If it was raining, a common occurrence in the Delta, we lifted weights.  If it was nice out, we would run for three miles or so.  We were always trying to get stronger and develop more stamina.  The summer would come, and it was time to slack off, right?  Not a chance.  The weight room continued to operate. In the summer we would come to the gym three days a week.  The city boys would go to lift weights during the early afternoons.  It is comical for me to refer to boys who lived in Rolling Fork as "city boys" since I have lived in cities like Honolulu, Miami, and Las Vegas.  But boys in Rolling Fork had to be contrasted with the "farm boys" who lived and worked on the farms during the summer months.  I was more like a city boy -- I did live in Egremont, after all.  I did not work on a farm.  I worked at "Burns Grocery" and could leave to go lift weights in the early afternoon. A lot of my teammates who lived in Rolling Fork would be there at that time.  Farm boys, on the other hand, came later.  They were dirty, sweaty, and dog tired from having worked outdoors since sun-up.  Still, they came.  They lifted weights to become stronger and better.  This was true dedication.  RFHS was a smaller school and the players had to work harder to keep up, but Colonels were in better shape throughout the year than players at other schools. This is why Colonels were winners.  

We also met to run on the track on off days.  In the spring of 1969, players were told we had to run a timed mile before football camp.  I don't remember this requirement in prior years.  Linemen had to run a mile in seven minutes or less.  Backs and ends had to do it in six.  I was a lineman.  A number of players had to try several times to meet their time.  We always wondered how some players ever made the time required.  Maybe when Doss Shropshire was running his laps, Coach Grayson miscounted and he ran only three laps, instead of four.  We don't know, because no one else was there. 

Brooks Lynch tried and failed in his first attempt to meet the requirement.  I ran and successfully completed my mile in under seven minutes.  I was a runner -- I liked to run -- I was good at it.  My time was five and a half minutes.  Brooks and I were friends, so I ran with him on his second try to pace him.  Coach Grayson was there to time Brooks.  He gave us our time on each lap.  I had a good sense of pace and knew what we needed to do with each stride to run a six-minute mile.  Brooks struggled more and more with each lap.  I wanted to grab a hold of his arm and drag him along faster.  On the last lap Brooks could not keep up the pace.  Our first three laps were exactly on a six-minute pace.  On the last lap we were going slower by a few seconds.  My hopes started sinking.  I knew we would not finish under six minutes.  Brooks had nothing left -- we could not sprint to the finish.  We reached the end.  Coach Grayson showed Brooks the stopwatch -- six minutes exactly!!!  Brooks had made it -- at least, according to the stopwatch.  I knew that Coach Grayson had punched the stopwatch a few seconds early to stop it on six minutes.  Brooks had given his all -- that's what was expected from Colonels.  At times, we thought the coaches demanded too much from us.  But we learned a valuable lesson -- the more that is expected, the more you can do.  We learned that if you give everything, you will accomplish far more than you thought possible.  This is why Colonels are winners.

I was a senior the final year of the Colonels dynasty.  Those of us who played then had inherited a program, a tradition, and Colonel Pride.  All we had to do was continue on the trail blazed by those earlier Colonels. This is why Colonels were winners.

August would roll around and football practice could commence.  Before the official start date, schools were not allowed to have any practices.  The first day of practice would be on a Monday.  For most schools, I assume they would show up for practice on Monday and begin.  Not so for the Colonels.  We would arrive at school on Sunday afternoon just after church. We would board school buses to go to "Football Camp" for the first week of practices.  I think the tradition of Football Camp started in 1960 or 1961 when Coach Dunaway arrived on the scene.  I am reminded of the movie, "Remember the Titans" about a football team in Virginia.  The setting was from the same era as Colonel Football.  They went to football camp and stayed in the dorms of a college near Gettysburg. They got their tails worked off in the movie.  Was this what football camp was like for the Colonels?   I have to laugh just thinking of that question.  We have all seen movies where things are so exaggerated that you know it didn't really happen that way.  It just couldn't happen that way.  In this movie, they had it easy.  In the reality of the Colonels, Football Camp near Grenada Lake offered very rustic conditions in the woods.  There were no luxurious college dorm rooms for us.  Instead, we were greeted with barracks housing lumpy bunk beds, primitive showers and toilets, and a Mess Hall that also included a TV and ping pong tables.   The food was . . .  I'm searching for the right words . . .  the food satisfied our need for survival.  Home cooking was one of the things we missed most.  

I may forget the exact order we would do things, but as I remember, before breakfast we would dress in shorts and tee shirts, grab our helmets, and load buses to take us to the practice area.  The practice area was adjacent to the lake, which was a man-made reservoir.  A large area had been dug out and the earth was used to build a levee to hold the water.  The area where the dirt had been removed would technically be called a borrow pit -- not a barrow pit like those along the side of roads. (We always called them bar’pits.) We would run drills and do conditioning for an hour then load up and go back to the camp for breakfast.  After breakfast, we would have an hour or so of free time to watch TV, play ping pong, or catch up on some sleep.   Then we would get ready for our second practice of the day.  At that time, we would dress in helmets, shoulder pads, and shorts and head back to the borrow pit. This practice would involve contact drills and lots of conditioning. 

As I have indicated, we would be practicing in a pit.  This pit had a large flat grassy area that was perfect for practicing.  But if you can envision a pit, even a large one, it must have an edge.  The edge to this pit was a levee.  Our coaches could not let such an attractive sloping hill go to waste.  At the end of practice we would run the hill.  This involved sprinting up this slope . . . over . . . and over!  Sprinting might not be such an accurate term for what we were doing.   We would start at the bottom and move up the slope as fast as we possibly could.  That was pretty slow for a lot of us.  It was not pleasant running the hill.  We ran the hill to end each practice.  We would be reminded that the boys from Leland were not running this hill; the boys from Cleveland were not running this hill; the boys from Grenada, who lived near here, were not running this hill.  It was our hill.  It belongs to the Colonels   Only the Colonels were running this hill.  This is why Colonels were winners.

After conquering the hill, we would load the buses to go back to the camp for lunch.  After eating, we had a couple of hours to do what we wanted.  Most of us slept.  We were dog-tired and needed to sleep to recover.  There was the third and final practice yet to come.  This practice was in full uniform with full contact.  We practiced until we were ready to drop, and we still had the hill to do.  We did it.  I don't know how.  I wanted to quit so many times but I continued one foot in front of the other up the hill and back down to do it all over again.  And finally, our coaches let us know it would be time to load the buses when we make it back to the top.  The last trip up would be at maximum effort, which for some, seemed like a crawl.  At the top, vomiting was not uncommon.  We got back on the buses, and there was silence.  Everyone was too tired to talk.  We got back to the camp.  Getting off the bus was hard.  I remember being too tired to take off my uniform and get in the showers right away.  But we had to get it done if we wanted to eat.   Being teenage boys we would recover rapidly, but we had worked our tails off.  It wasn't like the movie -- they had it easy in the movie.  This is why Colonels were winners.

If I recall correctly, during my senior year we had one practice called off because of rain, or it was shortened.  We normally practice in the rain; we play games when it is raining.  This event was quite unusual for a Colonels football team.  We don't normally let a little rain stop us.  But this was not a normal rain -- it was Hurricane Camille, or what was left of it.  There were high winds, torrential rain, and a threat of tornadoes. We had no access to news, but we knew there had been a hurricane. We did not know the extent of the devastation that had occurred along the Gulf Coast until Bill Marshall came up for Dedication Night.  You see, because of a severe allergy to poison ivy which was prevalent at camp, Bill Marshall did not attend the majority of football camp that year. When Bill arrived on Thursday evening he told us the “rest of the story” of the hurricane. We had Dedication Night on Thursday night and would dedicate ourselves to giving our all for the upcoming season.  Each year at camp, all individuals would make a solemn pledge to the other teammates to give 110% to a successful season.  We would stand in front of our teammates and make heart-felt promises.  There were misty eyes and outright tears.  We kept the promises we made.  This is why Colonels are winners.  

(by: Kenneth Burns)