11/18/11
We were eager to get started on the 1969 season. We wondered if the hard work would pay off. We would know shortly. We practiced hard for the next two weeks before our first game against Oak Grove, Louisiana. We had never played them and didn't know much about them. The coaches told us they were a good team -- expected to do well in their district. As I recall, they had already played a game and had won. They came to Our Field to play us. The excitement was high, and we were ready.
In the early years of the Colonels, team captains were chosen for the year. I'm not sure when the tradition changed, but by the time I was in high school, the captains were chosen for each game. We would vote for captains on Thursday after practice. Only seniors could be selected as a captain. I knew that at some time during the year I would be selected; the honor tends to get rotated among the seniors so that all the seniors would be captain at least once. There were only nine seniors on the team.
Our school colors were red and gray. On game day we would dress in our red blazers -- we looked sharp. The tradition of the red blazers had started many years before. The Booster Club had purchased red blazers for use by the Colonels initially, I believe, but they were also used by the concert choir and other groups when representing the school at functions. Colonels were issued a blazer before the first game and we showed up in dress shirts and tie on game day. We were winners and were expected to look like winners. During the day, the cheerleaders would track us down and pin a gray paper Colonel with our names and jersey number printed on it. There were 34 Colonels on the 1969 team.
Pep rallies at RFHS were exciting. For home games, the rallies were held at the end of the school day. For away games, the team departure dictated the time of the pep rally. It was not unusual to have a pep rally in the morning if we had to travel a great distance to play. It didn’t matter what time of the day they were held; they were always exciting!
The high energy level that had begun that summer was reaching a fever pitch. Friday, September 5, 1969, finally arrived. The first game of the 1969 Colonels season would be played that night. The pep rally was held last hour of the day. The whole student body was in the auditorium waiting for the Colonels to enter. As soon as the first player broke the plane of the door, the entire room seemed to erupt in cheer! To this day remembering that thrill of entering a pep rally sends chills up my spine. If I close my eyes, I can hear the band playing Hail to the Victors and the cheerleaders leading cheers. Shortly before the end of the pep rally, one of the cheerleaders would announce who the captains for the game would be. For this first game, it was Libby Jones who announced the captains. She read from a slip of paper and said, "The captains for the game tonight will be 'Skunk' Burns and Tom Griffing." I was stunned! I knew I would have my chance to be captain eventually. I just never expected to be a captain in the first game. It was a tremendous honor to me. The first pep rally of the 1969 season ended and we marched out. I knew this would be an awesome year.
We headed back to the gym for our pre-game routine. Typically, we would change into shorts and tee-shirts and lay on mattresses on the gym floor. This was to be quiet time to focus on the assignment before us and to rest. Some were able to take a nap; I was too nervous to sleep. I kept wondering if I would be able to block my man. I had worked hard, but I had never been in a varsity game when it counted. The prior two years, I had played very little. I wondered if I would be the weak link. At our Dedication Night, I had promised my teammates and the coaches that I would do my best; would that be good enough? Some of my teammates probably were having the same thoughts. We all wanted the entire community to be proud of Colonels Football this year. We did not want to disappoint the fans, the school, or the coaches. More importantly, we did not want to disappoint each other. We were as close to our teammates as we were to our families. I do not remember any discord on this team. We were a team! We were winners! We were Colonels!
It was time to start getting ready. We loosened up and stretched and started getting dressed. I was nervous. I suspect that others were nervous too. We went to Our Field for pre-game warm-ups. The stands were already full of excited fans and they cheered as we took the field. It was a hot and humid Mississippi Delta night. We did exercises. We ran some drills. The coaches had us gather in the end-zone to run some plays. We didn't run our normal plays that we would use in the game. Coach Robertson had us run our spread formation and throw some passes. The Oak Grove coaches were watching us. Coach was toying with them -- showing a formation we would not use at all during the game. After running a few plays, we left the field to gather for Coach Robertson's brief motivational speech and team prayer. This was a warm night, so we had gathered a short distance from the field. "Amen" arrived, and we let loose a unified cheer. Then we entered the field. The cheerleaders always painted a giant Colonel that leaned against the goal post. We would burst through and run onto the field. There were six cheerleaders and they would generally run onto the field with the first six players to burst through. Guys who dated cheerleaders would try to make their way to front of the line to run along with their girlfriends.
Tom and I walked out to the center of the field for the coin toss. We shook hands with the Oak Grove captains. They didn't look so big. They were about the same size that we are. I was still nervous. The visitors got to call heads or tails for the coin toss. They loss the toss! We got to receive the opening kickoff. In 1969 the Colonels won the coin toss 10 straight games. For every home game, the opponents called it incorrectly and for every regular season away game, we called it correctly. Colonels were winners, even on the coin toss!
We received the kickoff and started our drive to the end zone. It only took a couple of plays and a few blocks and I was no longer nervous. We were opening holes and Doss was running wild. He was caught from behind several times. Doss was quick and could read the hole well, but he was not fast. He piled up the yards that night. I mentioned it was hot and humid. We had several players who went down with leg cramps at different times. After one play, there were three players who were suffering with cramps. When there were just a few seconds left in the third quarter, we had the ball on the 3-yard line and were ready to score. We would not have time to get the play off and would have to jog to the other end of the field. We were just too tired to do that. I called timeout. That was what a captain is supposed to do, or so I thought. We scored on the last play of the third quarter and avoided the jog to the other end of the field.
We won that game 35 - 0. I was reminded by one of my teammates that an Oak Grove player suffered a horrible injury to his leg. I remembered him being carried off the field. I do not know how or why it happened, but we were told that he lost his leg because of the injury. It was demoralizing to a high school football player when something like this occurred. We wanted to win, but we wanted our opponents to come through the game unscathed. As bad as this was, it was not the worst thing to occur during the 1969 season.
Our coaches were furious with us. I got an ear-full on the sideline for calling the timeout. After the game, Coach Robertson was very critical -- we were not in shape and it showed on the field. We were practically a disgrace to the Colonel uniform. I wanted to say, and I assume others wanted to say, "But, Coach, we won the game! They didn't score and we scored 35 points." No one spoke up. Practice on Monday was the worst ever. The coaches were going to get us in shape. We practiced longer and harder than we ever had. We didn't finish practice until 7 pm. I wasn't sure I understood the coaches’ dissatisfaction with our performance. It was a very hot and humid night. Cramps are normal. We gave our all. Maybe they just wanted to keep us from getting an inflated ego from an easy win. There were nine more games to play, and we couldn't “rest on our laurels.” That was a favorite expression of Coach Cain. That must have been it. There is no other satisfactory explanation.
Our next game was at home against Leflore County, a DVC team that we played every year. Two years earlier, they had tied us on Our Field. In 1968, we narrowly escaped with a one-point victory. Traditionally, this team had proved to be a very tough opponent. This year, however, we were ready and excited to open conference play against them. In the Oak Grove game, we had great success with our running game. I don't remember us throwing a single pass. But against Leflore County, we threw four passes; they were all play-action passes that were thrown after faking our best running play. Three of the passes were completed for touchdowns, and the fourth was dropped; it should have been a touchdown. Nonetheless, we won the game 42 - 0.
A Leflore County player was injured on the far sideline when he was tackled. He stayed down. We later heard that although he had a severe headache on the bus ride to the game, he did not tell his coaches. He told the player sitting next to him not to tell; he didn't want to be kept out of the game. He died from his injuries. We were devastated. The Colonels went to Itta Bena for the funeral. The church was over-flowing. We just stood outside to pay our respects. Many of us were so shaken by his death that we didn't know if we wanted to continue with the season. There was discussion among the players about just canceling the rest of the season. Those were just temporary thoughts. We vowed to continue so we could be the best we could be.
The next week, we would play our first away game against Cleveland. We had great success the week before passing the ball. Three touchdowns passing! I don't think we threw a pass against Cleveland. After one punt, we started a drive on the five-yard line. We ran "Drive-4" thirteen times in a row and drove the entire length of the field to score. After we had run the play three or four times, I could hear the Cleveland safety shouting to the other defensive backs to watch for the fake. They were not cheating up to stop the run. Their coaches had told them that the minute they cheat up to stop the run, it will be a fake and a pass over the top for a touchdown. They slowed us down some. We won the game 27 - 0. We had played three games and had not been scored on. And, we had scored 104 points in those games. An interesting sidebar is that the 1970 yearbook has the scores for the first two games reversed. This wasn’t a problem, but caused a little confusion when I was trying to research. Nonetheless, Colonels were winners.
During the next three games our opponents scored one touchdown each game. We beat Coahoma County 20 - 7 on their field. They were good; the Colonels were better. Then, Leland came to play on Our Field. We had lost to them the last two years. They broke the unbeaten string on Our Field in 1967. We could not let that happen again. We prevailed 13 - 6. It was our toughest game so far. For the next game, we went to Indianola to play and won 34 - 7. We had played six games in six weeks and had a bye week following the Indianola game. We needed the break. Our next game would be against South Panola. They had lost a game to Coahoma County, but they had a lot of talent and were explosive. It would be our biggest test.
Up until this point, this season had been everything we expected and more. That energy that we began to feel over the summer had really turned into something as the season ensued. On the scoreboard, we had been awesome. There had been devastating moments with players on the opposing sides, but we continued to stay the course. It was obvious that the Colonels were winners, and the expectations for this season were especially high. This final season was only about a half complete, but it was proving to be noteworthy. As we moved into the next phase, that would be even more evident.
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