Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 10, 1993 TAG: 9310110357
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RAY COX STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
They sloshed around in the muck at Cary Field at The College of William and Mary, did the 1973 Patriots of Patrick Henry High School in that soggy December matinee, and they kicked poor Lafayette's tail halfway to Virginia Beach. The final score was 23-0, and that was probably a reasonable measure of the difference in the two teams, Lafayette's future NFL running back Ron Springs notwithstanding.
Glenn Holland, the Patriots' all-state halfback who game after game would gobble antacids to calm a churning and nervous stomach, finally let loose and showed some real emotion. He cried.
The PH players, noted for their businesslike approach to their tasks, showed remarkable levity in the second half. Players recalled years later that they were kicking mud back and forth in the huddle.
Mostly, though, these fellows booted opposing rear ends, and they weren't gentle about it. Thirteen games, 13 victories, 10 shutouts, one state Group AAA championship trophy. Nobody from Roanoke had won a state football crown since Jefferson High School did it in 1957. Nobody after PH has done it since.
The 1973 Patriots weren't particularly big - at 226 and 225 pounds respectively, tackles Dyke Wood and Tommy Sexton were as large as PH had to offer - nor were they very flashy. But the sort of football excellence that they represented has not been duplicated in the Roanoke Valley, nor is it likely to be.
"If there was a better team, I'd hate to see it," said former Roanoke World-News sports editor Bob McLelland, who knows more of the city's sports history than anybody alive.
There was a reunion of the team over the weekend in Roanoke. They met and attended PH's 24-7 victory over E.C. Glass on Friday night, and they gathered to dine and toast each other's health and continued prosperity Saturday night.
Certainly, it was one of the great teams in state history. The 1971 T.C. Williams team - which crushed a terrific Andrew Lewis team quarterbacked by Eddie Joyce Jr. 27-0 in the title game at Victory Stadium - was cited as the most magnificent team ever in the Washington, D.C., area by the Washington Post. If those Titans were not the best ever in the state, then they were among them, and they had one fewer shutout than did the '73 Patriots.
Funny, therefore, that when then-PH coach Merrill Gainer was asked whether it was the best team he ever coached, his answer came swiftly and decisively.
"Oh, no, I can't say that," said Gainer, 80, who was prevented by poor health from traveling from his home in Shepherdstown, W.Va, to the reunion. "I was fortunate to have had four West Virginia state champions before I ever came to Patrick Henry from Bluefield High. But I will say that Patrick Henry was one of the best."
Several of the PH players got a good laugh out of that. So what else is new? Gainer was a crusty cigarette-smoking son of the West Virginia coalfields who didn't drop compliments lightly then, so why should he now?
Fact of the matter was, some of the Patriots thought the previous year's team, the one that went 10-1 and lost to E.C. Glass in the opening round of the playoffs, was superior to the squad that won the state.
"Athlete for athlete, we were better the year before," Sexton said. "No question."
Perhaps that was true, but the loss to Glass changed everything.
"It was a bitter, bitter defeat," said Rick Harman, an all-state defensive back.
The '73 Patriots came back with a frightening resolve, and it showed. They may have gotten an idea of what they were capable during a film session after the third game of the season, a 41-0 victory over Cave Spring. Gainer's film sessions were deadly serious affairs. Players paid attention and kept their mouths shut. The coach insisted.
In the middle of that session, Gainer stopped the projector and said to the seated congregation in the darkened room: "In all my years of coaching, I've never had a better defensive team."
"We were in awe," Harman said.
So was the enemy that was limited to a puny average of 2.8 points per game. PH only gave up 28 points all year, 14 of that to William Fleming. Led by defensive back David Klein's 12 interceptions, the Patriots picked off an astounding 35 as a team. Gainer said his secondary - Klein, Harman and Harman's brother Mark - was "a dream."
Defensively, PH was more like a horrific nightmare. The takeaways didn't stop with interceptions. PH had 17 fumble recoveries and a safety. The boys could play. Three playoff opponents knew. The Patriots outscored them a composite 49-0.
Unreal.
"We played 90 percent of the game in the other team's backfield," linebacker Shannon Delaney said. "[Linebackers] Randy Dickey, Lewis Neal, [nose guard] Barry Campbell - those guys were quick as [anything]. They'd run circles around people."
Campbell made the all-state team, too. Pretty good for a lineman who was 5 feet 9 and 168 pounds. He wasn't much bigger than defensive ends Lewis Hale (5-9, 150) and Mike Airheart (5-8, 168), who seemed to play the whole season with a gash on the bridge of his nose that recalled the old no-face-mask, leather-helmet days.
Bob Fisher - the strong and silent type whose father Richard was the team doctor - Delaney, Dickey and Neal were a ferocious corps of linebackers. Dickey led the team after being in on 98 tackles, one more than Campbell. A contemporary news account dubbed Dickey "The Silent Destroyer," and his teammates savaged him unmercifully the rest of the season as a result.
Sexton, the defensive player of the year, teamed with Brian Elswick at tackle. Gainer later would say of Elswick, "He did a much better job than his coach gave him credit for."
PH kept it simple offensively, and perhaps that is the reason the unit always was overshadowed by its defensive counterpart. Still, the Patriots averaged more than 35 points per game. Basically, the line of tackles Wood and Elswick, guards Dennis Austin and Sexton and center Jim "Raider" Andrews pushed people all over the field.
"With the line we had, anybody could have done a good job," Holland said. "They made it easy."
Holland, who gained 1,075 yards for the year, was being overly modest, but the point is well-taken. He and Fisher, the fullback, were forever running through holes that would welcome a stampeding herd of cattle.
Not that the Patriots couldn't pass when the situation called for it. Quarterback Donnie Smith threw for 620 yards and 10 touchdowns while completing 51 percent of his tosses.
Nothing was left to chance. Gainer and his coaches Willis White - the current Salem head coach - Sherwood Kasey, John Land and Wayne Dodson put in 16-hour days and asked only slightly less of the players. Workouts - particularly weight-lifting and agility drills - carried through the year. Two-a-day late summer practices were particularly grueling.
"Whenever I smell wet grass, I remember having to put a wet uniform back on when we came back in the afternoon," Dickey said.
During the season, there wasn't a lot of contact in practice, but the precision drills went on and on. Thursdays, there would be tests in which the players had to recite, from memory, the height, weight, class, number and position of every player on Friday's opponent's roster. Wrong answers resulted in penalty laps of running.
The night of the game, there were Marine Corps-style dress inspections. Shoes had to be polished, shoelaces bleached white.
"You didn't have your shirttail out, you didn't have your socks pulled up to your knees," Delaney said. "You looked good. You looked like you knew what you were doing."
The players themselves were tough, period. They were the cream of the school's athletes - there was no junior varsity - and there were only 36 of them. Six or seven never left the field. Delaney played 12 of the 13 games with a torn anterior cruciate ligament on his left knee and a torn rotator cuff - a practice unheard of today. He sat out the one game when he couldn't stand it. Sexton had a sore knee all year long and missed only one game when it suddenly occurred to him that he couldn't walk. By the end of the season, the training room looked like a big-city emergency ward on Saturday night.
Somehow, you just couldn't keep them off the field.
"I wish I had it to do all over again," Sexton said. "Hell, yes."
by CNB