FOOTBALL: Scott High defeats Duquesne Oct 10th, 1969 in a game right out of “Friday Night Lights”

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It was a perfect fall night, cool and crisp and the field was in relatively good shape for early October. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 3,500 rabid fans were in attendance that night. And this was not unusual for the football hungry steel town that was my hometown. Football was king at every level. Everyone turned out! It was part of the fabric and tradition of these small boroughs in the greater Pittsburgh area. Given the relatively small opportunities available outside the steelmills, football was one of the few ways working-class kids and their parents could level the playing field, succeed in life and experience a few minutes of fame. Here in North Braddock, one grasps the status of athletic prowess wherever you can find it, especially in a sport so defined by its “toughness.” And it was not always in the winning that it was defined. It was in the sheer brutality of it all unleashed on your opponents and the capacity for withstanding the brutality unleashed on you. Manhood was defined here.

In the fifth game of the season, we were to face Duquesne, a formidable foe led by John Braxton, a large fullback, who happened to be their leading rusher and middle linebacker. We were 3-1 going into the game as a “A” team. In the game from the prior week, we lost to Elwood City who was a “AA” club. But we were undefeated against “A” teams. Duquense was “A.”

We were led by a number of notables including our team captain and tough middle linebacker Denton “Butchie” Hunter, tailback Scottie Quick, quarterback Dale Cromling, and lineman Mark Gefert. There was also a junior by the name of Keith “Moto” Moore that had made quite an impression in camp and was a starting receiver.

Duquesne was winning 16-8 at halftime. But why the game became so memorable begins in the kickoff of the second half. To that point it was a back and forth game and from my perspective Duquesne had the momentum. Both teams line up and play out what in all likelihood seems like a routine kickoff. As the teams pick themselves up from the ground and begin the ordinary shuffling of players between changes in possession, one player remains on the ground towards the middle of the field. It is our star, Butchie Hunter.

He’s lying on the ground writhing in pain, holding his lower leg around the calf. Before the training staff can get onto the field and attend to him, a number of players from the Duquesne football team move to where Butchie is on the ground. And one of the players begins jumping up and down, arm raised in the air, yelling out a warrior whoop. At the moment he begins to do this, other Duquesne players closeby come together and do likewise. In seconds, the entire Duquesne team that was on the field are jumping up and down just over our fallen star player in a way that reminded me of a warrior dance.

The reaction on the part of our team was a combination of being stunned that a team would be so disrespectful of a player’s injury and rage that our opponents would taunt us in such fashion. Our team and the officials intervened pushing the players away from Butchie so the training staff could attend to him. His injury is serious and we find out later he has broken his leg and is lost for the season. Head coach Fran Rogel makes his way to me after visiting Butchie on the field and says, “We’re counting on you to fill some pretty big shoes. I know you can do it!” Butchie played right tackle on offense and I was his backup.

The shock of losing Butchie was beginning to wear off but the intensity of raw, powerful rage was just beginning. You’ve heard of the expression “emotional contagion,” where people experience and share similar emotional states. We were there. To a person on and off the field, we all began crying angry tears. And these were intense tears, tears of determination. In football as in life, there are times when someone can make you so mad that their size or ferocity cannot compare to the power you’ve unleashed, embraced as your own and direct it at an opponent. On defense it becomes a gritty steadfastness that does not permit any forward movement by an opponent. On offense, the line surge, blocks and forward movement by the running backs becomes a kind of juggernaut. As we approach the line of scrimmage to get set for the next play, we engage in trash talk to the Duquesne players. We tell them through these crazy tears, “You are all mine. You’re dead meat!” The Duquesne players were clearly rattled and intimidated by this ongoing display of intense anger and tearful grit and it lasts the entire third quarter. Our team scored 24 unanswered points. Keith Moore was responsible for two of those touchdowns, one on a pass and the other recovering a teammate’s fumble and rambling 51 yards. Scottie Quick had a strong performance scoring in the first quarter and then again as part of the overpowering third quarter surge. As the right tackle, I had ample opportunity to block for Scottie although I felt more like a shield as he shot through the gaps in front or behind me depending on where my body was relative to a defender. Duquesne scored a touchdown in the final quarter but it was not enough and the Scott High Raiders remained undefeated.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette summarized the game in the following day’s paper commenting, “It was pyrrhic victory for Scott.” This word “pyrrhic” was a perfect word to describe the game, partly due to the warrior dance as one definition of the word and the more accurate analogy to “Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, who defeated Roman armies at Asculum, 280 B.C.E., but at such cost to his own troops that he was unable to follow up and attack Rome itself, and is said to have remarked, ‘one more such victory and we are lost’” (dictionary.reference.com). The sports reporter’s comments were almost prophetic. Our team lost their remaining three games.

As far as my performance, it was mixed. Coach Rogel was full of congratulatory comments immediately following the game. But when he reviewed the tape, he shuffled the offensive line and used seniors to replace Butchie putting me back on the bench. I got another chance later in the season on defense. But regardless of the extent of my involvement, this remains the game I think of as the most exciting, riveting and emotional in my entire football career.

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Filed under Marriage & Family, Parenting & Kids, Stories from my Childhood

Tags: boys, football, Fran Rogel, life, manhood, pyrrhic, rage, sport, story, warrior dance