High school football playoffs kickoff tonight. Now, we have seen so many great games and players over the years, but one game in particular was so big the stadium could barely hold it. Christology spoke to the coach and players that were part of it in this morning’s Daybreak Rewind Friday nights in Texas. It’s interesting being back our when memories are made. It’s kind of surreal, but 30 years ago it was just mayhem.
One Friday night sticks out amongst the others, people everywhere jumping over the walls. The Small 3A school in 1992, S Lake Carroll wasn’t yet a powerhouse, but coach Bob Ledbetter, linebacker Brian Nimphius and safety Jeff Kroy were laying the foundation. It seems surreal that we are part of it, right? And the fact that we may be the ground floor, so to speak, and three decades later we brought them back to Bedford, Pennington Field and that Friday night, people that come up to me that I don’t even know, and they say coach live better, we were at the Vernon, South Lake games.
This is the game you’ve been waiting for.
#1 S Lake versus #2 Vernon, a third round game everyone knew was the real state championship. The crowd that was here that night was people from all over the state of Texas, a crowd far above capacity spilling onto the field and on top of stadium walls. They came to me and said coach, we’re not letting anybody else in this stadium where the fire marshals locking the stadium. The back and forth battle lived up to the hype and with burn in just five yards from a possible go ahead touchdown in the final minutes, wide receiver didn’t make a good block on me. Nimphius made the deciding play and I remember just kind of going and essentially going right for the ball.
Dragons won 3935, then won the remaining three games by combined score of 172 to 7, claiming their second of now 8 football state titles. We helped build something that is not only still going, but. Arriving. Ohh, that’s a little rough. A memory that, like the program, has only grown stronger now as you look back through the hourglass of time.
God, it means so much more now than it did back then. In Bedford, I’m Chris sodeke. Our digital team spoke to many more players from both South Lake Carroll and Vernon and put together an oral history looking back at that game. You can read much more about the epic game from the people who were there at wfa.com, and I love how they say they appreciate it even more now.
Well, when you saw how large that crowd was and you know how many people were there, I imagine there’s a lot more folks that are like, yeah, I was there, I was there. I just wanna know who’s going to know..
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