SPORTS
Thursday, September 15, 1983
Tracy Johnson (41) Blocks For Curt Pressley (11)
Curt Pressley (11) Finds Big Hole In Ashbrook Defense
Parker
Contest
Winner
Eddie Parker of 304 Somerset
Drive, Kings Mountain, forgot
to predict a tie-breaking score in
last week’s Herald football con-
test, but it didn’t matter. He cor-
rectly predicted 15 of 20 winners
of area high school and college
football games to edge out
several other contestants and
win the $100 prize.
Parker missed Ashbrook’s vic-
tory over Kings Mountain,
Shelby’s loss to Crest, Ap-
palachian’s loss to James
Madison, Boston College’s vic-
tory over Clemson and East
Carolina’s win over N.C. State.
Other winners last week in-
cluded East Gaston over South
Point, Cherryville over Burns,
Chase over North Gaston, East
Rutherford over R-S Central,
Hunter Huss over West
Mecklenburg, Mooresville over
Bessemer City, Lenoir-Rhyne
over J.C. Smith, Wofford over
Davidson, Indiana over Duke,
Alabama over Georgia Tech,
Maryland over Vanderbilt,
North Carolina over Memphis
State and Wake Forest over
VPI.
The third of 10 weekly con-
tests is inside today’s paper. Pick
the most winners and you will
pocket the next $100 check. Br-
ing us your entry by 5 p.m. Fri-
day, or mail it to Herald Football
Contest, P.O. Box 752, Kings
Mountain, N.C. 28086.
The sport of skiing is said
to have begun in Telemark,
Norway about 1860.
Now 10-4 On Season
Fearless Riding With
Raiders And Warriors
By FEARLESS
Fearless had backfires on
Kings Mountain over Ashbrook,
North Gaston over Chase, and
Hunter Huss over West
Mecklenburg last week.
Not too good, in other words.
I had a 5-3 week, giving me a
104 record on the season after a
5-1 opening week.
We had power failure at Ar-
rowhead Stadium last Friday
during a good football game bet-
ween East Gaston and South
Point, a game (following the
blackout) won by the Warriors,
20-10.
It was one of the most unusual
nights of my life, but not quite as
bad as when I jumped out of
Memorial Stadium in Charlotte
many years ago while covering a
-
game (I got locked up in the
stadium after calling my story
back in to the paper), and broke
my right foot and badly sprained
the left. We who cover athletic
events serve valiantly. I won a
purple heart for the Charlotte af-
fair. I was just “in the dark” at
East Gaston.
If there was anything Butch
hated it was that preachin’ type
of crooks. The kind of guys who
would rob a bank or beat their
mothers and then go to church
to pray that they don’t get
caught. One day the warden put
one of these guys right in his cell
and the preacher started
preaching right away. “Brother,”
he said, “lose no time. Turn to
the path of righteousness. We
are here today and gone tomor-
row.”
“Don’t kid yourself,” said
Butch. “I got eight years yet.”
Women can get more dirt out
of a telephone than out of a
vacum cleaner.
Most girls today have a keen
sense of rumor.
My girl has a rattlesnake tat-
tooed on her arm. Very femine,
though. The snake has a rose in
its mouth.
“Hey,” she whispered to me as
we entered the theater. “Look
who they’ve got tonight. My
favorite actor. Nosmo King.”
She pointed to-an electric sign.
“Honey,” I said. “That sign
says ‘No Smoking.”
The two girls stood on the cor-
ner watching the gentleman
holding the newborn child.
“Look at his cute teeth,” said
one.
“Yes, said the other. “And
small ears and blue eyes.
“Right,” agreed the first. “The
baby is kinda cute too.”
Attention, mothers: Buy a
chemistry set for a kid who
wants to go places.
Never cash a friend’s check on
Saturday. That leaves two days
to worry about it.
The man laughed and hung up
the phone. “Boy that was great,”
he said.
“Who were you talking to?”
his friend asked.
“Nobody,” he said. “This is a
party line.”
The car knocked down the
man on the country road. “Don’t
just stand there,” shouted the
driver to a gaping farmer. “Go
into town and get the village
doctor.”
“Can’t,” said the farmer.
Turn To Page 3-B
Lose 21-13
Mounties Play
‘Flag’ Football
Ashbrook’s Green Wave took
advantage of 112 yards in
penalties against Kings Moun-
tain’s Mountaineers Friday
night at the Ashbrook Stadium
to score their first win of the
year, 21-13.
Kings Mountain, 1-1, plays its
first home game Friday at 8 p.m.
at John Gamble Stadium against
an East Gaston team which is
2-0 and looking like the team to
beat for the Southwestern 3-A
Conference championship.
The Mountaineers, coming off
a 29-6 victory over Burns in their
opener, ran up a 13-7 halftime
lead over the Greenies, 1-2, but
had three drives stopped inside
the 20 on penalties.
Coach Denny Hicks was
unhappy with his team’s perfor-
mance, but took much of the
blame himself.
“We played 27 kids, but didn’t
have many of the ready to play,
and that’s the coaches fault,” he
said. “I don’t know if we took
them lightly or what, but we had
only two kids to grade out with a
winning effort. We played with
no intensity, and you can’t win
like that.”
The Mountaineers missed a
golden scoring opportunity on
the opening kickoff, when the
Ashbrook deep receiver let
Tracy Johnson’s kickoff hit the
ground and bounce around in-
side the 10 yard line for several
seconds. By the time the Moun-
taineer defenders realized they
had a shot at recovering the ball,
it barely broke the goalline and
was ruled a touchback.
Ashbrook took over on the 20
and quickly moved 80 yards for
the first touchdown. Quarter-
back Darren Littlejohn hit Tony
Smith on a 14-yard touchdown
pass and Jay Cline booted the ex-
tra point for a 7-0 margin.
But the Mountaineers struck
back with two touchdowns to
take the lead. Quarterback Todd
Cloninger stunned the huge
Mountaineer crowd when he
faked a back into the line and
hung up a long pass down the
Ashbrook sidelines. Thomas
Putnam was 30 yards behind the
secondary when he caught the
ball and turned it into a 54-yard
touchdown with 2:18 left in the
first period. Curt Pressley kicked
the point-after to tie the score at
7-all.
/
read
"THE WINNERS CORNER
Each week the Kings Mountain High coaching staff grades
its players on the important factors that lead to victories.
Each week throughout the rest of the year the players who
give a “winning effort” each Friday night will be pictured in
this corner of the sports page. The only players who graded
out to a winning percentage in Friday's loss to Ashbrook were
Kale Bagwell (top) and Dale Moore. who are pictured working
in the KMHS weight room. Any players who want to be pic-
tured here next week should put forth an extra effort to win Fri-
day's game against East Gaston.
The Mountaineers took the
lead on their next possession.
Tracy Johnson, who gained 109
yards in 15 carries, scored from
39 yards out the first time he
touched the football. He ran
over several Ashbrook defenders
as he broke through the left side
of the KM offensive line, and
then outraced the secondary to
the endzone. A bad snapped
resulted in Cloninger being tackl-
ed on a two-point conversion at-
tempt.
Kings Mountain missed a
chance to blow the game open
late in the first half when a bad
call from an official stopped
them at the 15. The Mounties
faced a third and one when an
official flagged them for five
yards because a screw in the
back of a KM lineman’s helmet
was missing. The lineman had no
way of knowing the screw, one
of four which holds the chin
strap, was missing. The penalty
made it third and six, and the
Mounties failed to pick up a first
down.
“Usually, an official will warn
you when he sees something like
that,” Coach Hicks said. “That’s
the first time since I’ve been
coaching that has occurred. The
screw just popped out and the
other three were still intact.”
Ashbrook came back in the
third period to take the lead
14-13 on a one-yard run by
Harold Jackson, and the Wave
got the clinching touchdown
with two minutes remaining on a
four-yard run by Jackson. Both
drives were aided by some costly
Mountaineer penalties.
The game followed much the
same pattern as the Burns game
a week earlier. The Mounties
were the superior football team
in the first half, but penalties kill-
ed them in the final two periods.
“We told our kids when we
first started that penalties have
killed us over the past two
years,” Hicks said. “The two
years that I was an assistant, we
lost 11 ballgames and in about
seven or eight of them, we beat
ourselves.
“For every penalty a boy
causes, he has to do extra work,
but they keep on making them,”
he said. “We've been working
Turn To Page 3-B