Undefeated Mount Gilead football team holding reunion Friday

Sub­mit­ted Photo
The unde­feated 1962 Mount Gilead foot­ball team is pic­tured above. Back row (l-r): assistant coach Jerry White, head coach Hart­sell Dodrill, Ron Nixon, Jerry Ash­brook, Tom Cot­ton, Ken Bush, Tom Ans­ley, John Rex­ford, Mer­rill Gil­fil­lan, John Zilske, Jim Mur­ray, Randy Brinkman, Bob Eckard, Jim Ors­born, Larry Fur­niss and assis­tant coach John Camp­bell. Sec­ond row: Jim Mal­one, Sam Mal­one, Denny Sims, Chuck Weas­ton, Jeff Mosier, Dick Bachelder, Ken Ger­hardt, Tom Con­kle, Ray Con­ley, Wal­ter Say­lor, Gene Hollingsworth, Dave Frayer, Richard Vail and Steve Hart, man­ager. Front row: Dave Warner, man­ager, Rick Geyer, Kenny Williams, Max Heim­lich, Junior Lev­ings, Val Har­ris, Don Roach, Wayne Hollingsworth, Les Mal­one, Roger Beall, Dick Foltz and Eddie Burns, man­ager. Not pic­tured is Lee McClelland.

The unde­feated 1962 Mount Gilead foot­ball team — the only unde­feated team in school his­tory — will hold a reunion this fri­day at the Mount Gilead foot­ball sea­son for the 50th anniver­sary of that feat.

Hart­sell Dodrill was the coach at that time and he will be in atten­dance at the game. He is the chair­man of the com­mit­tee that has orga­nized this event and need­less to say he is proud of that team and that moment in his­tory. He said it was the small­est team he had ever coached, but it was also his fastest. It was his last game to coach. He later became Mount Gilead’s Super­in­ten­dent of Schools for many years.

The team was vis­ited by the Cleve­land Brown’s star, Lou Groza, before the sea­son began and that visit helped inspire that team to greatness.

Mount Gilead played Card­ing­ton High School that night in 1962. Card­ing­ton had beaten Mount Gilead 11 times in a row before that night and they were surely expect­ing to make it 12. Card­ing­ton had won 29 straight con­fer­ence games, so the seniors on their team had never lost a con­fer­ence game and didn’t expect to lose that night.

There was so much inter­est in that game that they sur­veyed all of the MOC coaches to see who they thought would win. (Obvi­ously Mt. Gilead and Card­ing­ton didn’t vote) The vote was 4–2 in favor of Mount Gilead.

It was a nine-game sea­son and the teams had seven com­mon oppo­nents. Card­ing­ton had the edge. As a side note, it is inter­est­ing that Coach Dodrill’s grand­son is now the Card­ing­ton High School foot­ball coach.

There were 3,500 hun­dred peo­ple in atten­dance at that game. Around the out­side, peo­ple were lined up 10 deep to cheer the Indi­ans on to victory.

There were only six pass attempts that night. Four were by Card­ing­ton, result­ing in minus-two yards.…and Mount Gilead was 0–2.

The game fea­tured four of the top seven scor­ers in the Mid Ohio Con­fer­ence area: Larry Coomer #1 with 156 points; John Zilske was #2 with 114 points; Ron Nixon was #3 with 112 points and Bob Otter­bacher was #7 with 72 points.

There were no play-offs at that time. Mount Gilead was ranked 14th in the state after the sea­son was over.

A din­ner will be served at The Cor­ner­stone Cafe in Mount Gilead prior to the game for the coaches, team mem­bers and cheer­lead­ers of that win­ning 1962 team. Over 65 fam­ily mem­bers from that team will be fly­ing in from Texas, Col­orado, Florida, New Hamp­shire and else­where to attend the celebration.

The team will be intro­duced before the game and then will be going to the Com­mu­nity Room at Mount Gilead High School after the ball game to visit, meet, greet and rem­i­nisce. The film of the cham­pi­onship game with Card­ing­ton will also be shown at that time.

The com­mu­nity is encour­ag­ing any­one inter­ested to please come join in the cel­e­bra­tion that night.

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Sep 19 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.