Remember it, appreciate it as though it were yesterday

Posted on Oct 12, 2014
by Mike Burke

With Fort Hill’s 49-7 win over Walter Johnson at Greenway Avenue Stadium yesterday, Coach Todd Appel’s Sentinels tied the Fort Hill school record for most consecutive wins at 20, having gone 14-0 last season to win the Maryland 1A state championship, then beginning this season with six straight wins.

Should the Sentinels defeat undefeated Kent Island Friday night at Greenway they will establish a new school record of 21 straight wins and tie the Cumberland City record of 21 set by Jim Refosco’s 1983 Class B (now 2A) state champions who went 12-0, and his final team at Alco, the 1984 Campers, who opened the season with nine straight wins.

The Area record winning streak is 26 in a row, set by the 1955-57 Keyser Golden Tornado of Coach Frederick “Tack” Clark. The ’55 Tornado won its final five games before the ’56 team went 11-0, beating Romney, 19-7, for what Times-News records say was the “State Class A title,” then defeating Mullens, 12-0, for what the T-N record book says was the “West Virginia Class B Title.”

That’s a pretty good season when you can win two state championships in consecutive weeks. It’s no wonder Tack Clark is one of our area’s greatest legends — not only for how he coached but, most importantly, how he lived his life.

The following season, Keyser won its first 10 games to extend its streak to 26. However, the streak came to a close at Buckhannon when the Tornado lost a heartbreaker to Vinson, Huntington, 14-13, in the Class A state championship game.

If the Sentinels are to win their 21st in a row this week, it’s rather fitting they’ll have to beat an undefeated football team to do it, as Kent Island, a Maryland 2A school, beat Colonel Richardson on Friday, 44-0, to run its mark to 6-0 as well. The last time a Fort Hill team played for its 21st win it, too, faced an undefeated team, Coach Bob Welsh’s powerful Northwestern Wildcats of Baltimore. And giving we’re even having this discussion, it’s safe to say things didn’t work out too well for the Sentinels that night.

Following an 18-13 loss at Martinsburg in the fall of 1972, Fort Hill’s current schoolrecord winning streak began with a 21-0 win over Beall, continued with six more wins to finish the season and then stretched through the undefeated season of 1973.

The ’74 season opened with wins over Bell Vocational, Frederick and Martinsburg before the streak came to an end at Greenway in a 22-7 loss to Northwestern. The Sentinels, though, won the next six games to conclude the regular season and enter the inaugural Maryland state football playoffs where they fell to Northwood, 23-13, in the Class A (now 3A) semifinals.

Obviously, those were great teams, having gone 40-3 in the four-year stretch under coach Charlie Lattimer. And they were filled with a heavy Division I college football presence, as Mark Griffin would go on to play for North Carolina and Mark Manges, Butch Benson, Steve Trimble and Lyle Peck went to Maryland to play for the Terrapins. And, oh yes, there was also a future Fort Hill head coach playing on those teams, an All-State linebacker by the name of Barry Lattimer.

Fort Hill has also had two
18-game winning streaks, the first coming in 1947-48 and the second in 1949-51 under Coach Bill Hahn. Coach Mike Calhoun’s 1997-98 Sentinels, who split a pair of Class 2A state championship games, won 17 in a row.

The most consecutive games Fort Hill has ever gone without losing — that’s right, anybody under the age of 50, there used to be ties in football — is 26, established by the 1956-59 Sentinels (two ties during this stretch) and 19 by the ’47-49 teams, with one famous tie, the 6-6 1948 Turkey Day Game between unbeaten Allegany and Fort Hill, being the only tie in that stretch.

Many thanks to our research department, Todd Helmick, for bringing these numbers to our attention.

Calhoun’s 1993-96 teams also hold the distinction of having not only the school’s longest regular-season winning streak, but the area’s longest as well, winning 30 straight games over the span of four regular seasons.

That streak came to an at Greenway when the Southern Rams of Coach Tom Woods beat the Sentinels, 8-6. The following week Fort Hill fell to DeMatha, 30-12, in front of an electrified packed house at Greenway. Oddly enough, that was the only time I ever saw Calhoun excited (in a good way) after a loss, as the Sentinels, despite the loss to DeMatha, played one of their best games of the season against the loaded Stags of Coach Bill McGregor.

“Fort Hill football is back,” Calhoun guaranteed after the game, and the Sentinels, in fact, went back to the state championship game, defeating Allegany, Aberdeen (led by E.J. Henderson) and Baltimore City College to return to College Park. There Fort Hill was defeated by Wheaton, the school Coach Hahn left Fort Hill to coach following the 1958 season, and he was there that night to perform the pregame coin toss.

What does it all mean? Maybe nothing other than some of us just find it all to be so fascinating. It’s a very proud reminder that we have been blessed with a lot of wonderful high school football through the years.

Keyser’s celebrations of its All-Decade and All-Century teams and 100 years of Golden Tornado football this weekend have proven to be another perfect example of that. And when something like that takes place, and when a team such as the current Fort Hill team comes along and strives to achieve something that will give it a share of our area’s rich lore, it gives us pause to appreciate just how lucky we have been and continue to be.