For a Cawood football program that had struggled through much of the first decade of its existence, the 1975 season stands as proof that the rebuild started three years earlier had reached its goal with the first district championship, the first regional championship and first playoff victory in school history.
The 1975 Trojans will be honored at halftime the Perry Central-Harlan County game on Friday at Coal Miners Memorial Stadium, marking the 50th anniversary of the only regional championship team in program history and the only 3A regional title in county history.
Cawood had several individual stars in the early years of the program, led by quarterback Tim Saylor, who signed with the University of Kentucky and played at Carson Newman, and Rick Fox, who played at Morehead State, but the Trojans posted only one winning season in the first six years of the program as Wendell Wheeler led the Trojans to a 5-4-1 mark in 1969. The program hit bottom with an 0-9 record in 1971 that included five shutouts.
Legend has it that football boosters at JACHS were determined to find a coach and went to Tennessee to land Boyd Fox, who brought with a tough, no-nonsense style that quickly changed attitudes and the work ethic of the players.
“When coach Fox started, football was pretty much non-existent. Everything was perfection with him, even running on the field before the game,” said Daven Hoskins, who was a junior inside linebacker for the Trojans in 1975. “We had a really good group of seniors and an awesome coaching staff with coach Fox, Johnny Mills, John Ashurst, Darwin Walters and Joe Campbell. They prepared us offensive, defensively and special teams. We ran a veer offense with a ’44’ defense. The game I remember most was the Hazard game we won in (double) overtime.”
Fox brought a former All-American wide receiver from the University of Tennessee to run the JACHS offense. Mills had been drafted by the San Diego Chargers after setting receiving records at UT. He installed a veer offense with the Trojans that eventually lit up scoreboards around eastern Kentucky.
“He was like Billy Hicks (Harlan County native who is the state’s winningest high school basketball) to me. They were larger than life,” said David Parks, who was the quarterback on the 1975 team and later went on to a long coaching career in basketball at Evarts and Harlan. “They had done so much. The things those guys do is not normal. You don’t meet an All-SEC receiver. You don’t meet the winningest high school basketball coach in the history of Kentucky high school basketball. I never had a conversation with coach Mills when he didn’t tell me something that was worthwhile to hear. I was fortunate enough, the year I broke my ankle (junior season), to sit with him on the roof of the press box to call plays. I sat with him up there all year, and he would tell me what he was doing and why he was doing it. It was very interesting, and I really enjoyed that part. I got to spend more time with him than anybody. It was an honor to be around him.”
The transformation didn’t happen overnight though as Cawood started with a tie and six losses in 1972 before closing with wins in two of their last three games for a 2-7-1 mark.
The losing seasons ended in 1973 with the arrival of quarterback Gary Jennings from Morristown and the emergence of several other younger players into starring roles. Cawood finished 8-1-1 with a 20-14 loss to Bourbon County and a 6-6 tie at Middlesboro that kept the Trojans out of the 2A playoffs. Jennings went on to play quarterback at East Tennessee State University.
“Jennings is probably, in my opinion, the second best quarterback to ever play in the mountains other than Tim Couch,” Parks said. “We were good at every position in 1973. I think that was the best team they ever had at Cawood High School. There was an athlete at every position. I was the third string quarterback starting the year, then they moved Freddie Howard to another position. I got to play just about every game because we were beating everyone so bad.”
Cawood produced several football standouts in the 1970s, led by Frank McDaniel, who played tight end at the University of Kentucky. Gary Grant signed as a receiver with Bobby Bowden and West Virginia even though he played quarterback as a senior at Cawood when David Parks suffered a broken leg in summer workouts. Tony Durham was a standout linebacker for the Trojans and also went on to play at Kentucky as did Grant, who left West Virginia before playing any any games with the Mountaineers.
The KHSAA realigned football in the state in 1975 as Cawood moved from 2A to 3A. The Trojans suffered losses to Middlesboro and Tates Creeck at midseason but rolled through their district games, including a 48-0 win over a Breathitt County squad led by Dudley Hilton, who was in the early stages of his Hall of Fame career.
Cawood played host to Belfry in the opening round, in the days when only the district winners qualified for the playoffs. On a cold, snowy night in Browning Acres, the Trojans rolled to a 27-0 victory.
“It snowed that day, and I remember (former school board member and coal operator) Jimmy Blanton brought a helicopter in and blew the snow off the field,” Parks said. “For a program that had never been anywhere, that was a defining moment.”
“It was a huge win. The coaches really had us prepared and talked about building tradition,” Hoskins said. “Frank Carr and I were the inside linebackers with Bill Saylor and Mike Johnson on the outside. Mike Nantz played tackle in front of me on defense, and the linemen had the responsibility of keeping people off us so could make tackles and they did a great job.”
The Trojans moved on to the state semifinals and a trip to tradition rich Fort Thomas Highlands on the banks of the Ohio River. Cawood fell 35-6 as a Parks to McDaniel pass accounted for the only score.
“We all had brand new warmups when we made that trip. Coach Fox chartered a bus for us. It was all first class,” Hoskins said.
“Being around Fox and Mills, you could tell things were very regimented and very disciplined,” Parks said. “And that’s all I knew for those four years.”