‘Will and desire’
Posted on Friday, September 19, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/bcdr/News/65856/
When the Gentry Pioneers stepped onto the football field this fall, they did so with the motto “ Renew the Legacy. ” But on the heels of a 43-24 loss to Charleston, the Pioneers are fully aware that change doesn’t always happen overnight.
If there are two words David Mc-Nair, Roger Holland, Rick Booker and the other 26 players from the 1967 Gentry football team encourage the current Pioneers to say before every play, beginning with tonight’s game at Siloam Springs, the words would be “ will ” and “ desire. ”
McNair spends his days heading up the Gentry Water Works Department, headquartered in the shadows of the current Pioneer Stadium and the former stadium grounds near Main Street. Spread across one of McNair’s desks are 10 newspaper clippings, one from each game he and the Pioneers played during his senior season.
“ It’s still a prideful thing — even all these years later, ” McNair said.
The 1967 Gentry football season was — and still is — one to remember. Still a couple of years before the state instituted a playoff system, McNair and his Gentry teammates rolled through the regular season with a perfect record of 10-0. A couple of Gentry teams have posted undefeated regular-season records but went on to get upended in the postseason. So, the 1967 Gentry squad remains the last to achieve perfection.
Ask anyone on that team — including their first-year head coach, Gene Carson — and they’ll tell you those 29 individuals were anything but perfect.
“ We had better, bigger athletes during my sophomore and junior seasons, ” McNair said. “ That undefeated team didn’t really have much size at all, and we were considered the underdogs the majority of games we played. What we did have were fundamentals. So when coach (Gene Carson ) stepped in, it all came together. He was a motivator. All of a sudden, no one was willing to give in, even if we were getting hit in the mouth. ”
Gentry got things started by knocking off Pea Ridge, 33-25.
Then, it was on to Gravette, a school the Pioneers had not beaten in seven seasons. But that changed, as Gentry posted a 14-0 shutout on the road.
Following a tight 7-0 victory at West Fork during Week 3, the Pioneers dropped Greenland, 20-7.
And if the Pioneers were at all patting themselves on the back following a lopsided 60-0 win over Decatur, to push their season record to a perfect 5-0, Carson snuffed it out in a hurry.
“ We pounded Decatur, but we also had five touchdowns called back by penalties, ” Mc-Nair remembered. “ We had something like 230 yards in penalties in that game alone. Coach didn’t care that we won 60-0. He was a motivator, so he punished us. We ran 23 100-yard wind sprints the next day. ”
“ The way I saw it, everyone should know how to count, ” Carson said. “ If we say the count is on two, it’s on two. No one should ever be jumping offside. I wasn’t going to put up with stupid mistakes. So I kept cracking down. ”
While Carson refused to soften, he admits he began to feel something special was in the cards for the 1967 Pioneers.
“ Every week, I was scared we was going to get beat, but after Game No. 8, I started thinking we could actually go undefeated. It fell into place. ”
Gentry rattled off a 35-13 win over Mountainburg and a 34-13 victory at Elkins’ homecoming. And that brought the Pioneers, then ranked No. 5 in the state, to No. 3 Farmington. There was plenty of hype to go around.
“ I’ll never forget the headline in one of the papers that week, ” McNair said. “ It was the same week the big Arkansas-Texas rivalry game was going on. But the headline said the Arkansas-Texas game might not be the biggest game in town that weekend. ”
“ We were supposed to get beat, ” Booker said. “ I think there was something like 10, 000 people at that game. You weren’t going to convince any of us we weren’t leaving with a win. Coach stood up on the bus before that game and said we’d remember whatever happened that night for a long time, so give 110 percent and make it a good memory.
“ He was right, ” Booker said. “ I still remember that game more than 40 years later. ”
Gentry upset Farmington 13-6 and went on chalk up impressive 48-13 and 61-19 victories over Prairie Grove and Colcord, Okla., respectively, to close out the perfect season.
The Pioneers outscored their opponents 325-96. Senior halfback Roger Holland rushed for 1, 128 yards and averaged more than 10 yards per carry. The team intercepted 22 passes, with McNair and Don Curran snagging seven apiece. Gentry ended the season ranked No. 3 in the state, behind Stamps and Gillett.
“ All that from a team of undersized underdogs, ” McNair said. “ I’ve never forgotten that season or those lessons in anything I’ve done since. That season was a lesson for life. ”
Booker, who lives in suburban Boston, Mass., said, “ Coach filled us with the idea we could do it. That was a year where some important lessons were driven home. We weren’t supposed to go undefeated. But we had will and desire. ”