MIKE BURKE
Allegany Communications Sports
It’s Homecoming Week and the decorations have gone up just as they did 50 years ago, and just as they had for the previous 38 years – just at a different time and for a far different circumstance.
This Saturday’s football game at Greenway Avenue Stadium will be the 103rd meeting between Allegany and Fort Hill but will mark the 50th anniversary of the Homecoming Game as we’ve come to know it and love it since November of 1974.
Thus, it also makes this the 50th anniversary of the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association football playoffs, which necessitated the elimination of the traditional Turkey Day Game that had been played on Thanksgiving since 1936.
The first Homecoming Game was played on Saturday, Nov. 9, 1974, and, frankly, nobody knew what the heck to expect, or even what to do. It felt funny to be going to the stadium on a November Saturday afternoon because for the entirety of our lives, we had gone to the stadium on Thanksgiving Day to see Allegany and Fort Hill play.
Needless to say, it was pretty weird, and on a beautiful warm and sunny day, Fort Hill won the first Homecoming Game, 21-13, in, frankly, one of the best games of the rivalry’s history.
Three of the five touchdowns scored, for instance, were scored by the defense – by Allegany’s Gary Ricker and Dave McGettigan, and Fort Hill’s Mike Hast.
There were three lead changes in the game that included at least six players from both teams that would become high school head coaches, including Barry Lattimer and Tim Kane who one day would become the head football coaches at Fort Hill and Allegany respectively.
Plus, it proved to be the coming out party of two of the best football players Cumberland has ever produced, Fort Hill’s Lyle Peck and Steve Trimble, both of whom were juniors on head coach Charlie Lattimer’s Sentinels squad.
Certainly, the players on both rosters knew who Peck and Trtimble were, because they all had grown up playing with and against each other in a variety of sports. However, it was the first appearance for both future University of Maryland and professional stars on Cumberland’s big stage, and both players had a big hand in helping the Sentinels come away with the upset victory.
Coach George Stimmel’s Campers had begun the season with seven straight wins and were the class of the Cumberland area. The week before the Homecoming Game, though, Alco fell on the road to Jefferson to dash its hopes for Stimmel’s second undefeated season in four years.
The 1974 Sentinels found themselves to be a team caught in the middle … of two of the greatest football teams in Cumberland scholastic history – the 1973 team of quarterback Mark Manges that rolled to a 10-0 season, and the 1975 team of Trimble and Peck that would win the city’s first Maryland state football championship with a 12-0 record.
And talk about big shoes to fill? Fort Hill quarterback Jim Penner was a fine quarterback, having directed the Sentinels to an 8-1 record leading into the first Homecoming Game, but he was also following in the footsteps of seven years of the All-American quarterbacking at Fort Hill by Greg Hare, who would lead Ohio State to two consecutive Rose Bowls, and Manges, who would quarterback the Maryland Terps to the Gator Bowl as well as an undefeated season and the Cotton Bowl.
Penner did just fine, throwing a 60-yard TD pass to Peck and scoring the final go-ahead touchdown himself late in the third quarter.
There were still great players on both teams (John Oates and Gordon Leib come to mind) and they would answer the bell in producing a classic for the estimated crowd of 9,500.
Neither team was close to being either of their school’s greatest teams, but they were outstanding teams and they produced a remarkable game into which great things were invested and from which great things and great people emerged.
It’s true that we as a community were in a panic the first year, and the first day, the Allegany-Fort Hill football game was not played on Thanksgiving. We believed the elimination of the Turkey Day games in Cumberland and in Frostburg would trigger the demise of Western Civilization, when in reality, that had already taken place with the creation of pee wee football and the participation trophy.
Truth is, the actual games became better games – better-played games – from the beginning, because there was no longer a 2-½-week layoff before the game the way there was when it was played on Thanksgiving.
Don’t misunderstand, the pageantry of the Turkey Day Game was like nothing else. It was a wonderful day and one of the most meaningful and beautiful family days the folks of Cumberland and Frostburg themselves created. But face it, some of the games were just barkers.
For beginners, you know how difficult it is for a coach to keep a team’s attention when there is no game to play for nearly three weeks? Think summer practice the way it used to be, except not only is it miserable, it’s dark and cold. And while the time off could give some bumps and bruises a chance to heal, it could also eliminate a team’s edge, not to mention give coaches far too much time to dream up new ways to reinvent the wheel.
Of course, we didn’t know any better then, as the Turkey Day Game was all we knew for nearly 40 years. But in 1974 when the 10th game of the season was played on Week 10 instead of Week 13, we all kind of looked at each other and admitted, “That was actually pretty cool.”
We fought change, because that’s what we do here, when, in fact, change was necessary and won out for the better, as not only have we been able to enjoy 18 state championships from Fort Hill and Allegany, but 12 more Homecoming games played than Turkey Day games, and even more playoff games that had never existed before.
Frankly, it’s to the point that we don’t even think about it having been played on Thanksgiving anymore. We certainly remember very fondly, but I don’t believe we miss it.
Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X @MikeBurkeMDT