Ad

Guest Blog: The 2016 BHS Football Team Playing for Piece of Very Rare, Special Place in Storied History

By Connect-Bridgeport Staff on November 09, 2016 via Connect-Bridgeport.com

By Chuck Miller 
Bridgeport High School Class of 1987
(Statistical Assist from Carl ‘Norm” Correll, Class of 1986)
 
There’s something special happening right now in Bridgeport. The Bridgeport High School football team is in the midst of a historic run of success. We should all take it in and savor it, because it won’t last forever. 
 
Since the program has been pretty stellar as far back as most of us can remember, the significance of the current run might not immediately register. Seems like more of the same, right? 
 
No, this is different.
 
To understand just how incredible the Indians have been the last four years, it’s not enough just to note that they’re riding a 35-game unbeaten streak. To truly appreciate the streak, we must examine the program’s history. 
 
Winning has been a hallmark of Bridgeport football since its inception. Our last losing record was a 4-6 mark in 1967; that’s 49 years ago if I can add that high. We’ve made the playoffs in 23 straight seasons - I’m even getting fuzzy at this point - playing in both AA and AAA.  
 
Current Coach, Josh Nicewarner, has an incredible record of 80-8-1, including playoffs, and is still only in fourth place on the school’s all-time wins list.  Of course, he’s still very young and certainly will move up that list.
 
So yes, BHS has always won a lot of games. Even so, as sustained as the success has been, it has never been as prolific as in the last four seasons.
 
We won our first state title more than 60 years ago, all the way back in 1955.  They had been tracking state champions as named by the West Virginia Sportswriters’ Association since 1937, but only began playing actual championship games in the different classes in 1948.  Depending how you view that little quirk, it either took us 18 years or seven years to claim our first title.
 
After that first title, we would endure a long, cold winter of 17 years until our second, as long as it takes the cicadas to emerge. Wayne Jamison’s first championship came in 1972 with mythical Steve Stout leading the charge in a four-team playoff, though I’ve heard stories of the 1971 team also being a deserving contender.  In 1971, only two teams were chosen to play in the championship game, and Jamison’s powerful squad was left out. That wouldn’t be the only missed opportunity for a school that’s nearly always in the hunt, but it is a memorable one.
 
We hit paydirt again seven years later at the end of the decade, winning title number three in 1979. By this point, I was 10 years old and following the team closely. Names like Minitree, Fest, and Marra were as important to me as more famous NFL names of the time like Bradshaw, Swann, and Lambert. This talent-laden squad dismantled St. Albans by the relatively comfortable score, at least by title game standards, of 20-7.
 
This seven-year cycle seemed to be working for us, and our fourth state championship came in 1986. By this time, I was no longer a wide-eyed 10-year-old, but was a 17-year-old senior on the team. 
 
Though we may have been a little talent thin, we were a resilient team; the first in the school’s history to win the championship with a loss on our record. With playoff scores of 21-13 over Magnolia, 10-8 over Winfield, and 10-7 over Tucker County, every game was a down-to-the-wire defensive battle. The oft-overlooked kicking game, capably manned by Scott Lewis, one of the earliest in a long line of kickers borrowed from the soccer program, twice proved to be the difference maker.
 
Enough of my own little memory lane diversion and back to the title march. We wouldn’t have to wait long at all for number five. Two short years later, the sophomores we had enjoyed beating on as seniors flexed their own muscles with a season and championship game for the ages behind the churning running of fullback, Chris Marteny. The 1988 title, Jamison’s fourth, would be the last of his illustrious coaching career.
 
Played under the lights at Mountaineer Field instead of at Laidley Field as all our previous trips had been, the game went a staggering four overtimes. After scoring the touchdown in the fourth stanza that many assumed would extend the game to a fifth extra period, Jamison had seen enough. 
 
The coach who never tricked anyone, fooled an entire stadium by having his extra point holder, Pete Curry, loft a perfect two-point conversion pass over Gary Lhotsky’s shoulder in the corner of the end  zone. Bridgeport’s version of The Catch was born, and Jamison’s legend grew larger.
 
Final score:  29-28.  Maybe there’s been a better high school game played in West Virginia history, but I’ve never heard of it.
 
Any thoughts of piling up state titles every couple of years were dashed in the decade-long drought that was the 1990s. We waited twelve long years to win another, finally getting it by ringing in the new millennium with a championship season in 2000. This was number six overall, and the first and only for the coach who followed a legend and became a mini-legend himself, Bruce Carey.
 
In 2001, Carey narrowly missed doing something Jamison never did, bringing an undefeated team to Wheeling Island to face twice-beaten Poca in a bid for a coveted repeat championship. Though we were heavy media favorites, the Dots handed us our only state title game loss, a 21-7 nightmare that remains one of the most disappointing setbacks in our illustrious history. 
 
In retrospect, that Poca team was at the front end of its own era of greatness.  They also won the next two state titles, becoming the first AA school to ever win three in a row.
 
Carey could have probably won another title had his powerful 2009 team been playing in AA. Reclassification, however, saw us playing throughout much of his tenure as one of the smallest AAA schools in the state. And Coach Josh Nicewarner's 2011 team could have also potentially won a state title if still in Class AA as it made it to the Class AAA semifinals that year.
 
Accounting quite well for ourselves, we made the playoffs every year in AAA, including semifinal runs in the aforementioned 2009 and 2011 campaigns.  The 2009 team, in particular, was a powerhouse, losing by the razor-thin margin of 28-25 to South Charleston on their home field despite dominating the line of scrimmage for much of the game and gashing them for many big runs. The Black Eagles comfortably handled Brooke 28-7 the following week to hoist the trophy we narrowly missed.
 
In 2012, we were reclassified back to AA, and fans were undoubtedly salivating at the prospects of our improved opportunities there. We were swept up by a Golden Tornado, absorbing two bad beatings at the hands of Keyser - one in the regular season and one in the playoffs - that served as a reminder AA was no cake walk in the 1980s and 1990s and wasn’t going to be now, either.
 
This brings us to the run that began in 2013 when a young Nicewarner’s even younger sophomore and junior laden squad, now with many last names I recognize as sons of former teammates, made it to the state title game to face the two-time defending champion Wayne Pioneers. Poised to knock Poca from its perch as Class AA’s only three-time champions, Wayne was acutely aware of the stakes. 
 
Perhaps the added historical importance of the game caused them to play a little tight. Maybe the driving snow was a factor.  Maybe we were just one point better than they were. Regardless, the Pioneers' streak was over and ours had begun in a 14-13 squeaker.
 
We may have waited 13 long years to get number seven, but we wouldn’t wait long for number eight. With a young 2013 team winning a title they probably weren’t expected to win, you could almost feel the train roaring down the tracks as 2104 and the lofty expectations that came with it approached.
 
When we steamrolled through the regular season and into the playoffs, I felt certain this was our best opportunity to finally repeat as champions. I wrote about it in this Connect Bridgeport article (CLICK HERE) that now somehow feels 100 years old with all we’ve accomplished since. 
 
Not only did we repeat in 2014, blasting Frankfort 43-7, but we also went on to take our place in the record book alongside the Dots by thoroughly dismantling Tolsia 39-0 for the coveted three-peat in 2015. These two lopsided title game victories are yet another way Bridgeport’s recent success deviates from the norm of nail-biting championship game tilts to which players and fans were previously accustomed.
 
When you’ve been winning for as long as Bridgeport has and haven’t lost a game since early 2014, it’s easy to forget that winning them all isn’t normal. Stringing together state title after state title just doesn’t happen, not even for Bridgeport. 
 
Long stretches between titles - 17 years (1955-1972), 7 years (1972-1979), 7 years (1979-1986), 12 years (1988-2000), and 13 years (2000-2013) - are far more normal than the current outlier success. Ponder this:  in the 23-year period from 1989 through 2012, we may have been very good almost every year, but we were great only once (2000).
 
If the past is any indicator of the future, we’ll fight our way back to the state title game again.  I just wouldn’t count on it happening every year or even every five years.
 
That the 2016 version of Bridgeport football could keep the streak going through a 10-0 regular season and #1 playoff seeding is nothing short of amazing. Tremendous senior leadership and talent was lost with the 2015 graduating class. Yet this team found a way.  
 
For them, you could argue the playoffs really started three weeks ago when they faced the first of three ranked opponents in a row, the last two on the road, in a grueling gauntlet to close the regular season. A loss in any of those games, while certainly not pushing us out of playoff contention altogether, could have at least knocked us down far enough in the rankings to have to go on the road at some point during the playoffs.
 
Those three games were by no means easy. Twice, they had to come back from unfamiliar deficits. Down 10 to Keyser in the fourth quarter and on the road - yes, the same Keyser that so rudely welcomed us back to AA in 2012 - things looked particularly grim. 
 
Fairmont Senior tested our mettle as well in a gritty contest decided by only three points. But the team dug deep both times and fought together to the wire.
 
Each week now, the stakes will be higher and we could well see one of these tough teams again or possibly a fierce Point Pleasant squad that went 40-0 the last three regular seasons competing in AAA. I almost hope no players on the team read this article. It’s for fans, just like those “Which Bridgeport Team was the Greatest” polls we so love to discuss. 
 
Let the players play for the one championship that’s right in front of them rather than for all this history stuff. The weight of one is enough. They can reflect on all of that other stuff later.
 
So for us fans, on the line now is, of course, the unbeaten streak. That’s probably the prize I rank the lowest. 
 
I personally wouldn’t care if we lost two or three regular season games as long as we found a way to win when the chips are really down, in playoff and championship games. I’m sure most coaches would agree with me on that, though they’d probably point out that losing breeds losing.
 
Plus, there’s an asterisk in there that sticks in my craw. Perennial AAA power Wheeling Park had been our nemesis in 2013 and 2014, handing us our lone loss each year. In fact, since the beginning of 2013, our record is a ridiculous 49-2-1, with Park responsible for all three blemishes.
 
I was living in Philadelphia last year and decided to drive over for the Park game. No self-respecting coach will ever talk about revenge. It must be against some unwritten coaching credo. But I’m not a coach, and you can bet I had Wheeling Park circled on my calendar. 
 
I was sick of losing to them, and I knew we had the team to stick it to them. We came out on that opening series and did exactly that, driving the ball deep into their territory before turning it over.
 
We stuffed them when they got the ball, too. And then the lightning came. I sat and waited and hoped. I had seen enough to know that we were dominating early play in the trenches, and that we could beat them if we could get back out on the field.
 
It wasn’t to be. The game was canceled, couldn’t be made up, and was recorded in the books as the infamous “kissing your sister” tie that left both sides feeling unfulfilled. Wheeling Park went on to win the Class AAA state title, and one interesting little historical footnote never happened. 
 
I don’t believe a Class AA school has ever beaten the eventual AAA state champion, but that’s exactly what I think would have happened last year. Best team in the state regardless of classification? Yessiree, at least if I’m the one keeping score.
 
Indeed we did get our revenge this year, beating them where those 2013 and 2014 squads could not, but just a bit of the luster came off that win for me when they went on to lose a couple more games.
 
So streak schmeak, I say. Everybody drops one eventually, and so will we. The ring is the prize you really play for.
 
And what of that ring? A fourth straight state title would place us alone atop the annals of Class AA history as the only team in the classification to ever win four in a row. Three state titles is a dynasty to be sure. Four would stake our claim as THE dynasty for all-time.
 
What about a 10th overall? Right now, we’re tied with Wheeling Central Catholic, currently a Class A school, in fourth place on the all-time titles list. Ten would move us into a tie with Bluefield for third place, just one behind Parkersburg and Ceredo-Kenova. C-K sadly will never have the opportunity to move up, as they were the victim of consolidation in 1998 and became part of what is today Spring Valley High School.
 
The mystique of Bridgeport football is real. It was built over decades, not just the last few years. Its origins are with a conservative coach who ran and then ran some more out of a funny-looking formation every other team only runs at the goal line called the stick-I. Adding to the mystery were his Belichickian, staccato answers to all media inquiries into his methods.
 
The other day, I saw a social media post congratulating the team on closing out an undefeated regular season. Some fellow commented, “Same four plays every year.” I wondered for a second if he even knows we run out of a pistol formation these days, one I readily admit I’m still having a hard time getting used to seeing.
 
Just as quickly, I didn’t care what he knows or doesn’t know. He wasn’t part of it. I was. I was lucky enough to play for a little piece of history. 
 
And now the 2016 Bridgeport Indians play for their own piece of history. As fans, we should all enjoy this for just how special and rare it is.  
 
Roll Tribe!
 
Editor's Note: A walk down BHS football history lane shows the 1955 team at the top, followed by Steve Stout doing damage in 1972 and quarterback Bobby Marra talking with Wayne Jamison in the second photo. In the third picture, the blog's author, Chuck Miller, is shown with his mother Jo, while Gary Lhotsky is shown after his game-winning two-point conversion catch in the 1988 game. After that, all-state running back C.R. Rohrbough is shown in 2000, while Anthony Bonamico celebrates a win in 2013, Connor Nelson puts on the pressure in 2014 and the group of - from left - Dante Bonamico, Elijah Drummond, Dylan Tonkery and Zach Spurlock reflect after a bing win on the sidelines. In the bottom picture, J.T. Harris, with the ball, celebrates with Mackenzie Holmes as part of a 10-0 regular season in 2016. Photos courtesy of BHS Journalism Department and by Ben Queen of www.benqueenphotography.com.
 


Connect Bridgeport
© 2024 Connect-Bridgeport.com