Many years have passed since the Marshall High School Dragons last took the football field together and since Marshall was even a high school at all. But the 1965 graduates of what is now Marshall Middle School are still able to get together, as they did for last weekend’s 50-year reunion.
It’s especially good for the members of that year’s football team, which posted one of the best seasons by any sports team in Hillsborough County history without making a playoff run.
The 1964-65 Dragons were probably not the first area football team to ever go undefeated, nor have they been the last, but the team did it by outscoring opponents 339-13 and recording seven shutouts, which would have had scouts from the nation’s top colleges and universities flooding Plant City like a summer rainstorm if it had happened in this decade.
PUSH IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION
For the previous season, in 1963, the Marshall roster didn’t look terribly different. But the on-field product did, as the team posted a 4-6 overall record that year.
There was clearly talent on both sides of the ball, so line coach Carl Crowell and the staff knew that wasn’t the issue. Instead, it was a matter of working hard to correct the mistakes of 1963 and improving the players’ work ethic in any way possible.
“Most of the years, we had good teams,” Crowell says. “We just really wanted to play football, and really wanted to turn it around.”
Crowell also served as the team’s scout, getting information on the Dragons’ opponents and working it into head coach Kelley Williams’ strategies from week to week.
The players, not wanting another losing record, were receptive throughout the offseason and showed up to the first game of the 1964 season with the will to win.
“They said they wanted the job done, so we got the job done,” defensive end Hardie Sykes says.
And they did, by a score of 27 to 6.
The Dragons beat Rochelle High — now Rochelle School of the Arts — so handily that, in the players’ opinion, it was the turning point. That moment, looking at the scoreboard after the fourth quarter ended, was when everyone started to believe the 1964 season would be special.
“That was the beginning of the season, but we knew we weren’t gonna lose,” Sykes says. “They got their six points, but they couldn’t get another point. They couldn’t even get an extra point.”
CLEAN SWEEP
Everything just clicked for Marshall, on both sides of the ball.
If the defense is a good starting point, then consider that the unit didn’t allow opponents to score any points for a month after beating Rochelle. It gave up a touchdown and an extra point to Lake Wales in Week six, but closed the season with three straight shutouts. Athleticism, football IQ and old-time football’s classic mean streaks combined within this defense to give it its edge over opponents. But the players say, at the end of the day, it all came down to one other thing:
“Doing your job,” Sykes says. “Being what you’re supposed to be. That’s the best part about it. When Coach comes back with all of the plays, we always know what to do and when to do it. We know how to defend everything.”
For those who prefer offense, Marshall made its mark in all of those areas. While the ground game was more widely used then than now, the Dragons could pass as well as they could run. Quarterback Bobby Holley led the passing game, throwing 33 touchdown passes, as did identical twins Earl and Douglas Cooper — wide receivers who each caught 11 touchdown passes that year.
The Dragons probably could have done some good work in the playoffs, had they been allowed to compete. The team nearly got to face either Middleton or Blake High in a postseason game, but classification issues — as well as everything that came with being an all-black high school during segregated times — kept Marshall out of the postseason.
“They said we had too much to lose, and nothing to gain, back in that day,” Sykes says.
Back then, because of segregation-based rules, Marshall could not play Plant City and other non-black high schools.
Several years later, in 1968, integration made its way to Florida, and by 1970 Marshall High’s football players had transferred over to Plant City High.
FLASH FORWARD
Fifty years after that perfect season, many members of the Class of 1965 got together for a reunion in the Plant City area.
Not all of the team members were able to make it. Some are no longer alive, perhaps most notably the Cooper twins. Both had football scholarships at Bethune-Cookman University waiting for them. Just after graduating from Marshall, they drowned while trying to save a woman from suffering the same fate.
But the football players and coaches who were able to make it to Bealsville had a great time reconnecting. Stories of the past were remembered, fallen friends were honored and friendships made on the field were reinforced.
“We were like brothers,” Sykes says. “It wasn’t best friends — it was like brothers.”
Although the high school no longer exists, the Dragons’ 1964 accomplishments will live on.
Contact Justin Kline at jkline@plantcityobserver.com.
THE 1964-65 SEASON
Roster: Leroy Sykes, Bobby Holley, Joe Sherman, Harvey Carter, Charlie Washington, Abraham Williams, Lawrence Keys, James Sykes, Wesley Thomas, David McDonald, Tommie Williams, Henry Smith, Tellus Shaw, Lovett Burnett, Donald Bradshaw, James Light, Hampton George, Andrew Graham, Allen Fisher, Ben Forte, Charles Jenkins, Joe Burnett, William McDonald, Dother Sykes, Luther Gimbet, Robert Cooper, Freddie Sullivan, Cornell Holloman, Nelson Sales, Leroy Green, Cornelius Green, Richard Adams, Earl Cooper, Douglas Cooper, Hardie Sykes, Marion Hampton, Daniel Coney.
Coaches: Kelley Williams (head coach), Robert Hall, Carl Crowell, Earl Sykes, Otis Williams.
Record: 9-0
Week 1 – Marshall, 27; Rochelle, 6
Week 2 – Marshall, 42; Booker, 0
Week 3 – Marshall, 24; Winter Haven, 0
Week 4 – Marshall, 33; Clearwater, 0
Week 5 – Marshall, 54; Haines City, 0
Week 6 – Marshall, 34; Lake Wales, 7
Week 7 – Marshall, 33; Bartow, 0
Week 8 – Marshall, 60; Fort Myers, 0
Week 9 – Marshall, 32; Sebring, 0