The Town Crier: Chick Bowl ’67

Published 8:00 am Sunday, December 8, 2024

It’s the fall of the year. Football season is in full swing. The teams have been playing for weeks; the Falcons, the Packers, the Colts, the Saints and of course the Stars, the Cougars, the Tigers and the Clippers.

Hey, we’re not talking about the NFL, we’re talking about all those teams that played in the Dalton Parks and Recreation fall football league. And it all built up to that glorious Saturday when the teams would get the opportunity to take to the “real” football field in a “real” football stadium right there at Harmon Field.

For 7- to 12-year-olds this was as big time as it got. Just like the teams we watched on TV or clipped the pictures out of our dad’s Sports Illustrated magazines to make a collage of our favorite players on poster board (that’s what I did anyway) or bypassed the baseball bubblegum cards for the football cards (me again), it was the football dream come true.

Seemingly all-grown-up

Us kids back then and for decades after and up to the present turned out in the fall to get “drafted” (randomly chosen) by the coaches (dads) of the rec center league. We were wee kids but the fact that we got to dress up in real uniforms and run real plays on real football fields made it all-grown-up for us.

With a kid’s imagination, you give him that kind of reality and that kid will be “there” for the game, no less dedicated and focused as the pro players making millions of dollars a season. We had real helmets, real shoulder pads, real padded pants with those foam side panels for our hips and real cleats … mostly. There’s a lot of concern regarding injuries and concussions these days, with new gear coming on the scene, but you stick a little 40- or 50-pound boy in 12 pounds of pads and it’s hard to injure him seriously. There’s just not enough muscle, weight and speed behind the impact. That’s not to say you can’t get hurt, it just means it’s not the same as two 300-pounder 20-somethings crashing into each other like a pair of bull Bison fighting over a lady cow in the springtime.

There were two leagues back then, split by age. There were the Mite teams, as in Mighty Mites, that was for the older kids, and for the younger ones, there was the Pee Wee teams. They both had access to the gear and the fields that the rec center provided. From the pictures of the teams back then, that was a lot of matching uniforms for all 11 teams. That says a lot about the community support back then from a small town. 1967 was the 10th anniversary of the Chick Bowl so that means it had started in 1957, well before the big economic upswing that came in the 1960s and ’70s.

The 1967 Chick Bowl, which I just came across a program for, was held Nov. 25, a Saturday, at Harmon Field. The games started at 9:30 that morning and every hour a new game was scheduled to start. There were 10 games scheduled for the day with the last game being scheduled for 4:30 p.m. That last game was between the All-Star team called the Dalton Mites and a similar best of the best team from Douglasville. It was our 23 players and two coaches against their 33 players and three coaches.

But let’s not forget the ladies. Just as important and involved in the football season were the cheerleaders. What’s a football game without the equally athletic and physically focused cheerleaders on the sidelines cheering the team on and firing up the crowd watching the game, doing their acrobatics in skirts instead of helmets and shoulder pads.

Each team had its own cheerleading squad and at the end of the year during the Chick Bowl championship game there were the cheerleaders that had made the “best of the best” cut. They were referred to in the program as the Dalton Midget Cheerleaders. I will say, between the mites, the midgets and the pee wees, they never let you forget you weren’t full size yet.

The All-Star cheerleader squad was photographed in their sneakers, white socks, white long-sleeve shirt which was covered with a smock/dress that I’m guessing, this being Dalton, was red. They were led by Vicki Orr, the cheerleading activities coordinator, who was wearing a nice dress that looked like she worked in a bank, and, in 1967, had a sky-high hairdo that certainly cast a long shadow.

Whether you were a player or a cheerleader, was there anything so invigorating as the smell of that fresh cut grass on the playing field? There were crisp, white lines painted to denote the battlefield and there were, if not crowds, throngs of onlookers, as parents, family members and your teammates waiting on the sidelines to enter the fray cheered you on.

There were 25 coaches on the roster, all volunteers. I can’t imagine the variety of emotions they must have gone through coaching kids that young. I’m sure in their minds they were each going to have the winning team that season, and I’m equally sure that things happened with those kids that they never saw coming. They didn’t have bruised foreheads in the photos, but I’m sure there was some serious forehead self-smacking that went on. It’s funny, but looking at the pictures of these men, they all actually do look like coaches, even though some are younger and some older, some more stern and some smiling. They just have that look about them.

Ups and downs

When I was old enough to play pee wee and Mighty Mite football, I don’t remember memorizing a lot of plays. Like most footballers, we did look up to the quarterbacks. I always seemed to play defensive tackle and I liked it. Better to tackle the man with the ball as he runs by you rather than, as an offensive lineman, try and push a bigger guy than you to clear the way.

My football career at that age was pretty up and down. The lowest was the year the season had just started and I managed to break my ankle horsing around at a friend’s house. I was sidelined for the rest of the year, but that doesn’t mean that I stopped going to every game. I was there working the hashmarks up and down the field, probably getting in the coaches’ way as I cheered my teammates onward. I was so active out there I literally got blisters under my arms from the crutches I had to use to move around.

Another low point was when an opposing player came in low, head down, and got me in the stomach. For the first time in my life I had the wind knocked out of me. That’s the moment a light went off in my head and I realized “That’s the breadbasket they’re always talking about hitting!”

The highlight of my entire football career was when I single-handedly won a game! It was a brutal matchup, the two teams of tiny terrors turning it into a slugging match. The game was almost over, and the score, after going up and down the field time and time again, was still at zero to zero. We had driven into the red zone of our opponents, but couldn’t close the deal. The ball was turned over to the other side for their last chance to score and win.

As a defensive player I was now sent in to man the front line. The other side was so close to their own end zone that when the ball was hiked the quarterback was in the touchdown territory. I managed to get by the opposing tackle and suddenly there was a clear shot for the quarterback. I charged ahead like a near-sighted rhinoceros and hit him good, maybe even in the breadbasket. I grabbed hold and wouldn’t let go. Next thing I knew our feet got tangled up and down we went. I had tackled him in his own end zone and had pulled off a “touchback” worth two points. And thanks to those two points we won the game and I got my name in the paper. I’ve still got the clipping.

Some people sing of their youthful salad days, or, if a bit older, their days of wine and roses, but for those of us lucky enough to play football here at the rec center it will always be days of helmets and shoulder pads. We put the “mighty” in the Mighty Mites!

Mark Hannah, a Dalton native, works in video and film production.