Marceline Missouri High School Football 1970 vs Macon

Can't say enough about the importance of this win. We went winless the year before (had one tie) and were 0-1-1 so far into the 1970 season. From the Macon newspaper: '. . . the high point of the game was the band's performance at half time'. Further from the Macon paper: 'they (Macon Tigers) were out-run, out-passed, out-kicked, out-blocked, out-thought and out-tackled all the way through'.

Here are the game highlights if you want to jump to them in the video:

3:12 4th down – Marceline goes for it from the 19
3:50 Touchdown pass to wide open TE Sophomore David Courtney
6:44 Macon fumbles on the goal line but recovers for the score; PAT no good
9:13 Two passes to Jerry Jordan for the score; he caught the PAT also
11:21 Accidental double-team block by Bill Stuart and Scott Murray which broke Larry Despain’s leg
11:44 Marceline receives to start the 2nd half
13:33 Defensive pressure cause errant pass which Mike Frandson intercepts
14:48 1st pass to Bill Stuart gets knocked away but Bill makes fingertip catch on next pass
15:10 Marceline goes on 4th down; Scott Murray in for the score
16:07 Another great runback by Mark Downing
17:30 Example of great defense to chew up the remaining time
20:54 Macon completes long pass to set up their final score
23:28 Macon gets the ball back with 2:44 to go, down 8 points
24:22 Final comments!

The video is pretty burred for the first few minutes, but it clears up as the game goes on. As a side note, Larry Despain suffered a bad leg injury as he was cross-blocked (cleanly) by Bill Stuart with his right leg firmly planted and immediately hit with a shoulder block by Scott Murray which twisted him seriously. How many times have we seen this happen and shorten a football career? I saw it happen to my cousin John Palmer at Missouri Western during a freshman football game with William Jewell.

I used 'On Wisconsin' as some of the background music and the same crowd noise contributors jhouse4 and tosha73 for their recording of a soccer game crowd and an audience prior to a concert respectively as background embellishments.

And thanks again to Scancafe for the great job of digitizing these 52-year old films!