1963 Admirals were benchmark for all others
75th Anniversary of Farragut High School Football
With the 1962 Admirals (7-2-1) finishing their season recording five consecutive shutouts, the 1963 Ads — which to this day is the only FHS team in 75 season to go undefeated (8-0-3) — began their campaign with five straight shutouts.
“I think that was pretty incredible,” said David White, a senior defensive end/receiver on the 1963 team who earned All-Knoxville Interscholastic League A Division and All-County honors his final two years at FHS.
“It’s just all seemed to work in 1963 when we went undefeated.”
“We were just a bunch of guys who had been going to school together for a long time,” said David Keck, a standout defensive end/receiver.
“One key to our success was being buddies on and off the field; everybody had everybody else’s back. If somebody got into a fight, they had to fight the whole team,” added Keck, who joins White and other senior members of that 1963 team for a reunion “about every six months.”
Hard work, resources, style
Saying Farragut was a small school “in a small community” playing in the KIL’s A-Division, “We were a farming community, so everybody who was on that team had a job somewhere,” Keck said. “They were either working on a farm or working somewhere putting up hay. … Some of them may have had to go milk the cows.”
Though “we never had a weight program, a weight room,” White added, “Everybody that was on that team got strong and stayed healthy from working.”
“Everybody had a good work ethic,” Keck said. “There wasn’t any laying around playing video games.”
As for resources, “most of our equipment — like our
pads and everything — were hand-me-downs from the University of Tennessee,” White said.
The style of play wasn’t exactly fancy. “We didn’t throw a lot back in those days,” White said. “… Most of all it was the old winged-T offense: a wingback, a tailback, a fullback.”
Special player
“One of the hardest hitting guys we had was Ronnie Kirby,” White said of this star linebacker, a 1963 senior, who also played fullback.
“He was probably the hardest hitter on the team,” Keck said of Mr. Kirby. “Ronnie died pretty early in life, but he could hurt you when he tackled you.”
“(Assistant) coach (Lendon) Welch told me one time at one of our reunions that he had never seen anybody who hit as hard as Ronnie Kirby,” he added. “Ole Ronnie, he was tough.”
Leader, talker
“David was kind of born before his time as far as football went,” Keck said about White trying to intimidate opponents with smack talk. “David did that back then.”
In fact, “I dare say probably everybody on the opposing teams hated him by the time the game was over,” he added. “Before the games, he was so fired up — he’d have everyone else fired up.”
Saying White was a team leader, “If you weren’t making your blocks, or whatever you were doing wrong, he didn’t care to tell you about it in no uncertain terms,” Keck said.
Other seniors
Other FHS seniors on the 1963 team were Butch Blosser, a defensive back/wingback; Charlie Russell, a guard; Sam Guinn, a tackle; along with Larry Blalock, Richard Hobbs, David Huffaker, Glen Norman, Donnie Payne, Gary Scarbrough, Wayne Smathers and Calvin Starnes.
Final look back
About the 1963 team, “I think about it a lot when I’m watching games on TV,” Keck said. “And the togetherness we had then, and still have now. A lot of us are not around.
“The few that are enjoy getting together with each other.”
Next week: two noteworthy games in 1963, which included one pre-game photo that made waves.
