The home games were played on a field next to the school that had a couple of small bleachers that would not hold very many people, but it seemed like the whole town would come out to the games. They would jam in close to each other and encircle the field. Some would pull their cars or pickups up close enough to the field so they could sit in or on their vehicles.
I forget who all we played that year, but I do remember playing Forney, & Crandall (We played Crandall twice - once at their place and once at ours). We ere supposed to scrimmage Vanston that year, but that was canceled after members of our team got into a fight right before the game. We also played every 8th grade team in Grand Prairie. There were other teams that I no longer remember without going back to the school and finding the trophy that lists all the games and the outcomes.
There was one game that really stands out in my memory though. One of teams from Grand Prairie featured a group of boys that had played together since their peewee days and had never be defeated. They had not lost even one game. They were feared among all the other Grand Prairie teams.
We played them at our field. They came out and their team was so large that they practically covered the whole sideline. They (as did most of the other teams from Grand Prairie) had shone arrogant smiles, chuckles and laughter at our combination of 3 grades just to come up with 18 players, not to mention that they also looked down on our stadium.
Our game with them was the next to last game of the season and we had already beaten all but one of the other GP teams. Everyone was wondering if this team of little"rednecks" could do what had never been done before. There were people from the other GP teams there to view the game.
It was a very tough game and a lot closer then the score showed. We scored the first touchdown, but failed the two point conversion. They then scored on a big pass play and got there two conversion. The turning point in the game would come just a little bit later as they launched another big pass for a score, but their receiver lined up offsides, and so the play was called back and they were penalized 5 yards. They lined up and ran the same play again, but this time our outside linebacker (or end) hit their player and held him as the rest of us gang tackled him. We would go on and hold them and we then had all the momentum, and we kept the momentum for the rest of the game.
I believe that the final score of that game was 20-8, with the Sunnyvale Raiders winning. We would go on and also win the last game of the season against the one remaining GP team even though we were still emotionally flat after our big win the week before. We ended our season with a 9-0 record.
Later on while working at a Warehouse, I met a man who was the backup quarterback for that "unbeatable" GP team. I asked him what happened after that game and why did they not go on and dominate the high school scene. He told me that a lot of the players could not take the way people went from worshiping them to laughing at them. They got caught up into drugs and other stuff and quit playing football.
As for the Sunnyvale players, I only know of 2 that went on and played varsity football in high school (although there were 3-4 players that went to other high schools, and I do not know what happened to them). No one from that team went on to play past high school. We did not have a lot of talent, not to mention that there is usually a lot of difference in growth and maturing from the 6th to 8th grades but we did come together to be one team and we played our hearts out. That team was something special and will always have a special place in each of our hearts. The unified team that had the perfect season.
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