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August 24, 2005 Roughrider Retrospective
Roughriders v. Sidney Yellowjackets, Series
ROUGHRIDER RETROSPECTIVE -- by Buz Howard
This is the second installment of a series designed to look back on memorable games in St. Marys football history. Each segment, to be posted on Ridertown on Mondays, will deal with a key game from the series with the upcoming opponent.
On Wednesday each week we will post a follow-up article providing an overview of the entire competitive series between the two schools, focusing on further highlights through the years.
 In its oldest football series with a current opponent, St. Marys leads Sidney, 27-20-4.
Sidney High School boasts one of the oldest programs in the state, with records of games played as early as 1896.
The first account of a Sidney football contest with St. Marys goes back to 1912, the first year of St. Marys interscholastic football.
In that game a veteran Sidney squad shut out St. Marys High School (Memorial High School was yet to be built, and the nickname “Roughriders” was yet to be adopted) by a score of 25-0.
St. Marys , in 1924 in their fifth try against a Sidney team, finally secured their first series victory, 18-12.
Twenty years later, the 1944 team picked up the second series win, again by a score of 18-12, in Lyle Barber’s first year as head coach. Chuck Huwer, Bill Slife, and Harry Steinecker each provided a touchdown for the team that would go on to win a Western Buckeye League championship.
It took another 19 years before the Roughriders won again, beating the Yellowjackets in 1963 by a score of 24-8, Ron Jones running for 147 yards and Tom Hollman scoring on an interception.
Sidney’s golden years in football come in the three-season span from 1968-1970 when they ran off a 30-game winning streak, three of those wins coming against St. Marys in one-sided season openers.
Sidney started the streak with a 42-0 pasting of the Roughriders, but, fittingly enough, it was the Riders who halted the streak, 16-8, in the 1971 season opener.
Since then, St. Marys has dominated the series, winning 21 of the last 25 meetings.
One of the highlights of this period came in 1989, when the two schools actually met each other twice. The Riders won the first encounter in the season opener, 21-14, with halfback Greg Keith running for 136 yards, and Derek Turner hitting Tony Jones (son of the afore-mentioned Ron) with a game-winning 21-yard touchdown pass with 20 seconds left. The strong Sidney squad retaliated in Round Two of the playoffs, with a 28-7 win that saw Keith on the sidelines with an ankle injury.
Another memorable game for St. Marys fans came in 1965, when a 44-20 Roughrider victory unveiled a powerful rushing game, featuring Tim Fortney (153 yards) and Floyd Keith (183 yards).
Fortney would go on to set the single-season rushing record for Miami University, and Keith would go on to play at Ohio Northern, enjoy a long collegiate coaching career, and currently serve as director of the National Black Coaches Association.
And, of course, there was the historic 1970 game (featured in the previous installment of this series) in which the state-ranked Sidney team easily handled the Roughriders in the night when Coach Skip Baughman first employed full-platoon football. A side-note on that contest was that one of the Sidney assistant coaches was Tom (“Scooter”) Hollman, the former Roughrider who would become a standout at Ohio Northern, playing alongside high-school teammates Floyd Keith and Greg Freewalt.
Hollman was taking the first steps of a long coaching career that would him to three high schools, four universities, and finally back to high school again. He currently serves as an assistant in Florida at Mainland High School in Daytona Beach.
Other Notes:
This will be the Riders’ first appearance in Sidney Memorial Stadium, inaugurated last season. The field itself has been dubbed “30-0 Field” in honor of that 1968-70 winning streak. Julia Lamb Stadium, named to commemorate the benefactress who donated the land, had been the site of Sidney home games since 1919.
Near the visitor’s locker room at the new Sidney stadium is a plaque that honors outstanding visiting coaches who have brought teams to Sidney. Among the names found there is Skip Baughman. Other coaches so honored are Bucky Wertz of Piqua, Harold Dodd of Bellefontaine, Chuck Asher of Piqua, and Al Hetrick of Versailles.
The only Sidney player to have his number retired (#27) was Dick Flanagan, who played for the Yellowjackets from 1940-1943. The Roughriders never had to face Flanagan since there was hiatus in the series during those years. Flanagan went on to become an All-American at Ohio State and enjoy an NFL career with the Chicago Bears and Detroit Lions. Flanagan’s son, Mike, caught three touchdown passes in the much ballyhooed 1970 game.
Another Yellowjacket of note was Kris Haines, son of Coach Dave Haines. Though Haines played briefly against the Riders in the 1973 game, he didn’t blossom as a star until the following year, when , once again, the two teams did not play.
Thanks to Sidney historian Dave Ross for much of the information used here. Ross has created a comprehensive book on his school’s football history, entitled Sidney High School Football Replay. The 437-page book was written in 1996 as a record of the first 100 years of the Sidney program. It cleverly blends football with local, national, and world history, making it a “fun-read” for the nostalgic among us. By the way, Ross was the place-kicker for most of the fabled 30- game win streak. He kicked six extra points against the Roughriders in that 1970 game.
Next week: Celina
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