By TONY McINTYRE
Druid Hills is one game away from having the best regular season football record in the school’s history, according to Head Coach Jim Rakestraw.
Only Shamrock, having an off-year with a 3-6 season to date, stands in the way of the Red Devils finishing the year with a 9-1 record, the best in the long history of the school.
According to Rakestraw, the best regular season record to date was compiled in either 1955 or 1956. Coached then by Elmer Morrow, presently the director of athletics in DeKalb, the Red Devils compiled an 8-2 mark. However, that same team played for the AA championship, bowing to Valdosta in the title game.
“If we get into the playoffs, we want to have the best record in the history of the school,” said Rakestraw, whose club clobbered Marist, 50-19, for victory No. 8. “That’s what we’re shooting for.”
Unfortunately for Rakestraw’s team, its sole loss of the season came to sensational Southwest DeKalb, the defending AA champion, which is breezing along toward the first perfect season in its history. Thus, the Red Devils won’t be in the playoffs.
Although the final score appears that Rakestraw let his boys see if they could wear out a scoreboard, he denied that he was running the score up against Coach Dean Hargis’ young team.
“The game wasn’t decided until midway in the fourth quarter,” said Rakestraw. “At the end of the third quarter we only led, 28-19.”
“In fact, Marist took the opening kickoff and went 70 yards to score first,” he added.
A 53-yard pass and run from quarterback David Middour to tight end Tripp Childs and the first of several successful PAT boots by Mike Goodwin tied the count at 7-7, the score after the first quarter.
However, the Red Devils got a pair more to take a 21-7 lead into the dressing room at intermission.
The Middour-to-Childs combination clicked again for 61 yards for the second score and Keith Honeycutt’s three-yard run climaxed a 62-yard drive in six plays for TD No. 3. Tommy Southard’s 23-yard run set up Honeycutt’s TD.
Marist closed the gap to 21-13 when Jack Murray ran back a punt 85 yards for a score, but the Red Devils went 94 yards in 12 plays to increase their lead to 28-13, David Adams’ seven-yard run provided the TD.
Marist picked off a Middour aerial and scored in three plays to leave the score 28-19 at the end of three.
Three TDs in the final stanza finally put away gritty Marist. The first came on a 20-yard run by Honeycutt, the next was a 21-yard Middour pass to Southard, and the final one was a 33-yard hook-up between Middour and Childs.
Middour finished with 225 yards passing, hitting on 9 of 17 attempts. Five of those grabs were by Childs, whose receptions netted three touchdowns and 170 yards.
The balance the Red Devils showed was outstanding. Southard and Honeycutt both rushed for 90 yards and Adams pounded out 92 yards.
