By TONY McINTYRE
When Druid Hills and Shamrock meet this Friday night at Memorial Stadium, it will be one of those area rivalries.
“Shamrock is neighborhood game,” said Jim Rakestraw, head Red Devil coach, after his squad had beaten Marist 50-19. “And it’s one of those where anybody can win it. I’m sure they’ll be up for it. We feel like this is a big game for us, too. If we win this one, we’ll have the best season in the history of the school.”
To this point the best season in Druid Hill’s history was in 1965 when Crawford Kennedy took the Devils to an 8-1-1 record. Right now Druid Hills is 8-1, with their only loss coming at the hands of Southwest DeKalb.
“We’ve lost one big game this year that meant a lot to us,” said Rakestraw. “Since then we’ve set our goals to have the best record the school’s ever had.”
But it will be a tough game for both teams. Druid Hills is out to keep their sterling season intact and Shamrock will be out to end their year on a win.
Shamrock lost to Gordon last week,” said Rakestraw. “We feel like Shamrock’s got some good football players. We’re going to have to go out there and play if we’re going to beat them.”
The Devils are a good bet to play Shamrock a good though, just as they did against a stubborn Marist team.
“We were real pleased with the offense,” said Rakestraw, “but it took that to win it.”
Marist took the opening kickoff and drove 70 yards downfield to score.
“After that our defense played well,” said the coach, “even though Marist moved the ball on us.”
And the game wasn’t really decided until midway through the fourth quarter, according to Rakestraw.
“Marist just kept coming back,” said Rakestraw. “It happened all during the game. It was 28-29 halfway through the fourth quarter.”
Then the Devils broke it open and Keith Honeycutt scored on a 20-yard run, Tommy Southard threw a 21-yard TD pass to David Middour, Mike Goodwin threw a two-point conversion pass to Randy Tanner and Middour threw a 33-yard TD pass to Tripp Childs.
Middour and Childs connected for three touchdowns during the night on passes of 53, 61 and 33 yards.
Childs caught five passes for 170 yards and three touchdowns, while Middour hit nine of 17 passes for 225 yards and four TDs.
Middour also rushed for four yards, making his individual yardage 229 yards.
Southard caught four passes for 55 yards and one TD of 32 yards.
Rushing statistics show Southard with 90 yards in 10 carries, David Adams with 92 yards in 16 carries and Honeycutt with 90 yards in 16 carries.
Druid Hills totalled 503 yards offensively, with 278 yards coming on the ground and 225 on passing.
Pat Kelley intercepted for Druid Hills on the Marist 38 yard line, which set up the second touchdown of the game.
Carry Ulman intercepted Marist in the midst of their next drive to set up another score from the 21 yard line.
Then Al Sheppard intercepted Marists 33 yard line, which led to another score.
Dennis Yarborough recovered a fumble right before the half which did not lead to a score because the attempted field goal was missed.
Rakestraw cited Robert Hall, Ward Gober and Glen Bourgeois as having outstanding defensive games.
