Former Avondale football coach Calvin Ramsey, now a supervisor of physical education in the DeKalb School System, received the Gene Goff Memorial Award at the DeKalb County Touchdown Club’s year-end fete last night.
Jim Rakestraw, whose Druid Hills team put together the best regular season record in 18 years with its 9-1 standard, was named the coach of the year by his peers.
Top player awards went to Gregory Graves of Southwest DeKalb and David Barron of Towers, selected as offensive player and defensive player of the year respectively.
Special recognition awards went to past president Dwight Martin and coaches Terry Sparks of Henderson, Jack Miller of Clarkston, Wayman Creel of Lakeside and Jack Wilks of Tucker.
Ramsey, who compiled an 18-year record at Avondale of 167-33-7, received the Gene Goff Award, presented in memory of the long-time Chamblee mentor who suffered a fatal heart attack on the field during the Lakeside-Chamblee game in 1969, for his long-time contributions to the game of football in this area.
Ramsey was one coach who did not believe that football is fun.
“Football is not fun,” he said. “There’s no substitute for winning. I’d rather have my fun on Friday night than have it Monday through Thursday.”
Despite what some may insist, Ramsey’s teams didn’t win an average of eight games a season because the Blue Devils were physically superior to their opponents.
“We believed in repetition,” he has said. “Our motto was that you ran a play 100 times during the week before you used it in a game. The only way to cut down on mistakes is repetition and recognition.”
Rakestraw’s 5th team at Druid Hills was his first winner. His previous best record was 5-5.
At the end of the past season, Rakestraw expressed satisfaction at being able to see the program do something not many thought possible at Druid Hills — put together a winner.
Averaging 32.5 points offensively, while yielding but 11.8 per game, Rakestraw’s ’73 team got rid of the football patsy tag that has been with the program for several years.
