This past February, Dan Mallet and Gary Kern, with the help of out-of-town classmates, hatched an idea. Over four decades had passed since senior class members from the undefeated 1977 Kosciusko football squad shared the field, and the duo and its former classmates felt it had been long enough.
So together, they crafted invitations and mailed them to nearly 50 people involved in that special season — players, cheerleaders and team managers.
This Friday, more than two dozen of them will gather for a reunion tailgate at Kosciusko High School before the Whippets’ Oct. 11 home contest against West Lauderdale. They will also be recognized at halftime.
“Some of our classmates who are out of town had said something about it, so they told me and my partner, Gary Kern, since we’re in town, why don’t we start with a letter,” Mallett, 58, said.
Kern, a former middle linebacker, said he expects 31 former players to join he and Mallett on Friday.
Four members and one coach from the team have since passed away: Coach Lewis Slater, Andrew “Piggy” Carter, William “Bingo” McBride, James “Cookie” Thompson and Tommie “Crow” Williams. Kern said each player on the team had a nickname, and he recited all four without hesitation.
“Those guys are missed,” Kern, 58, said. “We talk about them a lot.”
Mallett said he and a few of his former teammates who still live in Kosciusko met a couple of weeks ago to discuss the reunion. Once together, it was as if they entered a time machine and were transported back to 1977.
“About two weeks ago, we had a meeting with the guys who are still here, and it just brought back memories,” said Mallett. a former guard and nose tackle. “We sat there and talked for about two hours before we started — we talked about everything else, about football.”
The 1977 Whippets went 12-0 during the third year of Ricky Black’s tenure. Black currently coaches at Jackson Prep, which will prevent him from attending Friday’s gathering. But he and his former players plan to have lunch on Saturday.
Kosciusko that year outscored its opponents 365-64. The Whippets’ defense recorded three shutouts (Newton, Philadelphia and Decatur) and no opponent scored more than 14 points against the unit.
James Curtis Miller, a senior middle linebacker and running back that season, suffered ligament damage in Kosciusko’s season-opening, 14-0 win against Starkville. Kern called Miller the “heart and soul” of the Whippets’ team that year and said his injury sparked shockwaves of devastation throughout the team.
“I think he was a lot of motivation that year,” Kern said. “We’d all be on the sideline, and we’d look down and see him on crutches, and that just motivated us more, seeing him out there with us, as well. He may not know, but a lot of it was for him, as well.”
Although Miller still lives in Kosciusko, he said he believes Friday’s reunion is the first of its kind.
“This is the first gathering since that championship team that I know of,” Miller, 59, said. “I get in touch with a couple of the guys out of town every now and then via Facebook.”
As Kosciusko forged ahead on its historic run without its leader, Miller anticipated his return to the gridiron. He received the opportunity to do so in the Mississippi Bowl, which pitted Kosciusko against Saint Aloysius in the Whippets’ final game of the season. He still remembers the ovation he received from the crowd.
“That was pretty outstanding,” he said.
Coincidentally, that contest was the first to be televised in the state of Mississippi. The Whippets rolled to a 21-3 victory against Saint Aloysius to cap their undefeated run.
“It was defense,” Miller said. “We had a lot of players. We could run an offense and a defense, and sometimes we could run a second-team offense out there on the field. That’s just how large the squad was.”
Kern said the team’s dominance that year was not just reserved for game days. During the week, it practiced with the same ferocity it unleashed on opponents.
“Some of our practices we had that year were more intense than some of the games,” Kern said. “It made us better, and a lot of the guys will tell you those practices were what made us as good as we were that year.”
Although Mallett and Kern are responsible for handling a lot of the logistics for Friday’s gathering, they said many former players had a role in seeing it realized. They are looking forward to finally sharing the field again with their teammates after a more-than-four decade absence.
“We were brothers,” Mallett said. “There wasn’t a black or white thing. Everybody on the team was brothers, and we had each other’s back. That’s how it was.”
