1953 Football Season

Front Row: Appleton; Greenbaum: Pyburn; Tiesler; Coke; Johnson; Ferguson; DuBose; Ansley; Derryberry. Second Row: Stokes, Manager; Stein; Suter; Collier; Taylor; Grove; Stratton; Niles; Carney; Farmer; Compton; Coach Shapiro. Third Row: Keel; Parsons; Owens; Justice; Jones; Stephens; Cranch; Gothard; Corn; Christian; Coach Kennedy. Inset: French.

 Not much was expected when the 1953 football season rolled around. Following a 3-6-1 season and the transfer of two projected starters, fall practice started with only twelve seniors and four of them had not played the year before. The inexperience showed in the first game against Cohn which ended in a scoreless tie. With Ralph Greenbaum trying a rarely used drop kick the game ended as the  field goal attempt failed and the Blue Jays faced a road game against MBA, a team they had never beaten.

Trailing 13-0 at the half it was beginning to look like a long season, but the defense stiffened and the offense came alive in the second half scoring three times and after sixteen years of futility West could finally say they had beaten MBA 20-13.

This emotional win was followed by a narrow triumph over Springfield 20-19, a team that had soundly defeated West the two previous seasons. But, there was an abrupt nosedive the next week when North shut out West 13-0. This shutout was avenged the following week as the Blue Jays went on the road and edged  arch rival East 8-0.

Homecoming against Hillsboro resulted in the only one sided victory of the year. Scoring four times in the first half they went on to win easily by a score of 32-13. Unfortunately this was followed by the most one sided defeat of the year when the team went on the road to Clarksville and lost 27-0.

But, the season ended on an upbeat note as West held on to defeat Father Ryan 6-0 and after a scoreless first half beat Central 21-6. On a cold November night at Central Cliff Keel convinced the team, but not Coach Shapiro, that he should kick the final extra point. With the Coach fuming on the sidelines a botched center snap resulted in a two handed pass by Keel to a kneeling Billy Owens in the end zone for what would be a two point conversion today.

So an unexpected winning (6-2-1) season which started with an old fashioned drop kick and ended with an inept, but successful, extra point attempt came to a close. No one really knew what to expect as six members of the football team traded in their cleats for sneakers and started basketball practice.

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