Marty Kirkland: Though outcomes are different for Dalton and Rome, the lesson is the same

Save for special occasions, this is the routine for a Dalton High School football player after a game at Harmon Field, win or lose: line up, shake the opponents’ hands and sprint to the fieldhouse for the postgame meeting. It may not have the grandeur of the team donning those red blazers on Fridays or the pregame Cat Walk, but it’s still a tradition of sorts — and it speaks volumes about the importance Dalton places on doing things a certain way all the time.

Well, this was a special occasion. So, the Cats were permitted by their coaches to soak up a little bit of atmosphere this time before making that run through the west end zone and the gate beyond.

Dalton beat Rome 35-21 on Thursday night at home in a game that was notable from the get-go because it fell on a day of the week when the Wolves and Cats, like most high school teams around Georgia, are normally walking through the game plan rather than carrying it out. Add to that the fact that Dalton’s win locked up an all-important top-three position in the Sub-region 7A-4A standings — it doesn’t mean the Cats are in the state bracket yet, but they’ll definitely have a chance at an 11th contest when the Region 7-4A playoffs arrive on Nov. 6 — and that running back Tre Beck’s 294-yard rushing performance set a single-game record for the program and you’ve got a pretty memorable evening.

Two ground-pounding offenses slugged back and forth in an entertaining matchup that held the crowd’s attention from start to finish.

Oh yeah, and the Cats clinched a winning season — for the 50th consecutive time.

“It feels great to be a part of it,” said junior linebacker Blake Raber. “I love playing for Dalton.”

CONTRASTING SCENES

Naturally, this qualified as one of those special occasions. So the Cats lingered a little bit longer on the field, accepting congratulations and swapping dirty game jerseys for gleaming white T-shirts commemorating the string of successful campaigns.

Three weeks after suffering a gut-checking 38-16 loss to Sequoyah, the Cats were grinning at Harmon Field again.

The 2009 team can be proud to have put the finishing touch on the run of winning seasons, believed to be a national record by Cats supporters who have researched the numbers. But this year’s Cats also know they’re simply the last link from 1960 to today.

“It’s very humbling and we’re very honored to be able to play our small part in carrying on the winning streak and tradition that dates back to so many great coaches and players who have built this over time,” said Dalton’s Adam Winegarden, who follows Alf Anderson, Bill Chappell, Bill McManus and Ronnie McClurg as the head coaches who led Dalton to 50 winning seasons in a row.

But Thursday night at Harmon Field, as the Cats headed back from the handshake line to celebrate with parents, friends and fans, Rome kept going in the other direction, snaking its line of players toward the visiting stands where their own supporters stood, hands reaching over the railing to offer condolent slaps of the palm.

Unfortunately for the Wolves, their season has been going in a different direction than Dalton’s, too. But it’s a pretty good lesson in why what Dalton has done over the decades is so impressive.

Had they won at Dalton, the Wolves — who lost to Dalton for just the second time in the past six meetings — still had an outside shot at making the state playoffs for the 10th consecutive year. Instead, after being off next Friday, in the regular season’s final week they’ll play a Region 7-4A crossover game that won’t have any postseason implications.

The Wolves are now assured of a losing mark for the first time since 1994, when they finished 2-8 two years after East Rome and West Rome merged to form a new school.

Not surprisingly, that doesn’t sit well with Wolves coach Sid Fritts, who’s been at Rome since 2005 and went 42-9 in his first four seasons, leading his team to the Class 4A state quarterfinals twice and the semifinals last year, when they came frustratingly close to the championship game.

But he’s not blaming his players.

“Our kids have played hard,” Fritts said. “Sometimes, I don’t know how good a job I’ve done giving them a chance. Anytime you lose one by one, and one by three and one by four and then you’re in every game late in the fourth quarter, you’ve got to be able to help the kids win a couple of those. I just didn’t get the job done. I’ve been doing it 20 years as a head coach and I felt like our kids deserved better.”

This year, which stands in stark contrast to any other this decade for Rome, the Region 7-4A champion from 2001 to 2006, hasn’t been easy on the players, either.

Deonte Dennis, a hard-charging, turf-churning fullback who had the misfortune of being outshined in Thursday’s box score despite rushing for 271 yards, said inexperience in spots has played a part. But the senior believes the Wolves will be back, even if he won’t.

“It’s strong,” Dennis said in reference to the state of the program. “We’ve just got a few young guys starting ... we’re a young team that has to get stronger next year.”

YEAR IN, YEAR OUT

Still, as Fritts pointed out, even in an off year Rome has played with toughness against some of the sub-region’s top-tier teams.

Dalton wasn’t able to relax until late in the fourth quarter, despite the Wolves’ trouble stopping the knee-buckling Beck. Sequoyah — currently sharing 7A-4A’s top spot with Northwest Whitfield at 4-0 — beat Dalton 38-16, but only slipped away from Rome 13-12. Northwest, like Dalton, needed some clutch plays late to put the Wolves away a week ago.

The point is, Rome has been far from awful. Anyone who saw Dennis force Dalton to keep punching back on Thursday night understands that. But the Wolves haven’t been good enough to keep winning at the rate they have in recent years.

And that brings it back to what Dalton has done so well for so long.

The Cats have had some years in the string of 50 when they were clearly among the best in the state. Thirty-four times during that run, they’ve made the playoffs. Fifteen times, they’ve been a state quarterfinalist. Seven times, they’ve made their classification’s championship game. They won the Class 2A title in 1967.

But they’ve had a few years when the streak has been at risk late in the schedule. Six of those 50 winning seasons were achieved with just five or six wins, the bare minimum. Though the contribution of those teams is no less important to the streak, it proves even the most consistent of programs have years where everything’s not quite in place. And that the Cats have figured out a way to win with the proverbial cupboard less than full is a testament to the traits that played a part in their best years, too: determination, innovation, unselfishness.

Moments after his team became the Cats’ sixth victim this year, Fritts — a veteran coach who had success at Vidalia and in Tennessee before he arrived in Rome — was asked about the streak.

“It’s unbelievable, because everybody has that year where you’re not as good as you’ve been in the past,” Fritts said. “But they’ve managed to find it through tradition, through community, through players believing. And that’s how you end up getting 50 years of winning football.”

For Rome, this year has been a primer on how many things have to go right to keep a good thing going.

Dalton’s sympathy for the Wolves will only extend so far. But it’s a lesson they definitely understand.

Marty Kirkland is a sports writer for The Daily Citizen.

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