Larry Fleming: Staten’s big night recalled

When Lassiter quarterback Hutson Mason threw eight touchdown passes in a 70-49 victory against South Gwinnett in the second round of the Class 5A state football playoffs on Nov. 13, it dredged up memories of North Whitfield’s Ed Staten doing something very similar 47 years ago.

Todd Holcomb, a co-founder of the e-mail newsletter Georgia High School Football Daily, came across a Dalton Citizen article about Staten’s exploits in 2006 while doing research for the Georgia High School Football Historians Association.

The newspaper article noted that Staten threw nine touchdown passes in North Whitfield’s 81-6 rout of Valley Point on Nov. 11, 1962. The Saturday game was the season finale for both teams. North Whitfield finished 2-8. Valley Point was 1-9, having lost its final eight games while being outscored 349-62. Ironically, North Whitfield had scored 81 points in its previous nine games that season and hadn’t won since beating Westside 41-6 on Oct. 4.

But there is a bit of mystery surrounding Staten’s breakout performance. The newspaper story, Holcomb wrote in this past Thursday’s edition of GHSFD, noted that Staten threw nine touchdown passes, but accounted for only eight.

On Saturday, Staten still couldn’t recall specifics of the game, telling this writer that “It seemed like every pass we threw went for 50 or 60 yards. Normally, you’d throw a 15-yard pass and be satisfied. That was just an unusual game. I don’t think we were that good or they were that bad.”

Staten said he suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his knee during his senior season and didn’t continue his football career in college.

“I wish I had never played basketball,” he said.

Another downer for Staten: His shining moment on the football field apparently was never confirmed or added to any record books.

The GHSFHA Web site recognizes that Mason tied the record of eight touchdown passes in a game held by Jeremy Privett of Charlton County against Pierce County in 2003, a 66-14 win for Privett and the Indians. It should be noted the GHSFHA is constantly asking for input from coaches, newspapers and other sources to update the records.

When Mason — he completed 52 of 59 attempts for 552 yards — fired those eight touchdown passes two weeks ago, Lassiter ripped South Gwinnett. The previous week, Lassiter routed North Forsyth 62-37 and Mason had seven touchdown passes. He also threw six scoring passes this season against Milton in a 56-32 win. This past Friday, however, Colquitt County shut down Mason and the Trojans, 46-17, and didn’t allow a single touchdown pass.

Mason, a senior, ended his season with 4,000-plus passing yards, 54 touchdowns and 10 interceptions, with half of those coming against Colquitt County.

Back to the 1962 season at North Whitifeld, which merged with Westside High in 1975 to become Northwest Whitfield.

The Pioneers had scored more than seven points in a game only three times prior to playing the Green Waves. J.B. “Ace” Adams was the Pioneers’ new coach that season, having taken the job after being dismissed in a highly controversial move by the McMinn County School board in Athens, Tenn., after the 1961 football season.

Adams used a ground-oriented, fullback-dominated rushing attack and never threw the ball that much prior to playing Valley Point. As the season progressed, however, Staten told Holcomb that Adams shifted from that ground game to a more wide-open passing game and everything clicked in the final game of the 1962 season.

“That shouldn’t have happened,” Staten, now a certified public accountant in Dalton, said of the lopsided score. “Everything we did went well. We shouldn’t ever run the score up. It wasn’t coach Adams’ philosophy. Everything I threw went for a score.”

North Whitfield, according to notes Holcomb took from the article — the Dalton/Whitfield County Library was closed on Saturday and this writer was unable to review the story — completed 15 of 23 passes for 219 yards and also rushed for 270 yards.

Again, according to the story, North Whitfield’s Carter Haley caught touchdown passes of 52, 56, 46 and 26 yards, Bobby Lawrence had a 12-yard touchdown reception, Donald Douglas one for 40, Bobby Cantrell one for 12 and Sherry Williams one for 14. That’s eight touchdown passes. Either Holcomb missed one or the ninth scoring pass was not reported in the article.

Let me interject one thing about Adams right here. Adams’ family and my family were very close — at one time our homes were about 25 yards apart. I grew up with Adams’ children, played baseball with his son and dated his daughter.

Adams was a great athlete, especially in football and baseball. He was a hard-nosed coach in both of those sports. He was my high school baseball coach and rarely was he pleased with anything but perfection. We once beat rival Etowah High by about 20 runs, if my memory is correct — if it’s not it’s close — and we had a full-scale practice session after the game.

Against Polk County, our team loaded the bases in a close ballgame and Adams yelled “timeout” from the third base coach’s box, causing the Polk County pitcher to balk in a run — the pitcher stopped his delivery when Adams’ yelled prior to the umpire’s signal. On the pitcher’s next delivery, Adams did the same thing. On the next delivery, he did it a third time.

That’s one way to clear the bases. That’s also a good way to create so much tension the umpire and the Polk County coach were about ready to fight Adams.

So with that in mind, I would have to say that Adams would beat anybody — including his grandmother, as the old saying goes — as badly as possible.

Adams died several years ago. His son, Joe, became a successful baseball coach at Bradley Central High in Cleveland, Tenn., and then coached baseball at North Whitfield Middle School.

But 47 years ago, the names of J.B. “Ace” Adams and Ed Staten were forever linked to a football game.

Maybe one of these days, the statistics can be confirmed and Staten will be in the record book. He deserves that much.

Larry Fleming is the sports editor of The Daily Citizen. You can write to him at larryfleming@daltoncitizen.com.