Bennett vs Wi-Hi

Bennett vs. Wi-Hi

A true story by Erick Sahler

You get up for your rivals.

Whether you are an athlete or a coach or a fan, there’s something about playing That One Team that stirs your deepest passions and, despite the odds, makes anything possible.

So it is about this time each year I look forward to penciling in football games on my fall calendar. And there’s always That One Game I look for first.

Bennett vs. Wi-Hi.

James M. Bennett High School and Wicomico High School have met each November in the last football game of the regular season for more than half a century.

As the new school in 1965, the first varsity Clippers — my dad included — endured “Little Jimmy Bennett” taunts all season from the cross-town Indians. But when the dust settled in the late afternoon of Thanksgiving Day, it was the Clippers who walked off the field at County Stadium with a 20-0 victory. And thus a rivalry was born.

Often, leading up to The Big Game, the taunts turned to pranks. In the 1970s, the large ship anchor on the Bennett campus was regularly spray-painted in Wicomico blue and gold. One year, some sneaky Clippers released dozens of baby chickens in the Wi-Hi cafeteria. And, of course, bonfires and pep rallies were held at both schools, all in prelude to the grudge match that is Bennett vs. Wi-Hi: the most important game of the season.

In the 1980s, the Bennett football program went on a tear that led to four consecutive state championship appearances, winning titles in three undefeated seasons. The stars aligned to stack the Clippers with a broad array of athletic talent and a coaching staff who molded them into a juggernaut that the Baltimore Sun called the best high school football team in all of Maryland.

By the last game of the regular season in 1983, Bennett owned the state’s longest winning streak — 21 straight games. Six of that season’s wins had been shutouts and five of the victories were by more than 40 points. The Clippers were so dominant that its first team was often pulled in the second half of most games and those players still managed to set records that stand today.

The 1983 Wi-Hi team was a different story. Its veteran players still smarted from a 28-0 drubbing by the Clippers the previous season. With a record of 5-4, the Indians’ only goal was to end the rival Clippers win streak and knock them from the state playoffs.

Game Day was cold and rainy. By the 8 p.m. kickoff, conditions were miserable. The field deteriorated into a soggy mess, defusing the Clippers’ explosive running attack. To add insult, scheduling for the shared County Stadium forced Bennett to the visitor sidelines of its home field.

Under the horrid conditions, both teams were sloppy, with numerous turnovers and penalties. The clock expired on a 0-0 tie. In overtime, both teams were again unable to score and a second overtime began.

Wi-Hi got the ball first and the Clipper defense held on three plays. On fourth down the Indians kicked a 20-yard field goal and went up 3-0. It was the first time the Clippers were behind all season.

Bennett then got its chance to score from the 10-yard line. The Indians jumped offside on the first play, giving Bennett a first down and five.

With running backs Carl Morton and Elmer Davis as decoys, quarterback Cam Carte handed off to fullback Wardell Turner, who plunged up the middle for a one-yard gain.

On second down, Turner fought again for another yard.

On third down, it was Turner like a bulldozer up the middle again, only to be stopped inches from the goal line.

With the fourth down looming and the undefeated season on the line, Coach John Usilton called timeout.

“Everyone in County Stadium figured that he was deciding as to whether or not kick a field goal or go for it,” Carte said. “That was the furthest thing from the truth. He told us that we came here to win the game and that we were going to do that right then.”

What happened next is like something out of a movie. Freezing cold and soaked to its bones, the stadium crowd fell dead silent and time seemed to stop as the Clipper offense lined up for its final play.

“The ball was snapped,” Carte said. “It went through my hands and hit the bottom of my face mask and the rest was a blur.

“I just remember trying to find the ball on the ground. Then I heard a huge eruption of noise from the visitor sidelines — our sidelines! Wardell had secured the ‘handoff’ and scored, cementing our trip back to the playoffs.”

Bennett fans leapt the chain-link fence and stormed the field — the only time I’ve ever witnessed such a celebration at County Stadium.

Meanwhile, Carte was still on the ground.

“Everyone was running around hugging and screaming,” Carte said. “The students and parents poured out of the stands and I was on my hands and knees from where I was ‘looking for the ball.’ I was so overcome with supposed guilt, then relief and finally elation that my nerves were shot and at that point I threw up all over the place.”

Later, Carte asked Turner how he got the ball.

“I took it from you like I always do — but just a bit different than usual,” Turner said as he smiled and laughed.

“You couldn’t see the exchange on film, so it may be that only Wardell and I know that he saved the game, and the season, and it was so like Wardell to not make a big deal of something of that importance,” Carte said.

Newspaper stories and yearbooks record simply that Bennett defeated Wi-Hi 6-3 in double overtime of the final game of the regular season. A week later in the state semi-final, the Clippers crushed Brooklyn Park 52-0 before a jam-packed County Stadium. Then on Thanksgiving Friday Bennett beat Poolesville 27-12 at the University of Maryland to cap an undefeated season and earn its second consecutive state title.

What those newspaper and yearbooks don’t show is how the rival Wicomico Indians came within a hair’s breadth — literally on the very last play of the last game of the regular season — of upending the mighty Clippers.

In their first-ever meeting, on Thanksgiving Day 1965, it was the Clippers who walked off the field with a 20-0 victory over Wi-Hi, and thus a rivalry was born.