DON McCORMACK
The way Scott Barber had it figured, the odds of the play working were slim and none... and slim had already left town.
But Reid Lamport had signaled the play in — by grabbing both his cheeks and flapping them — and Barber trusted his head coach, the former Bowling Green State University quarterback.
Barber, the Jefferson quarterback, gave Lamport a quick smile, nodded his head and ran back to the huddle.
“Take off your (hand) pads, Lance,” Barber said to his tackle-turned-tight end,
Lance Hammond.
The Jefferson Falcons broke the huddle and made their way to the line of scrimmage. Mike Adams was split wide left, just in front of the Pymatuning Valley bench. Mike Ritter was in the slot right and Dennis Mikolay was three yards to his right.
The crowd at Falcon Pride Stadium had been more than a little apprehensive since a booming Mike Hussing first-quarter field goal had put the mighty Lakers ahead, 3-0.
Now, midway through the second quarter, Barber looked for Lou Konyha, snuck a peek at Adams, took the snap from Jeff Scribben at the Jefferson 48 and took a one-step drop...
Prologue
After Jefferson had played to a puzzling scoreless tie against visiting Mathews the week before in its homecoming game, the entire community was rocked the following Monday.
When confronted, seven players had admitted to drinking at a party after the dance Saturday night. By Jefferson school rules in place at the time, that meant they were finished for the season.
Four other players turned in their uniforms in support of their comrades.
That left Lamport and assistant coaches Matt Bradley and Jim Richards with 15 bodies to take on the mighty Lakers of Pymatuning Valley, regarded by most as the best team in Ashtabula County.
The Lakers of coach Brian Cross were undefeated and boasted the 200-pound Konyha (who rushed for 1,154 yards that season) at tailback and linebacker, standout quarterback Larry Tennant, tremendous all-around player Mike Hussing and mammoth offensive and defensive lines.
Even though the four players who had quit the Jefferson team would eventually come back, the Falcons would dress only 19 healthy bodies for the game.
Because of the suspensions, 13 of the 22 starting positions for the Falcons were affected.
Almost in panic mode, Lamport, an extremely creative offensive mind, installed an entirely different offense — the jet offense.
Knowing what they were up against, the Jefferson coaches pulled out all of the stops.
“We came out in the papers and said how outmanned we were, and it really was the truth!” defensive coordinator Bradley said. “I think PV bought into the ‘Jeff has nothing left’ talk that was spreading like wildfire.
“Then, Reid comes out in the paper and says, ‘to beat us, PV has to run the football because they can’t pass against us.’
“I think Brian (Cross) was intent on proving Reid wrong.”
It seemed to work.
“Brian called me two days before the game,” Lamport said. “He said, ‘Reid, this is the worst thing that could happen to my team! My guys are not where they need to be emotionally.’”
Cross would prove to be prophetic.
Setting the stage
While Hammond came out for pregame warmups wearing his tradition No. 75 jersey, just before kickoff, he switched to No. 99 so he could line up as an eligible receiver without reporting to officials before every play.
The Falcons mounted little offense early, even with Lamport’s new offense. One of the few successful plays they had run, however, was using the aforementioned formation with Adams split wide left and Ritter, Mikolay and Hammond to the right.
Barber would throw a quick screen pass to Hammond, who would follow the blocks of Ritter and Mikolay as he dragged several tacklers after each of two receptions.
Meanwhile, Konyha was hammering away at the Falcons.
“We couldn’t have stopped Louie Konyha that night with a shotgun!” Jefferson defensive coordinator Matt Bradley said. “He was faster than anyone we had and he was bigger than just about every one of our linemen.”
But perhaps prodded by Lamport’s barb about the Lakers not being able to pass the football on the Falcons, Cross had quarterback Larry Tennant throwing more passes than anyone expected.
“Reid baited Brian into that, I have no doubt about it,” Bradley said. “If they had kept pounding Konyha at us, eventually, he would have simply broken us down.”
However, Hussing’s field goal on PV’s first possession would be the only score glowing from the scoreboard at the north end of Falcon Pride Stadium when the Falcons took over on their own 48 midway through the second quarter.
Back to Barber
The Falcon quarterback turned and fired the football toward Hammond, just as he had done on the two occasions earlier in the game. However, this one was slightly different — it was a lateral.
Still, Barber, who would go on to hit and Ashtabula County record .699 for coach Rick Havens’ Falcon baseball team in the spring a few months later, didn’t expect the variation from the quick screen to work.
“I looked at it this way,” he said. “I had to throw a lateral, not a pass, to a 240-pound guy who was our best offensive lineman..”
Hammond, who might have tipped off the PV defense to what was about to happen by throwing his handpads to the Jefferson bench as he lined up for the play, handled the first installment of the play by catching Barber’s lateral.
Meanwhile, Adams, who had lined up 53 yards across the field from Hammond directly in front of Cross and defensive coordinator Ken Parise, had done what he had done on Hammond’s two previous receptions.
“I jogged along a few steps and then just stopped,” he said.
But this play was different.
Hammond, who Lamport had spotted throwing passes completely across the field during a pickup game at a football camp at West Virginia the previous summer, didn’t head upfield after taking in Barber’s lateral.
As Konyha steamed toward Hammond, first Ritter, then Mikolay threw blocks at him. But Konyha ran through both attempts, then jumped, throwing his right hand high in the air, because Hammond was doing something no one — other than the Jefferson players and coaches — expected him to do... winding up to throw a pass.
“You know, all linemen want to be quarterbacks or receivers,” Hammond, who would go on to be signed by Jim Bollman to play at North Carolina State, said. “Well, I’m no different, I guess.”
Hammond is wrong, of course. Normal players can’t throw a football 70 yards.
Which is exactly what he did. With Konyha bearing down on him, he reared back — his huge right hand almost literally touching the Falcon Pride Stadium turf behind him as he grasped the football — and fired.
“After I saw Barber throw the lateral, I just took off,” Adams said. “And their safety had gone flying to try and help tackle Lance, because it took like their whole team to tackle him the other times he caught passes.
“We had set them up and the only thing in front of me was open field.”
Still, Barber was not yet convinced the play would be successful.
“We had to hope Lance wouldn’t get hit, and Konyha was almost on top of him,” he said. “Then, he had to throw the ball 60 or 70 yards, completely across the field.
“No way was this going to happen.”
Give Barber a break for his uneasiness about the outcome of the play. The Falcons had tried the play three times in practice. Once, Adams dropped the pass. The other two times, Hammond had — believe it or not — overthrown him.
“I remember taking the lateral from Scott and hearing the coaches yelling, ‘Throw it! Throw it!’” Hammond said.
“Me and (Mikolay) had gotten just enough of Konyha to get the pass off,” Ritter said.
“I snapped the football, blocked a couple of fellas and then saw the ball in the air,” center Jeff Scribben said. “It seemed like it was up in the air forever!”
In the pressbox, then-PV girls basketball coach Beth Helfer was heard saying, “pass, pass, pass,” as Barber’s lateral zipped toward Hammond.
Then, as the biggest Falcon wound up and fired, she yelled, “oh, noooooooo!”
“I remember watching the film and hearing Beth say that,” Bradley said with a laugh.
Air patrol
As the football sailed high into the slate-black October sky, Adams, who would lead the county in receiving in both his junior and senior seasons and who would make numerous miraculous catches, had one thought:
“I’m gonna look really stupid if I drop this!” he said, laughing.
Now, even Barber was starting to believe.
“Once I saw Lance get the pass off, I knew if he got it anywhere near Mike, he would catch it,” he said.
But Hammond did even better than that — he hit Adams in stride at the PV 5 and the junior hauled it in and danced into the end zone and spiked the football.
“I remember Mike spiking the ball and praying the ref wouldn’t throw his flag for that and call it back,” Lamport said. “But I think even he was too stunned.”
As was every soul in attendance... from both sides.
For a split second, an eerie pause-button silence engulfed Falcon Pride Stadium.
Then, bedlam ensued.
The play was called “The Chubby Special,” named after Hammond.
“That was what we called Lance when he came to us as a freshman,” Lamport laughed. “But he, like so many of our guys, had put in four years of hard work and had matured into a young man.
“So actually, calling the play, ‘The Chubby Special,’ was an extreme compliment to him.”
Game over
The stunned Lakers were never to recover. When Barber led Jefferson on a 15-play, 60-yard drive, capped by his plunge from a yard out, the shocking upset was complete, 14-3.
“We’d see Brian out and around months after that game,” Bradley said. “And he’d come up to Reid and I and say, ‘’Let’s play that game again. Let’s get everyone together, line up and have a rematch.’
“We would just laugh and say, ‘No way, Brian!’ We knew if we had played them a hundred times, we might have beaten them once. Somehow, and I think it was because of the heart of our kids, even those who couldn’t play anymore but who had come back and supported us, the one time happened to be that night.”
Epilogue
The 1984 Falcons went on to finish 8-1-1, winning an outright (Grand River) conference championship — something no Jefferson team has done since.
Hammond, who hurled “The Chubby Special,” was inducted into the Ashtabula County Football Hall of Fame in 2007.
Adams, who caught the Hammond’s hefty heave, will join his former teammate there Dec. 7.
McCormack is the sports editor of the Star Beacon. Reach him at donmac@suite224.net.
