1971 Cobra football team to be honored

Jackson Heights High School was in its third year of existence, but the young school’s football team made it a year to remember — even though the team’s last game of the season was one that many on the team would like to forget.

“We weren’t anticipating what was coming,” said Jim Childs, who was a junior and the quarterback of that year’s team. “Those other guys weren’t that much better than us, but they were that day. They definitely deserved to beat us. They were very prepared, very focused.”

“They” were Little River, the Cobras’ opponent in their first trip to a state football championship game — a team that beat Jackson Heights 53-6 to win their second state title in a row.

But the 1971 Cobras — one of two JHHS football teams to make it to the state football championship — were still something to be proud of, even to this day.

“Just being able to go to state was a great thing,” said Keith Wilson, a junior on the 1971 team. “Having that memory for the rest of your life is good. Of course, it would have been better if we’d have won, but getting there is quite an accomplishment, once you see what we had to go through to get there.”

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Cobras’ trip to the Class 1A state football playoff, and members of that team will be honored next Friday, Oct. 1, at halftime of the Cobras’ home football game against Troy. Childs and Wilson said they will be among the team members paying a visit to their home football field to remember that season.

So will Charlie Woltje, who was one of five seniors on that year’s team.

“We were all friends,” Woltje said of the team. “Some of us had been through all our school years together. Most of the seniors were from either Circleville or Soldier, but with the friendship and the camaraderie we had, we just got along as a team, worked as a team and pulled for each other.”

1971 was the second football season for young coach Dave Henry, whom all three men remembered as being a coach who was tough but fair.

“I remember when he came, I was a junior, and I remember thinking, well, he’s a young coach, he’s going to be a lot of fun,” Woltje said. “That wasn’t the case. He was tough on us, and he worked us hard.”

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