DALLAS — If the 1993 Dallas Mountaineers were to somehow travel through time and take the field today, there might be an issue or two with the way the rules of the game of football have evolved.
Playing a physical, intimidating defensive style that is being legislated out of football from the top down, the Mountaineers stormed to the 1993 Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association Class 2A state championship.
Players, coaches and others close to the team gathered Saturday night at the North Slope Brewing Company for a 25th anniversary reunion of their state championship team.
The team’s tough, intense style matched the image of their fiery coach, Ted Jackson Sr. who turned the Mountaineers into a local powerhouse – and, at times, beyond – while winning at least one championship in more than half Jackson’s 27 seasons as head coach.
There was more, however, to Jackson’s coaching success than bringing out the toughness in the players on his team.
“I was fortunate to live in the community and see a lot of these kids play Little League baseball and junior or biddy football and basketball,” Jackson said.
Rich Butcofski, the punishing inside linebacker who went on to play in the arena2 football league with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Pioneers, remembers those days.
“We had big guys,” Butcofski said. “We grew up friends, even before football started.
“We all started mini football together and grew up playing against each other or with each other.”
Before state high school football playoffs arrived in Pennsylvania, Jackson spotted a fifth-grader with some special talents and made sure he exposed him to the Mountaineers program.
Even in a group of talented and enthusiastic youngsters who were part of successful youth programs, Brian Brady stood out. He was as impressive on the baseball mound as he was on the football field.
“I said to his mother, ‘we want that guy’,” Jackson recalled during the reunion. “He had a gift, like some lefties do. He had mechanics you couldn’t believe and he was tougher than … .
“We hired him as waterboy from there on out and he became a star.”
By the time he got his chance to play for the Mountaineers, the strong-armed, left-hander who once thought baseball was his favorite sport could not wait to be at the controls of leading the Dallas football team.
“He was sneaky like that,” Brady said. “He saw me playing baseball with his son when we were young. He had ideas of getting me over to football because I had played on the (Kingston Township) Raiders for a while.
“He got me, Corey Cherup, and a couple others who were already doing it, to be waterboys for the team. Those were the years when they were really good.”
Through the late 1980s until he became quarterback of the freshman team, Brady was already around high school football.
“I saw championships and saw how it was run,” Brady said. “ … All I wanted to do was play Dallas football once I started doing that.
“He got me hooked. He knew what he was doing.”
A special connection was made.
Ted Jackson Jr., who took over as Dallas quarterback following Brady’s graduation, helped organize Saturday’s gathering. He stays in touch with team members through social media and keeps his father informed of developments in their lives.
Brady made the trip from Florida where he now lives to be with his former teammates.
The players arrived at North Slope Saturday to table after table of memorabilia, including poster boards of newspaper clippings, game programs, plaques, and other items Jackson’s wife Sandy saved from 1993 and other seasons.
On a giant screen on the opposite wall, local television broadcasts of Dallas games from the championship season played on videotape.
It all served to supplement the memories players brought with them and shared among old friends.
Brady has heard reference since to his three interceptions in the state championship, but he recalls it as making two of the five Dallas interceptions while he was also throwing two touchdown passes in a 31-7 win over Washington at Mansion Park in Altoona.
At least Washington managed to score and tie the game for a while in the second quarter before the damage inflicted by big hits resulted in six turnovers as well as hurried and dropped passes.
Dallas finished with 50 takeaways in a season that featured seven shutouts.
When the season was over, there was plenty to celebrate. Before it even started, hints of possible state-level success were apparent.
Berwick, still in its early years as a Wyoming Valley Conference member, was the most successful program in Pennsylvania following the launch of state playoffs in 1988. Along with the Bulldogs, the early years of state playoffs featured the biggest of what were still District 2’s small schools benefiting from their willingness to take on demanding schedules.
While Berwick was becoming a perennial power in Class 3A, Dunmore won a state title in Class A in 1989, Hanover Area won the Class 2A state championship in 1990 and went back to the final a year later and, finally, Valley View went 15-0 to win in Class 2A in 1992.
The only Dallas loss in 1992 came against the state champion Cougars.
“They beat us up,” Jackson said. “We kind of put that as a measuring stick as to how far they were ahead of us and the idea was to try to catch up.”
Jackson insists that keeping up with the local competition was the toughest part of winding up on top in Altoona in 1993.
The only loss was inflicted by a neighbor, 14-0 against Tunkhannock and standout tailback Reuben Sherman in Week Three. The loss ultimately left Dallas seeded behind Wyoming Area and Dunmore for a district tournament that had the attention of the entire state.
Dallas went on the road to beat Dunmore, 14-6, then pulled away in the second half for a 28-9 victory over Wyoming Area, which had halted Valley View’s winning streak and, up until then, lost only to defending state champion Berwick.
“Dunmore was like a street fight,” Jackson said. “That was, by far, the toughest game we had all year.
“Then we had Wyoming Area. Those two games were tougher than anything we had all the way through.”
The Mountaineers responded to their only loss in style. They didn’t give up a touchdown for the next five weeks, outscored opponents 248-10 while winning the last eight games of the regular season and did not allow any team to score in double figures while closing with 12 straight victories for a 14-1 record.
“The best thing that happened to us was when we got beat by Tunkhannock,” said Jackson, in recent years a Wyoming Valley West assistant and now out of coaching for the first time in 45 years. “After that, we kind of pummeled everybody the rest of the way.
“It was a wake-up call. We thought we were better than we were and Tunkhannock whipped us. We did things that day that we never did – we dropped the ball and fumbled and jumped off sides, things we didn’t do all year.”
The Mountaineers did not let it happen again.
Along the way to district and state titles, they made an impression and left a few marks, both literally and figuratively.
“Football ain’t like it used to be,” Butcofski said. “ … It was a different level when we played.”
There were plenty of contributors throughout the season and in the state final.
Mike Viglone caught two touchdown passes from Brady in the state final, including one to open the scoring. Butcofski ran for the go-ahead touchdown and intercepted a pass. Buddy Rhodes rushed for more than 100 yards behind a strong offensive line, Matt Williams returned an interception for the final score and Jeff Kunkle kicked a field goal while going 3-for-3 on extra points.
It all added up to the Mountaineers returning home to a state championship celebration – one that was renewed again last weekend.
“They were just a special group,” Jackson said. “I’ve never seen a bunch that was that close knit.
“They were big and strong. We had speed; we had size and they just had an attitude that they feared nobody.”
