Nice to see the Runnin’ Dawgs in action

As I mentioned last week, there was a lot of blue on the streets of Albany last Saturday morning as most of the Clinton County Cross Country members competed in the Foothills Festival 5K Run.

Those runners ranged from elementary school age through high school and of course many of the other Foothills 5K runners in the older categories were former members who have since graduated but continue to run.

Photos of most of those running from the local squad are included in this week’s SPORTS. As I mentioned also last week, due to the fact that at present, the Runnin’ Dawgs are unable to host local meets, the Foothills Run is the only real chance we get to cover any of them in action.

Congrats to all the runners on a great race Saturday morning and congrats to the Foothills 5K organizers on another fantastic turnout.

Gridiron Dawgs to host Jackson for last outing of season

Our Bulldogs returned home after a long trip to Jenkins High School last Thursday that resulted in the gridiron Dawgs picking up another win over the Cavaliers by an impressive 44-28 score.

The win brought Clinton County’s record to the 5-4 mark on the year, with a break coming up this week while they go through an open spot on the schedule before playing host to Jackson County for the last contest of the season on Friday, October 30, on Bulldog Field.

Kickoff for that final contest is slated for 7:00 p.m.

Some questions/arguments over best prior record

With the Bulldogs now in control of a 5-4 record on this season, there have been a host of questions in the circles I’ve been in the past few days about what was the previous best ever record, and some conflicting reports.

Doing some looking back through the archives here at the Clinton County News, I correctly went first to the era that everyone seems to agree on was the best two-years for football here.

According to what I could find in the Clinton County News archives, the 1973 season (graduating class of 1974) finished the year under Rick Highsmith with a 4-5 overall mark.

In 1974 (graduating class of 1975), there seems to be some conflicting information about the final record. Our archives show the season ended on a 3-6-1 mark, but David Cross, who played on that team and is my normal “go-to-guy” on all things sports/historical related, says he is certain they finished the year with a 4-6-1 mark. David went as far as to remember scores of games, important plays and even penalties in some of the games that cost the Bulldogs wins down the stretch.

Other reports are coming in of people remembering even different records of those same years that are even better in a couple of instances.

If anyone out there have anything with absolute proof as to the record for the 1973 and 1974 teams that are any different than these two possibilities, bring it to the office and let me see.

Sid still showing improvement

Long-time Bulldog broadcaster Sid Scott is still at home and still slowly recovering after what has been a long illness that began over the summer with a bout of very serious pneumonia.

His daughter, Lynn Starnes, tell me he is making “baby steps” in his forward recovery and repeated that he and his family continue to thank the community for their support during his illness.

His son, Sid II (aka Sid the Kid), also mentioned over this past weekend that his outlook, not to mention his well documented stubbornness, was still good, noting that he actually mentioned coming out and doing a broadcast for the WANY live remote during the Friday afternoon Foothills Festival Parade.

That notion was quickly “nixed” by the family.

Condolences to the Castle family

News came last week as to the passing of a long-time fixture around all of sports for many years at Clinton County High School, Mary Helen Dick Castle.

Of course Mary Helen was the wife of long-time Bulldog basketball coach and athletic director Lindle Castle.

Mary Helen – other than being a foster mother figure to many of the athletes that went through the Bulldog athletic program family, was also a fixture for many, many years at every Clinton County athletic event being played – whether “Coach” was directly involved or not.

Even in recent years, it wasn’t uncommon at all for me to look across the basketball floor from my seat at the official table, and see Mary Helen – simply “Mary” to me – to be sitting near the front row watching the game.

And she knew the game as well – which of course came from a lifetime of being the coach’s wife. Many times I’ve been pulled aside to hear some of Mary’s armchair coaching thoughts after a game. Once, during my high school basketball playing years on that team that for the longest time didn’t seem to be able to win or even come close to winning, Mary pulled me aside and warned me that if we didn’t start doing better, we were going to “be the death of Lindle” .

We never did do any better that year, and Lindle survived just fine (thank goodness for Gamaliel that season, where three of our six wins came).

Condolences to Coach and to daughters Terrie and Jan and the rest of the family on their loss.