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Dayton Bronco Football: Building a tradition of winning, Pt. 8
  
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Broncos go ‘where no Bronco team had gone before’ – 2007
By MIKE GEORGE
The Dayton Broncos were disappointed they didn’t advancer farther into the playoffs in 2006, but during that process, it started becoming evident that the 2007 season could be another one of those very special seasons the Broncos were having every three or four years. In this case, however, given all the adversity and missed opportunities suffered by the team early on, no one could imagine just how special 2007 was going to be.
“Our kids, in ’07 were really ready to go play, and as a coach that is something you always want to see,” said head football coach Jerry Stewart. “We struggled at the beginning of the season after having two good scrimmages, but the thing that really got to me that year was that a lot of good kids that I had known for a long time were coming to the end of their Bronco playing careers. Ford (Smesny), John (Gable), and others that I could remember sitting around and watching when they were in junior high.”
The coach described earlier memories of Smesny.
“The coach described how he could still remember Ford Smesny’s momma, Peggy, coming over to the old administration building selling candy when they were in little red and white baseball suits.
“I can still remember seeing him and saying, ‘Oh Lord he’s little,’” said Stewart. “So I can still remember that and her letting everybody buy that candy so they could go play the New York Yankees or whoever it was. Then I watched them grow up. I remember watching John and Ford as junior high kids, and not just them but those other kids with them – Robert (Billings), Chase (Barnes), Ronnie (Powell), Jeffrey (Summers) and Brent (Kimmy). They were all special to me and always will be.”
Blown in from the wind, so to speak, was another football player who had not been part of the system. Gregory Charles had been going to school and playing football in Louisiana until Hurricane Katrina caused him and his family to pick up everything they could carry and move to Texas. Just so happened, they chose Dayton. Arriving too late to play in 2005, Charles played on the JV during 2007 and won every game he played in that year.
“We didn’t know how good Gregory Charles was going to be,” stated Stewart. “Little did we know how special that kid was going to be for the Dayton Broncos.”
The first game of the 2007 saw an ominous start for Dayton against West Orange-Stark. Controlling the game early, it looked like it might be a route, but the worm turned and Dayton was off to an 0-1 start.
“Although we played decently the first half, we didn’t hit anybody,” Stewart described that first game. “I was so disappointed in that game because there wasn’t a lick thrown in that whole ball game by either team. The only lick thrown was Fred Hynson pounding somebody on the other sideline. They came back and beat us in the second half. At the time I didn’t think we were very good, nor were they any good. I thought both of us were pretty bad football teams.
The next week saw the Broncos travel to Nacogdoches in a game that changed everything the Broncos had planed for since the spring before when they lost starting quarterback Cody Green for the year.
“We’re playing Nacogdoches and Cody goes down,” Stewart remembered. “We put A.J. (Dugat) at quarterback, but he was still running more than anything else, but it was Paul Fontenot, if you want to know the truth, who won the Nacogdoches game with two or three interceptions, running one of them back in for a touchdown. That was a tremendous game that Paul had.”
The next game was a showcase game for the Broncos. FoxSports was out and about filming all kinds of things at school as the game against Friendswood was their “Game of the Week.”
“We then took on an old nemeses, Friendswood, who has been an still is our nemeses,” stated the Bronco boss. “They always seem to beat us by a little bit and I don’t know why, but usually we’re not at full strength when we play them, but that’s not their fault, it’s ours. So we go out there with A.J. still at quarterback and he’s doing the best he can, but we just don’t have anybody to put back there that can deliver the ball quickly enough. We score some points against them that night, but we didn’t play very good defense. We let them run some play-action passes over the top of us. We go ahead of them, and they throw it over us again. We still have a chance to win at the end, but come up just short. It was a really good ball game, but we’re still struggling and trying to find the right combination and chemistry to make our club what we wanted it to be.”
The team, after a week off, rolled into Lumberton to begin district play in 22-4A, a district the team had swept the year before.
“Regardless of what some people think, Lumberton is not a rivalry,” stated Stewart. “I think they may have played a good ball game that night, but we didn’t. They bottled up A.J. and he’s still not a great quarterback back there, but he tried hard and that’s all I wanted. He played as good as he could play that night, but we lost and were 0-1 in district.”
The coach further explained the loss to Lumberton if for no other reason, that so many made so much out of that game.
“We didn’t play good against Lumberton,” reasoned the coach. “We played pretty good, but the Lumberton game came down to a couple of things that was no big deal to the Lumberton people, I mean they won and that’s fine, but we got that holding call on the nose tackle and that one still throttles me until I could just throw up. I mean I’ve been coaching 32 years and I’ve never seen a holding call on a nose tackle, yet. That was on third and long. Then we come down, don’t pay attention to Lumberton on the goal line, and they score. We told Ford to call timeout, he does, but the linesman didn’t give it to us, they run in through the trip side on an off-slant, but then the first quarter we should have scored some, but we didn’t, and they won.”
Things were pretty dismal around Bronco Land that night and into the next day as the coach would readily admit.
“After the Lumberton game, I really didn’t know if we’d win another game,” stated Stewart. “We were not a good football team, we didn’t play good. We played like a Pop Warner team and I was really disappointed. The kids were disappointed in themselves, the coaches were disappointed, but that’s what they pay a head coach for – to stop the fall, to stop the reeling backwards and to turn things around. That’s my job. Regardless of why or how you lose, you lost, so now you have to do something about it. You can stop and finish the year out at 1-9, or you can do something about it and try to win some games.”
Things were about to change for the Broncos, however. First of all they were in the process of getting Gregory Charles back from a staph infection that kept him from playing quarterback. Also, the morning after the game, Coach Stewart put the team in the locker room that Saturday morning after the Lumberton loss and challenged each and every one of them. He told them that the team was hanging from the cliff by one hand and that everybody had to pull together and work together to keep from falling off that cliff and becoming the first team since he had been there not to make the playoffs. It must have worked, because from that point on, without question, the Dayton Broncos became a team to be reckoned with and went on a winning streak that took the team to where “no Bronco team had ever gone before.”
It wasn’t only Charles moving to quarterback and that famous locker room speech, but other things were happening, some subtle, some not so subtle that would change the way things had been going.
“We also got Evan Brown and about three other kids who had been hurt back,” explained Stewart. “We also moved some positions around. We moved Robert Billings to center and Ray Samuels outside to tackle.”
First up for the “new look” Broncos was Beaumont Ozen.
“We played pretty well starting that next week,” Stewart said. “Ford, John and all of them (the seniors) were still doing what they needed to do. Ford was anchoring that defense and was going to play hard every play.”
The comment, as soon as it was spoken almost brought the coach to his feet and he fondly remembered that group of kids that did that – they played hard every single play.
“That’s what I miss,” stated Stewart. “I miss it right now! Kids won’t play hard every play. We have two or three that wallow around there like pigs in slop. Even on the scrimmage this past Saturday morning. It makes me so mad I just want to run out there and throw myself in front of a train. You have got to play hard every play. Ford would play hard every play and that’s my tribute to him.”
The Broncos however still had to go out and play the remainder of their district schedule with proverbial backs to the wall. They couldn’t, according to their coach, afford to lose another game or they’d be out of the playoffs for the first time in almost a dozen years.
“We’re getting ready to play Ozen and I’m afraid of them because they have so many great athletes, said Stewart. “We played well however and shut them out. Then we had Vidor coming in, and I really have respect for a guy down there named Jeff Matthews who’s there head coach. He’s a great young coach who works hard with his kids, but we were able to rattle them pretty good. We got to LC-M and we’re still playing great defense, but now we’re starting to play some great offense. Gregory Charles, who has a quick release and now has a better understanding of our offense is getting that ball out like a rifle, Ronnie Powell is catching the ball, John Gable is running the ball, A.J.’s over there doing what A.J. does and scoring points – we’re getting the ball into his hands.”
Looming large on the schedule now was Nederland, a team that had strummed Dayton enough so that the Broncos could not take them lightly. The stage was set for a shootout. Dayton, having lost its first district game could ill-afford another loss, meanwhile Nederland had been playing very well, suffering only a single loss. It wasn’t close.
“We came out playing well in that game,” stated Stewart. “The defense was playing just awesome and Charles and the offensive unit were clicking. John Gable and most all our guys had a great game.”
Port Neches-Groves came to Dayton the following week and everything was still on the line. The Broncos still had to win because everything was still up in the air. But at this time the coach could see something special in this team that evidently was born out of that single district loss to Lumberton.
“We had some great kids,” remembered Stewart. “Man, they were fun to coach, they didn’t wallow in their own self pity after the Lumberton game and they just did something about everything. I have a real closeness with that bunch and want every one of them to succeed because of who they are. Lots of them many people don’t even talk about. We always talk about the stars, but we don’t talk that much about Jeffrey Summers, who never hardly said anything. What a great kid Jeffrey was. Brent Kimmy at nose followed in our long line and history of great nose tackles. We had other kids that came on and played like Anthony St. Julian who does a good job now. We had a lot of other good kids, but that senior leadership was really something else.”
But one more game, that PN-G game still had to be played – the final regular season game and it was at home.
“Port Neches had just manhandled everybody else in district, also, so they were dangerous,” commented Stewart. “Right off the bat, they drive down the field, we have our chain crew on the other side, and some lady taking pictures for them for some newspaper I guess, said she thought Dayton was supposed to be pretty good. They scored, but then the onslaught began. Our kids, I mean we tee up. That’s why a ball game is four quarters. Gregory Charles had a good game, and A.J. Dugat had probably one of the best runs anyone is ever going to see. All the highlight reels got it. He runs to the right, cuts all the way back, and I guess he runs through every player PNG can put onto the field and scores. John Gable is running the ball and we were ready.”
By “ready,” Stewart meant that the team had overcome its adversity and were now at a new level, a higher level and just in time for the state playoffs.
“What had been established is that we were a powerful offensive team,” said Stewart. “The defense was really playing good at the time. We’re not the biggest –that’s our downfall is size, but our kids played hard and it was so much fun.”
First up is Crosby, a team whose history with Dayton goes way, way back.
“I’ve always liked playing Crosby,” Stewart stated. “We know eventually they’re going to win against us and that’s backyard scrapping. Crosby’s a rivalry, so that there is no mistake. Lumberton is not a rivalry, Crosby is a rivalry. Crosby has played well year in and year out. Lumberton is playing good now which is good for them and good for their people because they’ve got great fans, but Crosby is our rivalry and people that are right here on top of us. We hadn’t been in the Golden Triangle long enough to establish a real rivalry.”
The game against Crosby gets a lot of media hype. Some prognosticators pick Crosby to win, but Dayton seems, year in and year out, with one lone exception since Stewart has been at the helm, to have the Cougars’ number.
“John Gable is the Crosby-killer,” admitted Stewart. “John Gable throws his helmet out onto the field and Crosby wants nothing to do with him, because he makes them mad, runs over them and he’s the Crosby-killer. John’s having another good Crosby game and we get on them by a pretty good bit. John actually changed that game. We put him on defense, he comes around, smacks the kid in the lip and it’s over; game, set and match. He just destroyed them. Another thing is I watched Ford Smesny play with a pinched nerve in his neck all year. People didn’t realize. I mean his momma would give him Tylenol or something and he’d come on playing. I saw him freeze up and clinch up the whole front part of his body, but he’d roll up and get out there and play lights out.”
Next up for the Broncos was a nemesis from the previous year, Texas City, a team that just walking out on the field looks so much better than the smaller Broncos.
“Texas City did some things defensively we know our offense could take advantage of,” said Stewart. “Gregory Charles has become a gunslinger. He’s smart enough to get the ball into A.J.’s hands, Ronnie Powell, Paul Fontenot and Jeffrey Summers, and then with John Gable running that draw and counter down the middle, they were in trouble. If we could just stop them, but our coaches had a good game plan and we knocked a hole in them.”
Next on the playoff schedule was another old foe the Broncos hadn’t seen in awhile – Livingston.
“They had a good quarterback, a huge line, but our kids played good again,” Stewart pointed out. Brent Kimmy has really been a force the past seven weeks and the rest of our kids are just gelling. We put it on them.”
The Broncos had won and had won the third game of the playoffs that many wondered many times if Dayton would ever get past, but Stewart saw that a different way.
“A lot of people always wanted to know why we couldn’t ever get past that third playoff game,” stated Stewart. “But there’s a lot of teams that don’t get past that third game. Check it around the area. The other team you’re playing has a lot to do with it. We’ve had La Marque and Bay City waiting on us and those guys did win the state championship. Oak Ridge got beat in the finals, and that was one of those third games we really should have won, and that was embarrassing in ’02. Had we played them 10 times back then we’d have beaten them nine and by 40. Up until the Lake Travis game, the Oak Ridge game was the worst game we had played, offensively, that far along in the playoffs.”
Next up for the Broncos was Waller, a team that had manhandled Lumberton the week before.
“Waller could play,” the Bronco boss stated with no hesitation. “I have a world of respect for Jim Phillips. I don’t respect a lot of guys who are coaching, just like there are some school people I don’t respect. There’s a lot of coaches I have no regard for, but for Phillips I have high regards. He’s old school and hardcore. He can play the game. He coaches hard and we knew we were going to have to be ready for his offensive line, because they could come on with it.
Phillips had six kids from that team go division one, and after scouting their game with Lumberton, Stewart and Co. knew this team could play.
“We wanted to win for several reasons,” said Stewart. “We wanted to win to keep going after the title. In the backs of some of our peoples’ minds was that we wanted to win to show we were the best team in the area. With a packed house looking on, we were able to beat them. What a football game. We had a chance for 21-0. We really had a chance to put the hammer on them, but back-to-back fumbles and a good team like they are is going to take advantage and they did. Phillips kid played great at quarterback and on both sides of the ball, but this was vindication in that it meant Dayton was the best team around, at least in these parts.”
Then came the game at Kyle Field when the Broncos would take on eventual state champion, Austin Lake Travis.
“What happened early on was that we had two or three bad things happen to us,” Stewart explained. “They weren’t hitting or anything, but their quarterback got hot and we failed to convert a couple of times we should have and they kept rolling on us. There was nothing we could do. Some of our kids panicked and instead of doing what they should. The thing was if you lose, you lose, but what bothered me about the game was that we didn’t play our best and they played their best. Who knows? One of these days we might play again, but it was a bitter pill to swallow because we didn’t play defense we normally can play. I also think the Houston Chapter of Officials choked. One thing about a team that is not very big is that if you let big linemen hold you, you don’t have a prayer. You can’t rush the quarterback, you can’t do anything.”
That was it – the end of the season and the end of 12 memorable years at Dayton. But besides being the end of a great season, it was an end of relationships that had grown over those 12 years with kids in the first grade when Stewart began his quest at Dayton through school and through their senior year.
“I hated we lost to Lake Travis because it meant the journey was over,” lamented Stewart. “We had to stop playing and no matter where Ford, John, Brent, Ronnie, Chase, Gregory, Paul, Jeffrey, Zach and others that meant so much to me went or whatever they did, for us, for the Broncos and for Dayton it had ended. I guess if we could we’d want something like that to last forever, but that’s a fantasy. That’s never going to happen. They’ll pick up and they’ll go and hopefully be successful wherever they are. As for me, I’ll always have the memories of them and of all those kids that played for the Broncos over the past 12 years. I remember every one of them like it was yesterday and that’s why being at Dayton has been so special – it’s been because like I’ve said many, many times before – we just have the greatest kids here at Dayton.”
2007 DAYTON BRONCO SCHEDULE
West Orange-Stark 14-22 L
Nacogdoches 22-6 W
Friendswood 28-31 L
LUMBERTON 7-8 L
BEAUMONT OZEN 33-0 W
VIDOR 40-0 W
LITTLE CYPRESS-MAURICEVILLE 49-13 W
BEAUMONT CENTRAL 20-0 W
NEDERLAND 63-0 W
PORT NECHES-GROVES 40-7 W
Bi: CROSBY 49-7 W
Area: TEXAS CITY 42-10 W
Reg: LIVINGSTON 43-0 W
Qtr: WALLER 28-21 W
Semi: AUSTIN LAKE TRAVIS 13-49 L
EDITOR’S NOTE: The last comments by Stewart only told part of the story about how he felt about his 12 years at Dayton. He spoke more specifically about the individuals he has coached over the years, but neither time, nor space allows for all that to be provided to readers at this time, but the Dayton Broncos have an open week on Sept. 12 and in the edition following of Dayton News (Sept. 17), those final comments will be presented.
“Our kids, in ’07 were really ready to go play, and as a coach that is something you always want to see,” said head football coach Jerry Stewart. “We struggled at the beginning of the season after having two good scrimmages, but the thing that really got to me that year was that a lot of good kids that I had known for a long time were coming to the end of their Bronco playing careers. Ford (Smesny), John (Gable), and others that I could remember sitting around and watching when they were in junior high.”
The coach described earlier memories of Smesny.
“The coach described how he could still remember Ford Smesny’s momma, Peggy, coming over to the old administration building selling candy when they were in little red and white baseball suits.
“I can still remember seeing him and saying, ‘Oh Lord he’s little,’” said Stewart. “So I can still remember that and her letting everybody buy that candy so they could go play the New York Yankees or whoever it was. Then I watched them grow up. I remember watching John and Ford as junior high kids, and not just them but those other kids with them – Robert (Billings), Chase (Barnes), Ronnie (Powell), Jeffrey (Summers) and Brent (Kimmy). They were all special to me and always will be.”
Blown in from the wind, so to speak, was another football player who had not been part of the system. Gregory Charles had been going to school and playing football in Louisiana until Hurricane Katrina caused him and his family to pick up everything they could carry and move to Texas. Just so happened, they chose Dayton. Arriving too late to play in 2005, Charles played on the JV during 2007 and won every game he played in that year.
“We didn’t know how good Gregory Charles was going to be,” stated Stewart. “Little did we know how special that kid was going to be for the Dayton Broncos.”
The first game of the 2007 saw an ominous start for Dayton against West Orange-Stark. Controlling the game early, it looked like it might be a route, but the worm turned and Dayton was off to an 0-1 start.
“Although we played decently the first half, we didn’t hit anybody,” Stewart described that first game. “I was so disappointed in that game because there wasn’t a lick thrown in that whole ball game by either team. The only lick thrown was Fred Hynson pounding somebody on the other sideline. They came back and beat us in the second half. At the time I didn’t think we were very good, nor were they any good. I thought both of us were pretty bad football teams.
The next week saw the Broncos travel to Nacogdoches in a game that changed everything the Broncos had planed for since the spring before when they lost starting quarterback Cody Green for the year.
“We’re playing Nacogdoches and Cody goes down,” Stewart remembered. “We put A.J. (Dugat) at quarterback, but he was still running more than anything else, but it was Paul Fontenot, if you want to know the truth, who won the Nacogdoches game with two or three interceptions, running one of them back in for a touchdown. That was a tremendous game that Paul had.”
The next game was a showcase game for the Broncos. FoxSports was out and about filming all kinds of things at school as the game against Friendswood was their “Game of the Week.”
“We then took on an old nemeses, Friendswood, who has been an still is our nemeses,” stated the Bronco boss. “They always seem to beat us by a little bit and I don’t know why, but usually we’re not at full strength when we play them, but that’s not their fault, it’s ours. So we go out there with A.J. still at quarterback and he’s doing the best he can, but we just don’t have anybody to put back there that can deliver the ball quickly enough. We score some points against them that night, but we didn’t play very good defense. We let them run some play-action passes over the top of us. We go ahead of them, and they throw it over us again. We still have a chance to win at the end, but come up just short. It was a really good ball game, but we’re still struggling and trying to find the right combination and chemistry to make our club what we wanted it to be.”
The team, after a week off, rolled into Lumberton to begin district play in 22-4A, a district the team had swept the year before.
“Regardless of what some people think, Lumberton is not a rivalry,” stated Stewart. “I think they may have played a good ball game that night, but we didn’t. They bottled up A.J. and he’s still not a great quarterback back there, but he tried hard and that’s all I wanted. He played as good as he could play that night, but we lost and were 0-1 in district.”
The coach further explained the loss to Lumberton if for no other reason, that so many made so much out of that game.
“We didn’t play good against Lumberton,” reasoned the coach. “We played pretty good, but the Lumberton game came down to a couple of things that was no big deal to the Lumberton people, I mean they won and that’s fine, but we got that holding call on the nose tackle and that one still throttles me until I could just throw up. I mean I’ve been coaching 32 years and I’ve never seen a holding call on a nose tackle, yet. That was on third and long. Then we come down, don’t pay attention to Lumberton on the goal line, and they score. We told Ford to call timeout, he does, but the linesman didn’t give it to us, they run in through the trip side on an off-slant, but then the first quarter we should have scored some, but we didn’t, and they won.”
Things were pretty dismal around Bronco Land that night and into the next day as the coach would readily admit.
“After the Lumberton game, I really didn’t know if we’d win another game,” stated Stewart. “We were not a good football team, we didn’t play good. We played like a Pop Warner team and I was really disappointed. The kids were disappointed in themselves, the coaches were disappointed, but that’s what they pay a head coach for – to stop the fall, to stop the reeling backwards and to turn things around. That’s my job. Regardless of why or how you lose, you lost, so now you have to do something about it. You can stop and finish the year out at 1-9, or you can do something about it and try to win some games.”
Things were about to change for the Broncos, however. First of all they were in the process of getting Gregory Charles back from a staph infection that kept him from playing quarterback. Also, the morning after the game, Coach Stewart put the team in the locker room that Saturday morning after the Lumberton loss and challenged each and every one of them. He told them that the team was hanging from the cliff by one hand and that everybody had to pull together and work together to keep from falling off that cliff and becoming the first team since he had been there not to make the playoffs. It must have worked, because from that point on, without question, the Dayton Broncos became a team to be reckoned with and went on a winning streak that took the team to where “no Bronco team had ever gone before.”
It wasn’t only Charles moving to quarterback and that famous locker room speech, but other things were happening, some subtle, some not so subtle that would change the way things had been going.
“We also got Evan Brown and about three other kids who had been hurt back,” explained Stewart. “We also moved some positions around. We moved Robert Billings to center and Ray Samuels outside to tackle.”
First up for the “new look” Broncos was Beaumont Ozen.
“We played pretty well starting that next week,” Stewart said. “Ford, John and all of them (the seniors) were still doing what they needed to do. Ford was anchoring that defense and was going to play hard every play.”
The comment, as soon as it was spoken almost brought the coach to his feet and he fondly remembered that group of kids that did that – they played hard every single play.
“That’s what I miss,” stated Stewart. “I miss it right now! Kids won’t play hard every play. We have two or three that wallow around there like pigs in slop. Even on the scrimmage this past Saturday morning. It makes me so mad I just want to run out there and throw myself in front of a train. You have got to play hard every play. Ford would play hard every play and that’s my tribute to him.”
The Broncos however still had to go out and play the remainder of their district schedule with proverbial backs to the wall. They couldn’t, according to their coach, afford to lose another game or they’d be out of the playoffs for the first time in almost a dozen years.
“We’re getting ready to play Ozen and I’m afraid of them because they have so many great athletes, said Stewart. “We played well however and shut them out. Then we had Vidor coming in, and I really have respect for a guy down there named Jeff Matthews who’s there head coach. He’s a great young coach who works hard with his kids, but we were able to rattle them pretty good. We got to LC-M and we’re still playing great defense, but now we’re starting to play some great offense. Gregory Charles, who has a quick release and now has a better understanding of our offense is getting that ball out like a rifle, Ronnie Powell is catching the ball, John Gable is running the ball, A.J.’s over there doing what A.J. does and scoring points – we’re getting the ball into his hands.”
Looming large on the schedule now was Nederland, a team that had strummed Dayton enough so that the Broncos could not take them lightly. The stage was set for a shootout. Dayton, having lost its first district game could ill-afford another loss, meanwhile Nederland had been playing very well, suffering only a single loss. It wasn’t close.
“We came out playing well in that game,” stated Stewart. “The defense was playing just awesome and Charles and the offensive unit were clicking. John Gable and most all our guys had a great game.”
Port Neches-Groves came to Dayton the following week and everything was still on the line. The Broncos still had to win because everything was still up in the air. But at this time the coach could see something special in this team that evidently was born out of that single district loss to Lumberton.
“We had some great kids,” remembered Stewart. “Man, they were fun to coach, they didn’t wallow in their own self pity after the Lumberton game and they just did something about everything. I have a real closeness with that bunch and want every one of them to succeed because of who they are. Lots of them many people don’t even talk about. We always talk about the stars, but we don’t talk that much about Jeffrey Summers, who never hardly said anything. What a great kid Jeffrey was. Brent Kimmy at nose followed in our long line and history of great nose tackles. We had other kids that came on and played like Anthony St. Julian who does a good job now. We had a lot of other good kids, but that senior leadership was really something else.”
But one more game, that PN-G game still had to be played – the final regular season game and it was at home.
“Port Neches had just manhandled everybody else in district, also, so they were dangerous,” commented Stewart. “Right off the bat, they drive down the field, we have our chain crew on the other side, and some lady taking pictures for them for some newspaper I guess, said she thought Dayton was supposed to be pretty good. They scored, but then the onslaught began. Our kids, I mean we tee up. That’s why a ball game is four quarters. Gregory Charles had a good game, and A.J. Dugat had probably one of the best runs anyone is ever going to see. All the highlight reels got it. He runs to the right, cuts all the way back, and I guess he runs through every player PNG can put onto the field and scores. John Gable is running the ball and we were ready.”
By “ready,” Stewart meant that the team had overcome its adversity and were now at a new level, a higher level and just in time for the state playoffs.
“What had been established is that we were a powerful offensive team,” said Stewart. “The defense was really playing good at the time. We’re not the biggest –that’s our downfall is size, but our kids played hard and it was so much fun.”
First up is Crosby, a team whose history with Dayton goes way, way back.
“I’ve always liked playing Crosby,” Stewart stated. “We know eventually they’re going to win against us and that’s backyard scrapping. Crosby’s a rivalry, so that there is no mistake. Lumberton is not a rivalry, Crosby is a rivalry. Crosby has played well year in and year out. Lumberton is playing good now which is good for them and good for their people because they’ve got great fans, but Crosby is our rivalry and people that are right here on top of us. We hadn’t been in the Golden Triangle long enough to establish a real rivalry.”
The game against Crosby gets a lot of media hype. Some prognosticators pick Crosby to win, but Dayton seems, year in and year out, with one lone exception since Stewart has been at the helm, to have the Cougars’ number.
“John Gable is the Crosby-killer,” admitted Stewart. “John Gable throws his helmet out onto the field and Crosby wants nothing to do with him, because he makes them mad, runs over them and he’s the Crosby-killer. John’s having another good Crosby game and we get on them by a pretty good bit. John actually changed that game. We put him on defense, he comes around, smacks the kid in the lip and it’s over; game, set and match. He just destroyed them. Another thing is I watched Ford Smesny play with a pinched nerve in his neck all year. People didn’t realize. I mean his momma would give him Tylenol or something and he’d come on playing. I saw him freeze up and clinch up the whole front part of his body, but he’d roll up and get out there and play lights out.”
Next up for the Broncos was a nemesis from the previous year, Texas City, a team that just walking out on the field looks so much better than the smaller Broncos.
“Texas City did some things defensively we know our offense could take advantage of,” said Stewart. “Gregory Charles has become a gunslinger. He’s smart enough to get the ball into A.J.’s hands, Ronnie Powell, Paul Fontenot and Jeffrey Summers, and then with John Gable running that draw and counter down the middle, they were in trouble. If we could just stop them, but our coaches had a good game plan and we knocked a hole in them.”
Next on the playoff schedule was another old foe the Broncos hadn’t seen in awhile – Livingston.
“They had a good quarterback, a huge line, but our kids played good again,” Stewart pointed out. Brent Kimmy has really been a force the past seven weeks and the rest of our kids are just gelling. We put it on them.”
The Broncos had won and had won the third game of the playoffs that many wondered many times if Dayton would ever get past, but Stewart saw that a different way.
“A lot of people always wanted to know why we couldn’t ever get past that third playoff game,” stated Stewart. “But there’s a lot of teams that don’t get past that third game. Check it around the area. The other team you’re playing has a lot to do with it. We’ve had La Marque and Bay City waiting on us and those guys did win the state championship. Oak Ridge got beat in the finals, and that was one of those third games we really should have won, and that was embarrassing in ’02. Had we played them 10 times back then we’d have beaten them nine and by 40. Up until the Lake Travis game, the Oak Ridge game was the worst game we had played, offensively, that far along in the playoffs.”
Next up for the Broncos was Waller, a team that had manhandled Lumberton the week before.
“Waller could play,” the Bronco boss stated with no hesitation. “I have a world of respect for Jim Phillips. I don’t respect a lot of guys who are coaching, just like there are some school people I don’t respect. There’s a lot of coaches I have no regard for, but for Phillips I have high regards. He’s old school and hardcore. He can play the game. He coaches hard and we knew we were going to have to be ready for his offensive line, because they could come on with it.
Phillips had six kids from that team go division one, and after scouting their game with Lumberton, Stewart and Co. knew this team could play.
“We wanted to win for several reasons,” said Stewart. “We wanted to win to keep going after the title. In the backs of some of our peoples’ minds was that we wanted to win to show we were the best team in the area. With a packed house looking on, we were able to beat them. What a football game. We had a chance for 21-0. We really had a chance to put the hammer on them, but back-to-back fumbles and a good team like they are is going to take advantage and they did. Phillips kid played great at quarterback and on both sides of the ball, but this was vindication in that it meant Dayton was the best team around, at least in these parts.”
Then came the game at Kyle Field when the Broncos would take on eventual state champion, Austin Lake Travis.
“What happened early on was that we had two or three bad things happen to us,” Stewart explained. “They weren’t hitting or anything, but their quarterback got hot and we failed to convert a couple of times we should have and they kept rolling on us. There was nothing we could do. Some of our kids panicked and instead of doing what they should. The thing was if you lose, you lose, but what bothered me about the game was that we didn’t play our best and they played their best. Who knows? One of these days we might play again, but it was a bitter pill to swallow because we didn’t play defense we normally can play. I also think the Houston Chapter of Officials choked. One thing about a team that is not very big is that if you let big linemen hold you, you don’t have a prayer. You can’t rush the quarterback, you can’t do anything.”
That was it – the end of the season and the end of 12 memorable years at Dayton. But besides being the end of a great season, it was an end of relationships that had grown over those 12 years with kids in the first grade when Stewart began his quest at Dayton through school and through their senior year.
“I hated we lost to Lake Travis because it meant the journey was over,” lamented Stewart. “We had to stop playing and no matter where Ford, John, Brent, Ronnie, Chase, Gregory, Paul, Jeffrey, Zach and others that meant so much to me went or whatever they did, for us, for the Broncos and for Dayton it had ended. I guess if we could we’d want something like that to last forever, but that’s a fantasy. That’s never going to happen. They’ll pick up and they’ll go and hopefully be successful wherever they are. As for me, I’ll always have the memories of them and of all those kids that played for the Broncos over the past 12 years. I remember every one of them like it was yesterday and that’s why being at Dayton has been so special – it’s been because like I’ve said many, many times before – we just have the greatest kids here at Dayton.”
2007 DAYTON BRONCO SCHEDULE
West Orange-Stark 14-22 L
Nacogdoches 22-6 W
Friendswood 28-31 L
LUMBERTON 7-8 L
BEAUMONT OZEN 33-0 W
VIDOR 40-0 W
LITTLE CYPRESS-MAURICEVILLE 49-13 W
BEAUMONT CENTRAL 20-0 W
NEDERLAND 63-0 W
PORT NECHES-GROVES 40-7 W
Bi: CROSBY 49-7 W
Area: TEXAS CITY 42-10 W
Reg: LIVINGSTON 43-0 W
Qtr: WALLER 28-21 W
Semi: AUSTIN LAKE TRAVIS 13-49 L
EDITOR’S NOTE: The last comments by Stewart only told part of the story about how he felt about his 12 years at Dayton. He spoke more specifically about the individuals he has coached over the years, but neither time, nor space allows for all that to be provided to readers at this time, but the Dayton Broncos have an open week on Sept. 12 and in the edition following of Dayton News (Sept. 17), those final comments will be presented.
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