By Sam Hutchens
Bret Stone couldn’t shake a creeping, gloomy thought from his mind while driving back to Guthrie from a trip to Tulsa Stadium.
“I was thinking on the way home, ‘We’ve had a hell of a run. It’s gonna be fun to play in the finals and nothing will be wrong with that (runner-up) Silver Ball,” Guthrie’s defensive coordinator said.
The coaches were traveling together to Tulsa to scout undefeated Booker T. Washington, Guthrie’s final opponent. And like the van’s suspension, spirits were lower than usual.
“I hope we don’t get embarrassed,” special teams coordinator Ric Meshew said he remembered thinking.
Newspapers coming out with previews for the game did nothing to ease the thought.
“I think one guy, Andrew Gilman with the Daily Oklahoman, picked us to win it,” head coach Rafe Watkins said. “They probably all thought he was drunk.”
After the initial shock of seeing Booker T. in action, Guthrie’s players felt better. They had won nine in a row and went on what Meshew calls “the greatest run in Guthrie football history.”
In the first round of the Class 5A playoffs, the Blue Jays beat Ardmore, a gigantic team with 32 players over 200 pounds. Keenan Webb remembered wondering if the Oklahoma Sooners had gotten lost when seeing Ardmore players enter Jelsma Stadium. But Guthrie won that game 29-12 and then defeated Tulsa East Central 27-13 in the next round.
A matchup in Norman at Owen Field against No. 2 Chickasha was the first dicey game in No. 6 Guthrie’s run. With the game tied at 20 and 4:17 left, junior kicker Stephen Penrod, who primarily played soccer and would not come out for the team his senior year, booted a 35-yard field goal that gave the defense an edge it would not relinquish. The Blue Jays were in the championship.
The Booker T. roster, though, burst with talent like no other in 5A. Some said you could throw 6A schools in the mix, too, and the Hornets would still come out on top. They had already toppled 6A power Jenks earlier in the season.
Watkins said they had 20 future Division I players. Felix Jones, the Hornets’ sophomoretailback,would become a first-round pick in the NFL Draft. But more than Jones, and more than the multitude of opposing players with enough college mail to fill a post office, the Blue Jays heard about senior Robert Meachem.
Meachem, a wide receiver committed to Tennessee whom the New Orleans Saints went on to select in the first round of the 2007 NFL Draft, was the type of player to lurk in nightmares of defensive coordinators.
“All we heard about was Robert Meachem,” Webb said. “He ran a 4.2, 4.3 (40-yard dash) whatever. He went for 100, 200, 300 yards on teams. But we, honestly, we had no fear.”
And, yet, despite the vaunted opponent, the Blue Jays trusted their routine.
Amid mounting expectations, players still went to Scott Mick’s living room to burn CDs. Watkins kept eating his lucky chocolate cake and the coaches prepared like normal. When word spread, the validity of which is still debated, that players from Booker T. had gotten their fingers sized for championship rings, Guthrie used it as motivation.
“If Tulsa Washington would have blown out Guthrie, I don’t think it would have been a shock,” TV play-by-play broadcaster Mick Cornett said. “I think most people, though, expected a competitive game. But Booker T. was easily the favorite.”
On Dec. 15, the final game for the 22 Guthrie seniors, a thick fog obscured much of the crowd around the turf — a surface the Blue Jays had never played on. The game was held at Lewis Field, where the Oklahoma State Cowboys played.
“It’s a cold, cold night,” Stone said. “Very crisp. You can barely see the press box on the other side. It was kind of an eerie deal.”
Until the fog started to disperse in the second half, it was difficult for offensive coordinator Chuck Atchison, who called plays from the booth, and broadcaster Cornett to see. Cornett, the future Oklahoma City mayor, said he watched much of the game on his TV monitor so he could better see players’ numbers.
“The game that people were seeing at home was of a higher quality than those of us that were in the press box,” Cornett said.
Keenan Webb, Guthrie’s star receiver, remembers the Blue Jays crowd showing up in droves. Webb said Guthrie had always had more support than its opponents in the playoffs. In the championship game, there were about three blue shirts to every black and orange Booker T. Washington shirt in the lower bowl of Boone Pickens Stadium. Webb’s daughter, Keena, watched from the stands.
The Blue Jays could hear their opponents before they could see them. The Hornets warmed up fiercely, barking at the Guthrie players. Maybe it is easier to claim 20 years removed, but players say they were not intimidated.
“Our team, we never really cared about the hype,” DeMarko Jones said. “You can be undefeated all you want, but you haven’t played the Blue Jays. That was our mentality.”
The Blue Jays wore white jerseys and silver pants. Royal blue socks matched the numbers and helmet decal. The Hornets wore all black, with bright orange trim for the numbers and facemasks as the only deviation.
Guthrie won the toss and opted to kick, surrendering the game to its defense. And Meacham, the best player in the state.
Meacham caught the opening kickoff at the 18yard line and bolted to his left — a direction he never changed. Four Blue Jays forced him to run back and to his left, eventually dog-piling on him at the Hornets’ 12-yard line.
On the first play from scrimmage, Guthrie linebacker Jarrell Smith rocketed through an opening in the right side of the offensive line. He yanked Felix Jones, who took a handoff, down for no gain and suddenly it felt like the Blue Jays should have been the team getting sized for championship rings.
Watkins again enacted his belief that he should play his best players whenever possible. The secondyear head coach tasked DeMarko Jones, who played cornerback before moving to quarterback in the eighth grade, with covering Meachem. Webb, a receiver, also played cornerback, lining up against Quentin Chaney, a 6-foot-6 junior receiver committed to Oklahoma.
Guthrie forced a threeand- out to start the game.
Offensively, nothing changed for the Blue Jays.
Senior tailback Colby Wagner rumbled down the left sideline for a 29yard gain to jump-start Guthrie’s second drive. Meshew joked that Wagner was neither a power nor a speed back, but the 190-pound wrecking ball in white caromed through a Texas-sized hole.
When Webb drew man coverage a play later, Guthrie capitalized. With 3:29 in the first quarter, Jones took a four-step drop. He looked right, steering the safety away from his predetermined target.
Jones said he knew where he was throwing as soon as the play, Spread Right 800 Post, was called. Webb flew behind the defense, snatching the ball from the foggy air on the 10-yard line. Webb powered his way into the orange end zone, running through a defender tugging on his jersey like a resistance band.
With 3:35 left in the third quarter, Guthrie held a 9-0 lead. Penrod missed his extra point attempt but tacked on a field goal before halftime. That was when Jones threw Guthrie’s second touchdown. When horror turned to exuberance.
Jones rolled to his right on third-and-goal from the 10-yard line, but was stopped when two burly defensive linemen blocked his way like security guards to a backstage door. Jones rushed a wobbly, lofted pass intended for John Hudson.
Or Jason Shoemaker. “( Shoemaker) got pushed off his route,” Jones said. “He was just at the right place at the right time. He was supposed to clear, like run a drag … if you watch the film, as soon as he catches it, John Hudson puts his hands on his head like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe that just happened.’ Because Jason wasn’t supposed to be there.”
For Guthrie, the team that wasn’t supposed to be there going toe-to-toe with the Hornets for a championship, the irony of Shoemaker’s catch writes itself.
The Hornets fought back, but they couldn’t sustain drives. Through three quarters, Guthrie led 16-0. But with six minutes left, as the inevitable thoughts of having the game won eventually weaseled into the minds of those on the blue-covered sideline, Booker T. made a surge.
On third-and-goal from the 2-yard line, Hornets quarterback Kenneth Mc-Clellan arched a throw to the corner of the end zone, targeting Chaney. Webb lagged in coverage but jumped too late. Chaney deftly caught the ball in the back left corner. He handed the ball to the official while the beaten Webb pleaded with his arms, signaling Chaney pushed off.
The Hornets trotted out the same formation for the two-point conversion. They needed to make it 16-8, a one possession game, but linebacker Sam Murillo swatted the allimportant pass intended for Chaney to keep the score 16-6.
With 51 seconds separating Guthrie from the 5A title, the Blue Jays had a breakdown. On a Booker T. Washington fourth-and-10 play from the Guthrie 31, Meachem got behind everybody. Mc-Clellan dodged pass rushers and darted to his right upon receiving the snap, hurling the ball to the end zone. Meachem beat three players for it — two chasing Blue Jays and a Hornets teammate — and an extra point made it 16-13.
“I will give Meachem his credit, though,” Jones said. “He was the first person I ever guarded that they said was fast, and he really was that fast.”
Jones said the second touchdown was his fault.
“When I think back to those big state championship games in that era, it was not unusual for the best player on the field to do something spectacular at the end of the game,” Cornett said. “And for Robert Meacham to get that open in the end zone at the end of the game. It’s pretty, pretty remarkable.”
It would not be the last spectacular catch squeezed into the final 60 seconds.
With 42 seconds left, the Hornets lined up for an onside kick. The Division I talent of Guthrie’s opponent was relentless. Even special teams was infused with future college athletes. It bounced twice then took off, rotating fiercely straight into the air above a pile of players clad in black and white.
Jerrell Smith speared the ball, catching it at the high point of his leap. When he fell to the ground, it cemented the fall of the undefeated Hornets.
“There aren’t very many high school football teams in United States history that have had two NFL first-round draft picks on the same team,” Cornett said. “It was no surprise (Booker T. Washington was) undefeated going into the championship game. But it also, you know, just goes to show you that anything can happen in football.”
The celebration was a whirlwind. Kyle Smith offensive lineman brought the Gold Ball to the Guthrie fans in the stands. There was screaming and there were tears. Atchison and his wife took a picture with the gleaming trophy that they would use for their family Christmas card. The Blue Jays took a team picture on the field that hangs in the Guthrie locker room. A duplicate hangs in Watkins’ office in Prague, his hometown where he returned to coach in 2022.
“We didn’t want to leave the field and they had people trying to get us off,” Watkins said.
Even as players and coaches left the city and state, the relationships forged that year stayed strong. It was good they did. Because 20 years later, those friendships would be called on.