Hampton honors state champion 1973 team, coaches
Eighteen members of the 1973 Hampton High School football team took to the field once more Friday night along with their head coach and an assistant. However, they weren’t there to move the pigskin down the field, but rather to be honored by the crowd at Hampton’s second home game of the season on the 50th anniversary of a spectacular accomplishment.
In 1973 the Hampton Hawks went undefeated for a second year in a row, racking up an amazing 22-game winning streak and being rated by the Lincoln Journal Star as the No. 1 eight-man football team in the state.
At halftime of Hampton’s game against Lewiston, the players and coaches from the ‘73 team were called to center field to have their names read to the crowd along with the record of their accomplishments. In the group were all eight of the starters, including quarterback Mark Olsen, as well as head coach Jim Connick and assistant coach Jerry Eickhoff.
The sports page of a 1973 edition of the News-Register lists the team’s amazing record. Altogether the Hawks scored 446 points, to a mere 80 points for their season opponents, with 174 of those points being scored in the first quarters alone. In three games the team left its challengers scoreless, those teams being Hordville, Gresham and Benedict. The Hawks also had 2,470 yards rushing while keeping their opponents to a mere 869 yards.
Dean Troester led the team in scoring with 106 points including 15 touchdowns and eight extra points. He also led the team in yards rushing with 839 yards on 119 carries. Dale Klute was the leading pass receiver with 29 grabs for 580 yards and an average of 20 yards per carry. Olsen led the yard-gainers with 1,634 yards in 213 plays for an average of 7.6.
At the end of the season 19 members of the team were listed as letterwinners.
Connick commented following the ceremony that all 160 schools in Class D across Nebraska were competing for that one coveted spot. Asked what made the ‘73 team so special, Connick commented, “I think probably their willingness to work and work as a team together. This was an outstanding group of young men. Their parents were behind them. The students were behind them. The town was behind them.”
Connick especially credited the team’s parents for instilling a work ethic in their boys, noting, “They’d come to practice then go home and haul pipe. It was just a great time to be in Hampton. A lot of people say it was good coaching, but actually it was just having a good bunch of students. The kids had played enough football that if the other team started doing something different that they weren’t ready for, they could figure it out themselves. They called their own plays. Mark probably called 85 percent to 90 percent of our plays in the huddle, which is unheard of today. ”
Originally from Bassett, Connick recalls coaching in Hampton for eight or nine years and says the ‘73 team was the fourth or fifth team he coached there. Even though there were no more state championships to be added during his tenure (and none since), Connick said Hampton sports thrived during that era. Before he left he went on to take two more teams to the finals but lost both games. He also coached Hampton in the first overtime game in Nebraska history. That was in the playoffs in the late 70s, a game the Hawks lost.
He said during those years Hampton teams won 51 basketball games and 22 football contests. He said that era reminds him of the Huskers during the 90s.
When he left Hampton, Connick moved to Minburn, Iowa, northwest of Des Moines and went into the insurance business. He also left coaching behind, partly because he didn’t believe he could ever improve on what he had during those years in Hampton.
“I wanted to remember this and not go out some other way,” he said.
Although he has lived in Iowa for 46 years now, Connick said, “We still kinda classify Hampton as home.”
Also in attendance on Friday were two of the team’s seven cheerleaders – Sharon (Hansen) Klute and Damaris (Troester) Olsen, who married the team’s quarterback, Mark.
A member of the Hampton High Class of ‘75, Olsen said the years have flown by leading to much change. For instance, Hampton has gone from eight-man to playing six-man football.
Olsen recalls how the cheerleaders supported the team by making posters and decorating the bus, remembering that every win the team racked up only added to the spirit.
“We were so pumped,” she said. “The winning fed it more and made it more exciting.”
With so many familiar Hampton names on the roster, such as Troester, Olsen and Klute, it would have seemed unusual if there wasn’t some connection between the ‘73 team and the current Hawks football squad. And, sure enough, Jerl Joseph, who was one of the starters on the 50th anniversary team, was there rooting for his grandson, Bryce Joseph, who is a member of the 2023 Hawks team, on Friday night.
One of the people instrumental in recognizing the 1973 team on its anniversary was current Hawks head coach Jereme Jones. He sent out letters to the players and coaches from that team last spring, asking them to come back to be honored. He said he did it partly to inspire his current team to the kind of greatness achieved by those who have gone before them.
“I’ve used it as a teaching lesson,” Jones said, “saying that this is the legacy you can build in the future.”
Jones said he has lifted up the ‘73 team as an example of building a legacy for the future.
“We want to have the kind of season that people want to remember and bring you guys back and have that kind of thing,” he told his team.
He said he wanted his team to meet those players from the past and see “the kind of brotherhood they built, and just hear what it takes to go on a 22-game winning streak and to have the kind of success they had, which is something Hampton hasn’t done in football in quite a while.”
Jones said the legacy left behind by the 1973 team “is something that we really want to get back to.”