Most Exciting Game

Friday night December the 6th 1986 I was in the booth calling the game for the Eastern State title in 2-A football.  Whiteville traveled to Ahoskie  and that night as it turned out is my #1 most exciting game that I have ever called whether on TV or radio.  This Friday is the 25th anniversary of that night.

The final score that night was Ahoskie 33- Whiteville 32.  Yes I regard this game just a teeny bit higher on the exciting scale over the Rocky Mount- New Bern conference championship game in 2004 in which Rocky Mount beat New Bern 36-35 in overtime.

Whiteville was a power football team.  They liked to jam the ball down your throat.  Ahoskie was a speed team  that did every thing they could to get outside .  Those two teams couldn't be any more unlike each other.  I remember I had gone to the gym the Sunday night before the game and watched the game film with the Ahoskie coaches.  Their top player was their tight end and linebacker who had already committed to go play football at Clemson.

Whiteville love to run the football but when they passed they loved to throw across the middle to their tight end who was something like 6 feet 2 inches and weighted about 250.  The best I remember he wore number 32.  His name was Chester McGlocton.  He drug defenders after his catches and and playing linebacker he hit as hard as anyone I have ever seen.

Tweny five years after that game he is the only name I remember from Whiteville that night.  It may be because he went to Clemson and made a name for himself as a defensive  linemen and then spent 12 years in the NFL.

I never got close enough to him to say that I spoke to him or to say I even  knew him.  All I know is he was the best player for one of the teams that I consider the best game I ever called on the radio.  His death on Wednesday stunned me not because I knew him but because we all have those moments that are special to us and that night is a special moment in my life.  Chester McGlocton  a name that lives in my special moment.  Today my heart aches for a man I never knew but remember.