Joey Fosko’s Breakdown of A and AA playoffs.

The Paducah Sun’s Joey Fosko makes his weekly visit to the Travis Turner Sports Show, and Joe opens up discussing Mayfield’s clinical destruction of Caldwell County, a win that lifted the #1 Cardinals to a 10-0 mark in 2010.  The high-flying Redbirds enter the Class A playoffs as a state title contender, and Joe says Mayfield will roll through their playoff opener with Caverna.  He says Bethlehem could give Crittenden County a bit of a push, but likes the Rockets to move on to round two.  Joe highlights Ballard Memorial’s trip to Kentucky Country Day as one of the first round’s best matchups, and he thinks the Bombers have a great chance to win a playoff opener on the road for the third straight year.  Fulton County’s trip to Louisville will find them a heavy underdog to Holy Cross.  Joe also talks about Murray’s rise to #1 in 2A, and he pays tribute to the Tigers second straight perfect regular season.  He makes the Tigers a big favorite over Todd County Central, and he says Hancock County at Caldwell County could be a terrific battle.  Joe favors Fort Campbell over Trigg County at the post, and he says that Reidland’s exposure to postseason play will be a positive, but that the ‘Hounds season should end at Owensboro Catholic.

Here is the audio link of Joey Fosko’s breakdown of the A and AA playoffs:  http://www.froggylandsports.com/radioshows/jfosko11-2-10%20(1).mp3

Beechwood vs. Newport Central Catholic 10-30-2010

Here is the video to the Beechwood vs. Newport Central Catholic game that went into double overtime. Thought you fans would like see this: Beechwood vs. Newport Central Catholic

Kevin Weaks on Graves County’s second efforts, title bout between Mayfield Cardinals and Crittenden Rockets.

Listen to The Mayfield Messenger’s Kevin Weaks on Graves County’s second efforts, title bout between Cards and Rockets

Mayfield Messenger sports editor Kevin Weaks makes his weekly visit to the Froggyland Sports Network, and this week Kevin opens by talking about Graves County’s remarkable 34-point second-half that allowed the Eagles to rally to a 37-21 win over Apollo and give Lance Gregory’s team the #2 seed in 6A’s First District.  He details the play of Evan Smith, who stepped in for the injured Zach Crawford in the Eagles backfield, and he talks about defensive lineman Hunter McGuire’s trip to the end zone on an interception return.  Graves County hosts Daviess County this week as they wrap up district play, and Kevin tells us they’ll be favorites as they try to finish the regular season with a flourish and eventually get to 5-5.  Kevin also takes us inside Mayfield’s district title bout with Crittenden County, as the Cardinals welcome the Rockets to War Memorial Stadium after re-charging during the bye week.  He knows Mayfield hasn’t forgotten the Rockets regular season win at War Memorial in 2008, and he expects Class A’s #1 team to be fully motivated on Friday night.

The Boys of fall (About HS football)

I found this video and anybody that is a fan of high school football will appreciate it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlXDo5WhQXI&feature=player_embedded

2010 Mayfield High School Football Schedule

Coach Leahy: A Large Part of the Tradition

Eighteen-year-old Paul Francis Leahy of Rock Island, Illinois, heard about the Mayfield-Paducah Tilghman grid grudge match when he migrated south to Murray State University on a football scholarship.

“My teammates from Mayfield talked about it,” said Leahy, who helped anchor Murray’s defense as a 6-3, 240-pound tackle.  “So did our other players from Kentucky.  It was unbelievable.”  The Land of Lincoln ex-patriot was later hired as a Mayfield assistant coach in 1971 and notched his first Tilghman game from the sidelines.

“The first Tilghman games I attended as a new coach just astounded me,” said Leahy.  “People would pour into the stadium.  Our kids got to play in front of ten or twelve thousand people.  Most high school football players never have the opportunity to perform in front of a crowd that size.”

Leahy, who won a Kentucky class AA championship his first year as head coach, conceded that the “Big Red-Big-Blue” rivalry means nothing to either team’s quest for another state title.  But it’s anything but by-the-numbers when the Cardinals and the Blue Tornado clash.  It’s a football feud.

“I soon realized that people felt that the integrity of the whole community was on the line every year in the Tilghman game,” he said.  “There’s an intensity in this contest that goes back more than eighty years.  Some people would rather beat Tilghman than win a state championship.”

The Mayfield-Paducah game has grabbed more than local newspaper headlines.  The 1987 battle for town bragging rights merited a cover story in the Louisville Courier-Journal magazine.  A cable TV sports network broadcasted that game nationally as a Friday night high school football feature.  “It’s the kind of traditional rivalry that really captures the imaginations of fans and even of people who don’t know that much about the game,” Leahy said.

For years, Mayfield squared off against Tilghman as a season-ender on Thanksgiving afternoon.  The game was moved up in the schedule after Kentucky reorganized prep football into classes based on school size.  Larger, Tilghman ended up in Class AAA.  Mayfield was in Class AA for years and finally wound up in class A.

“It’s hard to explain exactly why the Tilghman game is still so important to the kids and to the community,” Leahy said, “I think part of the appeal to the players is that innate love of approval we all have.  Who wouldn’t enjoy having a whole town cheering his efforts?”

Mayfield no longer has an official football homecoming.  But Leahy said that the Tilghman game is the closest thing to it.  “Even people who don’t live in Mayfield any more often come home for the game.  We’ve had them send telegrams to the Tilghman pep rally apologizing for missing the game.”

Tilghman games are not found in the little-noted but rather in the long-remembered category of high school recollections.  “Fans, a lot of them former players themselves, can tell you plays and scores from games decades ago; and those memories make our players want to win even more,” Leahy said.  These games have become the traditions of Mayfield High School football in their own special way to hundreds of fans, players, and alumni.  Leahy added, “We remind our players that every Tilghman game gets ‘replayed’ over and over again in conversation.  They want their performance on game night to be good because they’ll be hearing about the way they played until their dying day.  A Tilghman game is never over.”

For 22 years, Leahy was an assistant to Coach Jack Morris, whose Redbird teams notched four state championships.  Off the field, Leahy taught geography.  “It didn’t take me long to realize that I had landed in a rare and unique teaching and coaching situation.”

“Football is important to me, but academics are even more so,” Leahy said.  He stresses that, “Even though I spend hours coaching, I spend even more time teaching,” Leahy said.  Leahy seems to combine the best of both professions with ease.  He attributes this type of success to every member of this community.  “We’ve always had outstanding students, a terrific administration, community support, and parents with high expectations for academic success.  When teaching is enjoyable and you’re winning ballgames, you’d have to be a nut to pack up and leave.”

Leahy, who became head coach after Jack Morris retired in 1993, admits he’s received his share of head coaching job offers elsewhere.  Many have been at larger schools with winning football traditions like Mayfield’s.  “It would take one heck of an opportunity to lure a guy away from a place he’s lucky to be,” Leahy said.  “Most head coaching jobs would be a step down from an assistant coach at Mayfield.  This is a team on which kids consistently play above their ability levels.  I think those performances over the years come from tradition.”

Tradition, he added, means Mayfield football is larger than any one person, even a coach with a state championship ring on his finger.  “Even bigger than me,” laughed Leahy, who claims he doesn’t need padding when he plays Santa Claus at Christmas.  Leahy feels that the tradition of excellence, both on and off the field, will always be passed on.  “If I keeled over tomorrow, the coaching staff would carry right on.  With Louis McDonald and Joe David Smith, I was part of a very good assistant staff; and I’ve got an outstanding group working now.  They’re dedicated and knowledgeable, and they have a strong sense of the MHS tradition.”

Campus support for Cardinal football ranges beyond the coaches’ offices, Leahy said.  “Look around the school at the students and faculty.  Our kids are great, and our faculty members are unbelievably supportive and enthusiastic.  For the Tilghman game, they’re wearing red and black and cheering, even the ones who don’t know a football froma pineapple.”

Coach Louis McDonald “Coach Mac”

IN MHS FOOTBALL, NICE GUYS DON’T FINISH LAST

Coach Louis McDonald “destroyed the myth that ‘nice guys finish last,'” the Mayfield Messenger once declared.  He was, the newspaper added, “one of those people who can make ordinary players great and great players even better.  He was the sort of man people wanted to be coaching and teaching their children.”

From 1958 until he died in 1990, “Coach Mac” mentored a multitude of Mayfield linemen.  He helped guide the Big Red to four state championships.  He also came straight from the enemy camp.  He’d been a star in Paducah Tilghman blue.  During the early World War II years, McDonald was a scrappy center who loved to whip Mayfield.  He earned all-state grid honors to boot.

If it’s true that great coaches are students of great coaches, McDonald learned from one of the best in college.  The Paducah native swapped Tilghman blue for Kentucky blue.  His Wildcat country coach was a gravel-voice Southern gent who hailed from Fordyce, Ark.  They called the coach “Bear.”  His name was Paul W. Bryant.  The prodigal Bryant moved on to greener pastures at his alma mater, the University of Alabama.

Coach Mac never returned to Tilghman, except as a Cardinal field boss.  McDonald helped steer the Big Red to 270 victories in his Cardinal coaching tenure.  But he never forgot his first Tilghman “homecoming” in 1958.  He was still “Buttermilk” McDonald to Big Blue boosters.  As a Tilghman teen, McDonald had worked after school at a Paducah dairy.  He swigged buttermilk to help him gain weight.

As usual, Mayfield was the underdog in ’58.  Oddmakers booked the Blue Tornado a 40 point favorite to blow the Cards out of Mayfield War Memorial Stadium.  But the home team battled the Paducah visitors to a 14-14 tie.  “I had never experienced the intensity of Mayfield fans before,” McDonald said.  “I answered the phone for an hour after I got home that day.  People called and complimented us so much we thought we had won”

While just about everybody called him “Coach Mac,” McDonald preferred the title “teacher”.  He taught biology and science.  “Football comes after school.   Teaching is the most important part of my job.”  Coach Paul Leahy said that McDonald taught him about life, “…How to handle yourself, how to win and how to lose.  He taught you how to act like a man.”  Leahy, who coached with McDonald for 20 years, added, “He was such a class person that you felt you had to be a better person just because you were around him.”

Coach Mac’s lineman are legion.  One is Mayfieldian Robert Barclay, who helps with Mayfield Middle School and grade school gridders.  “Outside of my family, Coach Mac had a more profound and positive influence on me then anyone else in my life,” said Barclay, a Mayfield lineman in the 60s.  While Coach Mac remembered the ’58 Big Red Blue Battle, Barclay recalled 1967, when the Cards took the wind out of the Tornado, 13-6.  “It was our first district championship,” Barclay said.

Leahy, a native of Rock Island, Illinois, played football at Murray State University in the 60’s.  Some of his Murray teammates were ex-Mayfield standouts who’d played under McDonald.  “It was obvious to me that these guys had a much deeper feeling for Coach Mac than most players have for their coaches,” Leahy said.  “They really seemed to revere him.”  Leahy swore that Coach Mac could shape up a kid quicker with just one look than he could with discouraging words uttered long and loud.

It worked on Leahy, too.  Not known for mincing words, Leahy was blasting a ref with both barrels over what the coach claimed was a bad call.  The ref walked away, but Leahy kept it up.  “Stop that!” Coach Mac ordered.  Leahy, a head taller and many years McDonald’s junior, silently obeyed.  “Coach Mac had a really firm but gentle way of letting you know when you had over-stepped your bounds,” Leahy said.  “He never had to raise his voice.  He made kids drill and drill until their execution was flawless.”

But McDonald wasn’t all work, no play.  He enjoyed a good joke, but seemed better at taking it than dishing it out.  McDonald used to razz Leahy about his less than fashion-minded school wardrobe.  “Then he’d go around for a week and tell me over and over, ‘I was just kidding.  You’re not mad, are you?”

Few people knew it, but McDonald had a passion for pastry.  He was a devotee of doughnuts.   When it was a doughnut day MHS, at the time Coach Joe David Smith who went on to become the principal, made sure McDonald got his share.  Smith would take a big bite out of a doughnut and send it special delivery to McDonald’s office.  Smith, a former Cardinal assistant coach, played at Mayfield in the 60’s when McDonald was an assistant under Virgil Rains.

Like McDonald, Smith played football at UK.  The were more than colleagues, they were friends.  When McDonald got diabetes, Smith found out he needed snacks to keep him going.  Smith bought McDonald a carpenter’s apron and stuffed it with an apple, cheese and crackers, and Twinkies.  McDonald got a kick out of the goodie bag and even wore it to practice one day.

He was known for wearing something else everytime Mayfield squared off against Paducah Tilghman—his lucky red socks.  Each year at MHS’s big Tilghman pep rally, McDonald would hike up his trouser legs as the students yelled, whistled and hooted.  Then Coach would reveal the crimson wool socks, which he’d wear for the game that night.  The socks are preserved for posterity in the MHS trophy case near the school’s front entrance.

Calloway’s Willis signs with top JUCO program

Here is the link:

Willis signs with top JUCO program

Paducah Tilghman Schedule

I found this link to Tilghman’s schedule, looks like we are playing them on the 3rd of September.  Anybody ever heard of Gateway Academy in St. Louis?  I figure it is some private football powerhouse.  Gotta give kudos for looking for teams to test their team.

Paducah Tilghman Schedule

We need your help!!

Hey, if you are a sports writer, photographer or just a fan that has access to any information or stats or facts, we need your help!!  I can’t provide all this information by myself so I am asking for any volunteers that are willing to devote their time and efforts to making this site all it can be.

We have access to at least 50 old games, possibly lots more, but we need somebody that can covert these old games to digital.  If you or someone you know would be willing to do this for us so we can get these games on the site it would be great.   (Some Of The Games Are Tilgham Games late 80′ Early 90’s  with Danville,Corbin Graves ect.)

Just fill out the contact form or send an email to mhscardinals@gmail.com, thanks for visiting the site!!