Reminiscing Tiger Football from Coach Matt Perry’s years
Coach Matt Perry’s last year at Stockton was the 1997-98 school year. His 1997 Tiger football team was featured in Day 8 of his “31 Days of Football.”
“Day 8 | The 1997 Stockton Tigers football team once again had high expectations and a good group of seniors who I had the pleasure of coaching and teaching for four years. The seniors were Chris Look, Joey Casad, Seph Bellerive, Jamie Vermillion, Josh Perez, Damion Dix, Nathan Roy, Jonathan Haines, and Adam Glendening.
Realistically, the worst thing that could happen for this season happened at the pre-season Soap Scrimmage. In the greedy coach world of “one more play” it came back to bite us hard when, during the scrimmage, the team offense had finished the script of plays but they were on the 5-yard line. So, let’s run ‘one more play’ and see if we can score. Ugh, I would regret that to this day! On the play I decide to give the ball to Seph Bellerive, our best leader and team spark plug. He made it into the end zone, but as he was tackled, he tore the ACL in his right knee for the second time. He tore it the first time his sophomore year returning a punt. Seph was not the biggest guy, but he played so hard and everyone on the team followed his lead.
We opened the season with a win over Phillipsburg and then it was time to play Hill City. Interestingly, the year before, Hill City had hired Walt Alexander, who is great building programs, so I knew they were going to be a challenge. Hill City and their speedy back Mike Applehans ran all over us to the tune of 44-0. Next, we lost to a good Norton team 26-0, and we were developing a problem on offense. People had figured out our veer offense and we did not have the big physical running backs that we had the previous three years. Our senior QB at the time, Damion Dix, was a phenomenal defensive player, but was struggling a little running the offense, so we made some tweaks to hopefully help us get on track. Damion and I had a very unique relationship because in the summers I worked on his family’s farm, so he was my boss. The tweak helped us beat Ellis and play WaKeeney tough, but we were still struggling. Smith Center come to town with a team that was beating everybody by 50+ points. I was extremely proud of our kids because they played their tails off, and for three quarters, held the Redmen at bay. We ran out of steam in the fourth quarter, and they wore us down, scoring three TDs to win 32-6.
Even though we were 2-4, it was district time, and a new season. Stockton kids always seem to hit another gear during those late October games and we were hoping that would happen again. We opened up District against Lincoln in what was an extremely frustrating game. We made many uncharacteristic mistakes and just could not seem to get on track, and lost 18-14. We were down but not out and had to rely on either Plainville or Osborne to upset Lincoln to get in the playoffs. We did our part by beating Osborne, but because of the point system, we were eliminated from the playoffs.
Time for one last game with a great group of players. That game was against county rival Plainville, but another big fall snow storm hit NW Kansas and they almost cancelled our game. We had to practice in the high school auxiliary gym because the practice field was covered with snow. When the weather broke and the field was clear, we played our best game of the year. I remember that the kids played very free, relaxed and had fun playing football together. I remember telling the seniors ‘you usually remember your last game,’ and they took that to heart and played lights out. We had some big plays by Josh Perez and Travis Wagner and won 42-12. After that victory I knew that Stockton Football was going to be back as good as ever next season. I also learned a valuable lesson, the most important thing to get out of a pre-season scrimmage is a healthy team.”
Following that 1997-98 school year, the Perrys moved from Stockton to Lyons where Matt coached and Cindy taught for eight years. Today the Perrys reside in Independence, Mo. We hope you enjoyed reminiscing, thanks to Coach Perry.
