LOOKING BACK

 Friday night’s tough loss to Knoxville Karns High School out of Tennessee by a score of 22-21 by the Corbin Redhounds brought back memories of an even tougher loss way back in 1980.

The Redhounds were on the four-yard line of the Glasgow Scotties, about to go in for a touchdown and already holding a 27-7 lead, with a little over four minutes to go in the game.

A fumble occurred and a young mane named Travis Scott quarterbacked Glasgow to a 28-27 victory over the Redhounds.

Did that devastating loss ruin the season for the 1980 Redhounds? No! The Redhounds came back to win the 2A State Championship, beating Fort Campbell in the championship game, 16-7.

It is early and this year’s Redhounds are young and they are playing a challenging schedule, which is a formula that will help develop championship teams,

You can look for a surge from this team beginning next week against Lexington Tates Creek.

 Meet the Taylor’s

From time to time I try to update you on my friend Clayton Taylor and his wife, Pauline’s family football tree. Of course it all began with the Taylor brothers, Roy and Greg, who were outstanding players as Redhounds in the late seventies and early 80’s. Then it was daughter Regina and Burley Foley, who was also an outstanding Redhound player that produced B.J. Foley and current Redhound star, Brady Foley. Roy’s sons Dakota Taylor, Matthew Taylor and current Redhound freshman Corey Taylor all carried the Redhound banner.

Somehow, Greg ended up in Shreveport, Louisiana, and his sons, Trent and Trey are making big noise at Evangel Christian High School.

Both Trent and Trey are considered division one college prospects. The Taylor brothers are key players for one of the top high school football programs in the country. They will be playing on ESPN Friday at 8 p.m. vs. Union High School of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The common denominator of this family tree, which at age 75 is still falling off buildings, playing golf one handed and in his spare time battles feverously at table tennis, is Pap Paw Clayton Taylor.

 BIG BLUE

College football begins this week, and Big Blue football fans are nearing the peak of their hopes for a great football season, as the University of Kentucky plays Western Kentucky University Thursday evening in Nashville.

The Lexington press fires up each year with high hopes. In his second year as head coach, Joker Phillips is talking championships, and the faithful Big Blue nation will fill the stadiums with their undying support.

As I often do, I will drift back in time, back to the 70’s and recall the words of a Corbin native, who now lives in Florida, Freddie Davis. Fred said, “They ain’t gonna win anything this year, they ain’t ever gonna win anything.” With that very accurate prophecy Fred became a Tennessee fan.

I refuse to go that far, but I will declare my allegiance to Eastern Kentucky University where the Colonels were wise enough to recruit Caleb Watkins of Corbin.

EKU Coach Dean Hood is very high on Watkins potential. To quote Coach Hood, :If we had 96 Caleb Watkins, we could win a national championship.”

Searching for local kids on the UK roster, the only local name I found was Cody Jones, a sophomore fullback listed as number two on the depth chart. Cody was an excellent running back at Whitley County two years ago and attended Morehead last year before transferring to UK.