Photo courtesy of the 1968 Hackettstown High School Yearbook

By Steve Sears

The fall of 1967 was a memorable one for the Hackettstown High School Tigers football team.

The team was undefeated (8 – 0), and won the Group 1 state title while outscoring their opponents, 203 – 19. Five of the wins were shutouts. 

Alfred “Sass” Applegate was the Tigers’ first-year head coach, and Doug Blake, who would go on to play at Princeton; John Whelan, Alabama Crimson Tide-bound; and Jack Hurley, who would head for William & Mary, were the three captains of the club.

Frank Albanese played defensive halfback, and occasionally offensive end. “Sass was new and they didn’t know what was going to happen with the transition,” he recalls. “But he had a good system and coaching staff, too. We had double sessions and triple sessions during the summer. The team gave all of our support to Sass, and there was just a great combination of all the people that we had on the team.”

Blake passed away in 2021, and Whelan and Applegate have passed away as well. Games were played at the old Alumni Field, and the school district and the town recently memorialized Blake by naming the football scoreboard in his name, and Alumni Field has been renamed Douglas Blake Field. Also, a monument to Blake will be placed next to the late, illustrious head coach Chot Morrison’s at Morrison Field. There is also discussion of a scholarship being created in Blake’s name to be awarded to a Hackettstown High School senior. 

Ken Russack, an offensive and defensive tackle, and placekicker, says the Tigers were a very fast, agile team. “We had phenomenal running backs. It wasn’t only Blake, who ‘ran like a deer’ as they said. John Whelan was another halfback who was fast as heck. Then you had people like Maurice Grimwalds, our fullback. He was known as “The Truck,” and he would just run up the middle and drag people down the field sometimes. Doug got a lot of accolades over the years, and rightfully so, but he couldn’t have done it without everyone else.”

Jim Dougherty was the quarterback. “We ran a lot of sweeps and the fullback up the middle,” he remembers. “We didn’t get into a lot of drop back passing like they do nowadays; we were more of a running team. A lot of the passes were rollout passes, and our defense was very good.”

Hurley played defensive and offensive end. “I think that we only had six points scored against our main defense. Only six points – the whole season! We had some points scored against us when the coach sat us down because we’re ahead by 30 points. We really dominated the people that we played. Actually, we were so cocky, we would get up at the line of scrimmage and we would tell the folks, ‘We’re coming right at you.’ And we did.”

The Tigers’ biggest rivalry was against Warren Hills, then Washington High School, who were the week three shutout victims, 32 – 0. “It was a great rivalry between us,” Albanese recalls. “And it’s funny, before that game, a few of us went over to Washington and we painted the grandstands orange and black. The next day – I think it was four or five of us – I don’t know how the principal knew who, but somehow, he rounded the same people up who painted it, and we had to go back the next day and repaint it to the Washington colors.”

“The one thing I remember is our last game against Roxbury,” says defensive nose guard, Steve Polakowski. “At halftime, it was 6 – 0 . They returned a punt for a touchdown and they didn’t get the extra point. In our locker room, Sass Applegate was giving us his Knute Rockne speech. He asked, ‘What can we do to come back in a second half?’ And Ken Russack raised his hand and said, ‘I know I can beat my man.’ Coach said ‘Well, we’re just going to run to that hole.’ And that’s what we did, and we at that point broke it open, held them scoreless the second half, and I think we scored 19 points.”

The 19 – 6 triumph gave Hackettstown the Group 1 crown, and it set the stage for what was then perhaps the Tigers’ equivalent of today’s dousing of a victorious coach with a Gatorade shower. “We picked up Sass Applegate and we threw him into the fish hatchery,” Russack says with a laugh, alluding to a time when a fish hatchery bordered Alumni Field.

Fond memories, all of it. Dougherty says, “In my opinion, I would always go back. It was the best part of growing up.”

Dennis Florentine, Dougherty’s battery mate at center, adds, “It was just a great time. I know there were a lot of great teams at Hackettstown High School, but that particular season we had a great year. It’s always been something nobody could ever take away from us.”