Southmont Football History

It’s hard to believe, but by this time next week high school football season, and all the other fall sports, will have already started practice for the 2017 season.

It’s hard to believe, but for people like me it’s about time.

Friday nights were made for football and having played and covered high school football for the better part of 35 years, opening night is just as exciting now as it was when I stepped foot on the sideline for the first time at Southmont “many moons ago.”

Southmont’s football tradition and its past mirrors that of a rollercoaster. There have been ups and there have been downs. Of course, the glory days of the Southmont football came in the first 13 years the school was open.

Everyone reading this column probably knows how the football program began at Southmont. The magical first season is something movies are made of and books written about.

The team went 10-0 and, not only did they go 10-0, but they just crushed every opponent and outscored teams 402-12. Attica scored a touchdown in the fourth game of the season and North Montgomery scored a single TD in the fifth game and then that Southmont team ended the year with five straight shutouts, including the infamous 80-0 shutout of Turkey Run, which entered the final game of the season against Southmont undefeated.

In the decade of the 1970s, Southmont’s average record was just under 8-2. The school program went 71-19 and its worst record was 6-4. The program started the decade going 10-0 in 1971 and ended strong as the school went 8-2, 9-1 and 9-1 from 1976 to 1978. That mark is 26-4 is still the best three-year record in the history of the school. The decade ended with a 7-3 record in 1979.

The 1980s got off to a great start as well. It continued its average of 8-2 seasons as the school went 32-8 from 1980 to 1983 including its second undefeated season of 10-0 in 1981. That meant after the first 13 seasons of football Southmont had compiled an outstanding record of 103-27.

Then the program hit a rocky patch. It suffered its first losing season in 1984 and for the next five seasons, it did not end with a winning record and suffered its first of two winless seasons in 1988.

In 1989 the team managed to finish 6-5, but out of the next 18 seasons the Mounties only managed to have a winning record twice (1997 and 2003) and one year where it finished .500 (1998).

The program’s darkest days came from 2004 through 2007 when the team went 1-9, 0-10, 1-9 and 1-9 or 3-37.

In the last nine seasons, the Mounties have gone 45-52 and that included the school’s only three Sagamore Athletic Conference titles that came in 2009, 2010 and 2011. At that time Southmont became the first team in the history of the SAC to win three straight football titles.

For the record, in 46 seasons of playing football Southmont’s overall record is 222-244 for a winning percentage of 47.6. That comes out to an average of 4.8 wins per season.

The Mounties played in the Wabash River Conference from 1971 through the 1984 season, during which time the school posted a 107-33 record. Since 1985, the Mounties have played in the SAC and have a 115-211 record. Through 46 seasons, the Mounties have played 224 home games and they have complied a 106-118 record in those contests.

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