Sixty years ago, the region's top high school team took on Greater Atlanta's finest for the final time.
From left, Ken Kindig and Ernie LaBranche, both of West Springfield, and Agawam's Allan Collins proudly display their Peanut Bowl memorabilia.
Quick now, name the last Western Massachusetts high school football team to play in an intersectional bowl game.
Only those who were around in the 1950s would know the answer – the West Springfield Terriers. They did it Jan. 1, 1953, when they lost 28-26 to Valdosta, Ga., in a North-South rivalry known as the Peanut Bowl.
It’s 60th-anniversary time for those Terriers, many of whom remember that New Year’s Day very well.
“I’ll never forget it, because I got hurt carrying the ball on the first play and had to sit out the rest of game,” said Ernie LaBranche, who as a sophomore started at halfback for that undefeated West Side team coached by Ed Mason, a former Agawam High and Springfield College quarterback.
The ’52 season and the ensuing New Year’s Day game proved to be the end of a memorable five-year period in local high school football. In June 1953, the Massachusetts Headmasters Association voted to ban intersectional bowl games for high school teams.
The headmasters (school principals) frowned upon such games because they used proceeds only for local charities while at the same time forcing northern schools and their towns to raise money to finance the trips.
They also had misgivings about sending teams from the North into the segregated South, as it existed at that time. No team with an African-American player was ever invited to the Peanut Bowl.
How did Western Mass. involvement in the game come about? It started in 1946 with Lon Gammage, president of the Exchange Club of Columbus, Ga., who envisioned it as a way to raise money for Georgia charities, including a hospital for crippled children. He patterned it after the bowl games of the day – Rose, Sugar, Cotton and Orange – with the big difference being the involvement of high school teams.
Atlanta Tech defeated St. Joseph’s, Mo., 34-0 in the first Peanut Bowl Jan. 1, 1947. In the second, North Charleston, S.C., beat Lanier of Macon, Ga., 34-6.
Dismayed by the one-sided scores, the Peanut Bowl committee began looking for better matchups. Its attention turned to Western Mass. because of Harold Jambon, a Columbus Exchange Club member who had been impressed with high school football in this area when he was stationed at Westover Field in Chicopee near the end of World War II.
At Jambon’s suggestion, Gammage contacted school officials in the Connecticut Valley about a possible Peanut Bowl matchup.
That led to 1948 Western Mass. champion Westfield, coached by Bill Moge, becoming the first area team to play in the game on New Year’s Day, 1949. Westfield represented Western Mass. well, beating Fitzgerald, Ga., 25-7.
Westfield went 9-0 in 1949 and made its second trip to Columbus. Again the Bombers prevailed, this time beating Glynn Academy of Brunswick, Ga., 26-20.
Vinny Ciancotti played on both Peanut Bowl teams as an outstanding two-way lineman. He went on to become a Hall of Fame player at American International College, then into a long and successful career in business.
“I could have been elected president of the United States, and Westfield people still would think of me as playing for those Peanut Bowl teams. That’s how much they meant to the city,” he said.
Westfield’s postseason success turned Coach Moge into a celebrity. In 1950, Chicopee succeeded in hiring him away from Westfield, and he had a long career as a three-sport coach of Pacers teams.
Holyoke, coached by Archie Roberts, lost to Rockmart, Ga., 19-14, in the third Peanut Bowl involving a Western Mass. team. The fourth saw Harmon Smith’s Agawam Brownies turn back Richmond Academy of August, Ga., 25-12.
A newspaper clipping from the Columbus (Ga.) Ledger-Enquirer details Agawam High School's 1952 Peanut Bowl victory.
Then it was West Side’s turn. Coach Mason’s Terriers established themselves as Peanut Bowl material when they rallied from a 7-6 halftime deficit to hammer Cathedral 33-7 Halloween Night before 6,000 at Pynchon Park.
From there, West Side went on to win the Western Mass. title with an 8-0 record, ending its regular season with a hard-earned 13-7 victory over archrival Agawam. A late interception by defensive back Joe Harrington clinched it.
Those Terriers were the first team in Western Mass. to operate out of the split-T, a formation which worked well because they had the right guy at quarterback – Les “Porky” Plumb.
His passing and shifty running carried West Side into the Peanut Bowl, and very nearly to victory. The Terriers were down 21-0 in the second quarter before Plumb rallied them.
As LaBranche said, “Valdosta had a real good team, but we did ourselves proud, and I think we made a good impression for Western Mass.”
That they did. Tall end Newt Blanchard caught two touchdown passes – one on a trick play with his opposite end, Kenny Mattoon, doing the throwing; and the other from Plumb. Fullback Al Klein scored West Side’s third touchdown on a 5-yard plunge while Mattoon scored the last on a pass from Plumb.
Valdosta scored its fourth TD after Klein’s to make it 28-20, and seemed on its way to a clinching score when Blanchard recovered a fumble at the West Side 10-yard line.
Plumb then whipped his team 90 yards for a fourth-quarter touchdown, capping the drive with a 36-yard pass to Mattoon. He got loose for the TD when Blanchard delivered a key block.
The Terriers got the ball back, but time ran out with them driving at Valdosta’s 30.
“They didn’t beat us. The clock beat us,” Mason said afterward.
Plumb went on to quarterback an undefeated team at Springfield in 1956, with future University of Massachusetts, Syracuse and New England Patriots coach Dick MacPherson as his center. One of their teammates, Dick Shields, played a backup backfield role as a junior on West Side’s Peanut Bowl team.
“Our high school team had a great coaching staff – Eddie Mason, Gordie Vye, my older brother (Bob Shields), Bob Ryan and Sahler Smith. They were all young, about the same age, and they were all from Springfield College,” Dick Shields said.
After SC, Plumb coached at the college and high school levels, including a 32-year stint at Westwood, N.J. He lives in retirement in Fort Pierce, Fla.
Plumb, who served as West Springfield co-captain with guard Art Pernice, has fond memories of his West Side days.
The program from West Springfield's appearance in the 1953 Peanut Bowl, the last in which a Western Massachusetts team competed.
“Eddie Mason had a phenomenal way of approaching everything. He treated every player the same, and we all respected him,” Plumb said.
LaBranche remembered his coach as “the fairest man I ever met. With him, there was no baloney.”
Mason left West Springfield after the 1958 season for a job at Springfield Tech, where he coached football and hockey. In November, he was enshrined posthumously in the Springfield Public Schools Athletic Hall of Fame.
Peanut Bowl memories? LaBranche, 75, still has a scrapbook that his family put together, covering the entire '52 season.
“I thought the Peanut Bowl was something special for Western Mass.,” he said. “I think the teams that went got a lot out of the trip and were treated very well. Actually, I was kind of sad to see it go. After our team, there were a lot of good ones in Western Mass. that could have had the experience. Just look at West Side. Coach Mason had another great team in 1956.”
Ken Kindig, who started at guard on offense, called the Peanut Bowl “the most exciting thing that ever happened to me in sports.”
Shields said his memories of the trip include sights seen from the train – it was the first Pullman ride for most of West Side’s 29 players.
“I can still remember going through the South and seeing houses on stilts,” he said.
Garry Brown can be reached at geeman1918@yahoo.com