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Thursday, October 20, 2005
Dublin football rides on heroes’ cheers
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In a small town like Dublin, football can excite hearts and hopes.
In a faraway place like Baghdad, it can connect a soldier to home.
Ben Gray/AJC
Dublin High cheerleaders Tameko Demnson (left) and Michelle Rardin attach a banner Thursday in the football team’s locker room. The team has a perfect shutout season in its sights. Tonight, in the sold-out Shamrock Bowl at Dublin High School, the dreams of Dubliners in both places will stand another test. The Fighting Irish will go into tonight’s game undefeated — and without having given up a single point this season.
On the streets of this town of 16,000, and in a war zone more than 6,000 miles away, there is talk of breaking state records, going to playoffs, even getting to the state finals.
The excitement flows through the phone lines from one side of the world to another.
Loren Rhyne is a cheerleader who also plays clarinet in Dublin’s marching band. Her parents are Dublin grads, and high school football has been a family event since she was little. Now, when her father calls from Iraq, the team is Topic A.
Most of the time, of course, is spent talking about how 14-year-old Loren is doing in school. But “the first thing he asks,” says Loren, “is ‘Has anyone scored on us and are we still undefeated?’
“I always say some smart comment like ‘We’re just that good.’ “
Loren’s father, Sgt. Anthony King, is a forklift operator for the local Best Buy distribution center who shipped out with the Georgia National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team. There are 62 citizen-soldiers from Laurens County serving in Iraq, plus local residents in the regular military. Even the school police officer from Dublin High School is over there, fulfilling his duty with the Guard.
King is with Dublin’s Alpha Co. of the 148th Support Battalion. He attended two of the high school’s winning games while home on leave recently.
“I’m just waiting on a T-shirt that says ‘State Champions,’ ” says King, 40, who played wide receiver when he was a student at Dublin.
Thomas Barnes, a junior fullback and linebacker on the team, has similar conversations with his sister, Tabitha Bryant, when she calls from Iraq. The regular Army soldier wants all the details, like how many tackles he has made. (Ten in the last game.)
For Peggy Smith, whose husband and son are both in Iraq with the National Guard, attending the games is bittersweet. Her youngest daughter, Paige, is a student at the school, so she still feels a direct connection to Dublin High. And there’s the excitement of the crowd and the camaraderie of longtime friends. But when she sees some of her son’s friends, now college students, come home to cheer the team, she’s reminded of who’s not in the stands.
Still, Smith is rooting for the Fighting Irish and hopes they get into the playoffs. Her son, Greg, should be home on a two-week leave around then, and she’d like for him to see them play.
If they can keep Bleckley County High School from scoring tonight, and do the same to their opponent next week, the Dublin team will become the fourth in Georgia High School Association history to go an entire 10-game season without giving up a point. The last team to achieve that feat was West Rome in 1985.
No team has gotten within 20 yards of Dublin’s end zone since West Laurens missed a field goal attempt on Sept. 24.
The team’s offense has run over opponents, averaging more than 50 points per game. The average margin of victory — 53.6 points — is on pace to set a new GHSA record.
Dublin faced its toughest game on Oct. 1 against No. 2-ranked Vidalia. Spurred by a pregame comment by Vidalia coach Jason McBride — he praised Dublin’s team, then said that no opponent had “hit them in the mouth” like his team would — Dublin won 58-0.
In his fourth season at Dublin, coach Roger Holmes has led the Class AA team to the state semifinals twice, including a trip to the state championship game in 2002, his first year at the helm.
The dream of getting there again is a powerful force — one that has captured even graduates of rival schools.
Sgt. 1st Class J.M. Wilcox, a technician who lives in East Dublin, graduated from West Laurens High School. But with the perspective that comes from being in Iraq, he says “that’s close enough.”
“It’s incredible, unbelievable,” Wilcox, 50, says of the Dublin heroes. “I’m hoping they make history.”
— Staff writer Craig Custance contributed to this article.
Hunting for insurgents
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Lutayfiyah, Iraq — The mortar round was barely detectable as it sailed over the soldiers’ heads this afternoon. It whistled slightly and made a low humming noise — “Vip!â€?
Louie Favorite/AJC
A soldier from the 48th interrogates a young man living in a farm house outside Lutayfiyah. Mortar rounds fired from the area had just hit FOB Lutayfiyah a few miles away.
It landed about 25 meters from some Georgia National Guardsmen. The blast shredded a plastic water reservoir for their showers and punched holes in two hot water heaters.
“Mortars!� Get in the truck!� Sgt. Jess Weatherholt, 28, of Douglasville, yelled to his buddies. The men scrambled into the Humvees they had just driven from another base in the neighboring city of Mahmudiyah.
Seven more 82 mm mortar rounds hit their base and the adjoining Iraqi Army camp. One U.S. soldier was slightly wounded. Two Iraqi Army soldiers were also hurt, one seriously.
Soldiers at Forward Operating Base Lutayfiyah are used to such attacks. Since the end of August, insurgents have mortared them four times. The attacks were more frequent before then. They lessened after soldiers from Georgia’s 1st Battalion of the 108th Armor Regiment started ambushing the insurgents.
After the last mortar round exploded this afternoon, Weatherholt rolled out in a Humvee to hunt the insurgents with other soldiers in his “Red Dogs� platoon as well as some troops from the Fort Campbell, Ky.-based 101st Airborne Division.
A U.S. military radar identified the location where the insurgents fire the mortars. Within minutes, Weatherholt and his buddies reached that location. It was on a dirt road beside a deep canal in the countryside. The area is called the “Triangle of Death,� because it includes three cities south of Baghdad where a robust insurgency persists.
An unmanned reconnaissance plane spotted some people running into a house near the mortar site. Weatherholt and the others hustled into the house and found two women and five children cowering in a bedroom.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Sgt. Daniel Carroll, a 24-year-old college student from Dalton, questions a woman outside Lutayfiyah. Mortar rounds fired from this area had hit FOB Lutayfiyah a few miles away.
Sgt. Daniel Carroll, 24, of Dalton, turned to his Arabic interpreter and asked him, “Did they see any vehicles?�
“La. La. La,� one of the women responded in Arabic, signifying no. Carroll asked her several more questions. He was polite but direct. The woman claimed her family did not witness anything.
Staff Sgt. John Conley eventually stepped in and took over the questioning. He typically plays bad cop, while Carroll plays good cop.
Conley set his sites on the oldest boy in the family. The boy said his family didn’t see anything.
Conley grew frustrated. He knows that some Iraqis refuse to cooperate with U.S. soldiers for fear insurgents will kill them.
Conley warned the boy to be on the lookout for insurgents and to turn them in if he sees them. Otherwise, he said, U.S. artillery could accidentally hit his house while responding to the mortars.
“I don’t want to see anyone’s house get blown up, but they have to do something for themselves. Nobody ever sees anything. It’s always a ‘safe area,’� said Conley, 40, an intense, shotgun-wielding soldier who lives in the Atlanta area and works for the Department of Homeland Security.
As the troops pulled away from the boy’s house, Conley spotted where the insurgents dug a hole in the dirt road for their mortar tube. A nearly identical hole from a previous attack was next to it. Moments later, a report came over Conley’s radio about a roadside bomb.
Fellow U.S. soldiers found the improvised explosive device on another route to where the mortar was fired.
They suspected the insurgents set the bomb there, expecting to hit soldiers hunting them. U.S. bomb experts safely destroyed it.
The Red Dogs were starting to head home after four hours of hunting their attackers, when Conley growled, “I hate this place.�
