About a mile west of the Marietta Square on Polk Street stands a time machine guarded by stone walls.
For more than 70 years, it’s been called Northcutt Stadium, Cobb County’s oldest high school football field. On Friday nights every fall, its memories come alive like no other place of its kind in metro Atlanta.
“There will never be another coach like French Johnson,’’ said Jimmy Whitfield, who was a senior in 1967 when Johnson led Marietta to its state title. “He didn’t have trick plays. He just gave it to the fullback and went down the field.’’
Whitfield started coming to Northcutt in 1959. For Friday’s game against Walton, Whitfield was sitting with Mike Tierce, another Marietta graduate.
Tierce’s favorite Northcutt memory involved Eric Zeier, the Marietta quarterback who went on to fame at the University of Georgia. Tierce said players from an opposing team — he thinks it was Cherokee High — stopped Zeier on the way to the locker room after a loss to ask for autographs.
Northcutt does not change often, but there’s something different there lately with the retirement of some coaching legends.
In 2009, Marietta’s boys basketball coach of 37 years, Charlie Hood, called it a career. His fall routine hasn’t changed much, though. Hood was at Northcutt on Friday night. So was Dale Ellis, the former NBA player who was a Marietta star in the 1970s.
Roscoe Googe, for 30 years a track and field coach here, also retired in 2009. He won five state titles. Googe still runs the Northcutt press box, as he has each year since 1979.
The big change in football came in February, when James “Friday” Richards, Marietta’s head coach for the past 15 years, hung up his whistle. He’s a Marietta graduate who coached at his alma mater for 33 years.
Still a part-time P.E. teacher, Richards found a seat Friday on the 45-yard line, holding hands with his wife, Dorothy.
Richards told of how his older brother, Patrick, played the National Anthem on a trumpet at Northcutt 44 years ago before Lemon Street’s state championship victory. Lemon Street was the Marietta high school for black students before desegregation, and its title banners are displayed in Northcutt’s end zones.
“This stadium is the best in the world to play in,’’ Richards said of the field on which he starred as a running back from 1969-72. “The field is right up on you. [It’s barely 20 feet from sideline to front row.] I’m still a Blue Devil at heart. It always will be a part of my life.’’
More than 200 résumés arrived last spring to get Richards’ job, which went to Scott Burton. He had been an assistant at the University of Richmond.
Marietta entered the Walton game with a 2-6 record, but it’s a team with seven sophomore starters and no major FBS (formerly Division I-A) recruits. Five years ago, when Marietta won its last region title, the team had six FBS recruits.
“Dexter Wood’s first year, we were 1-9, and then he was very good,’’ said Tierce, referring to Marietta’s coach during the Zeier years and beyond. “So the fact we’re going to be 3-7, I’m not sure that’s anything to worry about. The quarterback is a sophomore. Give them time.’’
Good teams have come and gone, but the loyalty is as strong as Northcutt’s stone walls: There have been only six coaching changes in 60 years.
“Some people think change is good just for change,’’ Googe said in his press box. “Life moves on. Somebody else needs to bear the burden of a legacy that’s there. That’s the new staff. You’ve got to wish them luck.’’
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