ELLINGTON — Plenty of people have stories about the "big game" they played as youths and the impact it's had on their lives. But Al Vogel says he and his friends' experience 50 years ago was unique.
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So much so that Vogel says everyone he's talked to over the years who played youth football for the Ellington Roadrunners, not just in 1973 when the team played a memorable championship game against the Hebron Rams, remembers this big game.
"It was a heartbreaking loss for us," Vogel said. "But the Rams were a good team and someone had to lose."
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After both the Roadrunners and the Rams won their respective division championships earlier that year, they met again on Nov. 4, 1973 for the Eastern Connecticut Midget Football Conference championship. In an intense game, Hebron won 26-20.
Almost 50 years later, the current Ellington Roadrunners and Hebron Rams will meet at Dick Gunn Field in Robert Tedford Memorial Park on Sept. 10, where all alumni of the teams and their cheerleaders have been invited for a reunion and celebration.
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Vogel, a lifelong resident of Ellington who just retired from his business as a cabinet maker, will be attending and is looking forward to seeing old friends from a team of which he said he was extremely proud to be a member.
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"Everyone played their heart out," he said about the championship game. He gives credit to the players being skilled enough to play in the championship against Hebron to the late Richard "Dick" Kenneth Gunn, the team's head coach at the time and for whom the field is named.
Vogel said Gunn carefully trained the players to do their best on the field. "He always coached us for the next game so, by the time we got to the championship, we were well prepared."
In fact, Vogel said, it was Gunn who encouraged him to play youth football and started the Roadrunners in Ellington over 50 years ago, along with Ellington's Little League and basketball programs, and the Shamrocks football league in Vernon.
"I had Coach Gunn for midget league basketball, which I started when I was 8 years old," Vogel said. "I didn't know much about football and was a little nervous about playing it but he told me I'd be good and he was right."
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Gregory Gunn, the coach's son, was also a member of the 1973 team.
Now living in Ashford, where he's retired from the University of Connecticut's information technology department and is currently working as a substitute teacher in the state's technical high school system, Gregory Gunn vividly remembers the details of the season and the Nov. 4 game, which he said was "billed as the Super Bowl" of the conference.
"I reminisce with teammates some 50 years later, even to this very day," Gunn said. "It's always a good conversation about great memories."
Gunn said playing for the Roadrunners was a family event for the Gunns. In addition to being coached by his father, Gunn said his mother, Louise, ran the concession stand and was a cheerleading coach for the league.
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His sister, Gina, was a cheerleader for the team, and his brother, Gary, who was just a baby in 1973, was strolled on the sidelines during the games that year by Gunn's aunt and uncle.
Gunn actually came up with the team's name.
"My favorite cartoon was the Roadrunner," he said, adding that he was watching cartoons as a child in his family's living room when his parents asked what the team should be named. "How about the Roadrunners?" Gunn recalls asking.
It was a group of dedicated volunteers that made everything happen for the kids who played and cheered, Gunn said. "I'm forever grateful to all of them."
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One of those volunteers was Tim Forbes, who was a Roadrunner from 1971-72. In 1973, he began helping out as an assistant coach. "There will never be another Coach Gunn," he said. "He created a program for all of us out of his love for sports that gave us a leg up so we knew what we were doing when we got to high school."
Forbes, who grew up in Ellington and now lives in California where he recently retired from a career in sports management, said it was because of Gunn's commitment to preparing young athletes in the youth leagues that Ellington High School was state champion in several sports for years.
Forbes said he mainly worked with the B and C teams, ages 10-11 and 8-9 respectively, on basic skills, and his role with the A team for ages 12-13 was to provide moral support from the sidelines.
He still remembers the 1973 team that played Hebron.
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Ellington Youth Football and Cheer President Matt Marcil said the board members are still working with the Hebron Rams organization on the final details of activities for all the divisions that played in 1973 and have been welcomed back to the upcoming game.
Gregory Gunn will definitely be in attendance. "In the end, it's not as much about the 1973 Northern Conference championship team as it is about all those that have contributed selflessly to this organization and others that do the same in their communities," he said. "What's better than watching the current Roadrunner players and cheerleaders in action on a Sunday at Dick Gunn Field? That's what I'm most looking forward to on Sept. 10."
Gina Gunn, who lives in New Jersey where she works for the American Red Cross and plays bass guitar and sings with a band, will be there as well and singing the national anthem. She was a mascot for the Roadrunners when she was 5 years old, later becoming a cheerleader for the teams and helping her mother at the concession stand.
When cheerleading practices were over, Gina Gunn said she often threw passes with the players. One day, she hurt her finger while playing with her father and her mother forbade him from letting her play football anymore. In response, she said, her father started a flag football program with the Parks and Recreation Department.
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"My father supported all of us," Gunn said. "He was big into football but my brother, Gary, was more interested in golf and soccer, so my father started to read books about soccer and then coached it."
What stands out for her during the years she was playing sports and cheerleading, Gina Gunn said, is that Ellington residents then and now provide tremendous support for youth sports. "The entire community gets together, not just parents, to cheer the athletes on."