We had three excellent speakers for our meeting:
Xavier Dye, Running Back Coach – Xavier played football at Clemson and coached at Coastal Carolina. Three of the current players at Coastal were recruited by Coach Dye. In describing the UD squad, he said that we had an excellent off season and that this is a very close team. After the hard fought loss at Vanderbilt last week, “the guys are hungry and want to get back into the winning column”. The QB for Coastal, “Deuce” Bailey, is red-shirt freshman and is a very athletic dual threat player. He has 6 TD passes on the year and no interceptions.
Kirby Lynch. Coach of the SPIRIT Teams – Kirby is an Indiana University graduate and was a cheerleader for the Hoosiers. The football team was 1-11 in her senior year, and last year for UD was the first bowl game experience which she described as “amazing”. She is the only full-time coach for the 90 members of the spirit teams, with the others being volunteers. Kirby noted that two of the BHTC members are cheer squad alumni, Cathy Matthews and Darelle Riabov. She particularly noted Darelle and John Riabov as being major supporters of the cheer squads.
Herky Billings, Running Back and Punter 1971-1974 – Herky, when first invited by the Club to speak, wondered why he was asked. Then, the memories came flooding back to him, of all the great players and coaches that he played with and played under. His love of Delaware Football went back to Middletown H.S. days and hitchhiking to games and sneaking under the fence in the south end zone. He is honored to remember that he played at Middletown with a 53 game winning streak and at UD with a 23 game winning streak. In his final season for UD, the team was in the playoffs and beat UNLV in a 48-21game, and ”that team still doesn’t know what happened to them”. The 1974 team was “beat up” in the championship game, but Herky is proud of the memory of scoring a TD the last time that he touched the ball for the Fight’n Blue Hens.
Join us on Thursday, September 24th prior to our game at the University of Virginia.
