By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

PASCAGOULA — Just as another tropical storm threatens South Mississippi, that was the case as well 45 years ago.
In mid-September of 1979, the Pascagoula Panthers were set to host Yazoo City on the football field in a rare meeting between the two teams. But Hurricane Frederic was bearing down on South Mississippi, making not only Jerry Clower upset but bringing the local prep football schedule to a brief halt as well.
Resurrection head football coach Eric Denmark was a junior starting defensive end for that Pascagoula squad. And when the storm slammed ashore along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, it threw Denmark and many other prep football players in South Mississippi for a loop.
“It still hate talking about that storm today,” Denmark said, Monday from his office at RCS. “It was awful for my family. We were living on Beach Boulevard and almost everything we owned was destroyed or lost, including my father’s business on Highway 90.”

Hurricane Frederic became a hurricane on September 10 over the Gulf of Mexico and quickly strengthened to a Category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds near 132 mph. The diameter of
the hurricane eye, which came ashore in Pascagoula, was reported to be about 10 miles.
Shortly before 10 p.m. on Wednesday, September 12, the northern eyewall of Frederic move ashore on Dauphin Island, Ala., while slamming the Mississippi Gulf Coast as well. At midnight, wind gusts from the north at 98mph were reported by Biloxi Civil Defense with north winds gusting to 127mph at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula. The most rain from the hurricane fell in Pascagoula, which had 11 inches, according to NOAA.

It was some 27 days later before all electricity was restored throughout Jackson County.

“It was traumatic,” Denmark added. “It disrupted everything in not only my life, but most of the lives of all my teammates as well. There was no electricity, no running water, nothing. Everything shut down. Businesses and schools shut down. There were trees down, houses were destroyed of trashed and power lines were down.”
Once the aftermath of the major storm passed, schools and prep football teams began to assess damages to facilities and such. Almost every stadium along the three coastal counties suffered some type of damage, from extensive to minor.
Most all games involving South Mississippi squads were canceled for that upcoming weekend with the exception of just a few. Pearl River Central hosted St. Stanislaus on Friday night Sept. 14th and Biloxi traveled to South Natchez on Saturday.

But everyone else was forced to miss at least a week of action. Also, most schools were out for at least a week if not longer as well, and many of the games played in the next month were afternoon affairs because stadium lights were one of the main victims of Hurricane Frederic.
Most teams tried to get back to practice early the following week.
Moss Point was the only squad in the “Southern Six” that had an open date scheduled for the week that the storm hit, which was the third week of the 1979 season for most teams.
Dantzler Stadium suffered significant damage, but was still useable, although the rest of the four game home schedule for Billy Wayne Miller and his Tigers would all be day games on either Friday or Saturday.
In fact, the Tigers hosted McComb for Homecoming on Friday, Oct. 19th with a kickoff set for 4 p.m.

“Our poor old lights just didn’t make it,” longtime Jackson County resident Jeff Standard said. Standard was a junior in his first year as Moss Point’s starting quarterback in the Fall of 1979.
“I mean we were fortunate to be able to play all of our games, but I didn’t like the day games much. It just didn’t seem right not playing actual games under the lights.”
Moss Point also hosted Laurel and Gulfport on Friday afternoons and Meridian on Saturday. It was in that game against Gulfport that Standard hooked up with sophomore tight end Curtis Rockwell on a key 37-yard strike deep into Admirals territory that led to an eventual touchdown and the game ended in a 7-7 tie.
Moss Point finished 6-4-1 that season, but missed the playoffs despite an exciting 26-25 win over arch-rival and home-standing Pascagoula in the annual “Battle of the Cats” to end the season for both teams. That game was played at night after mid-season renovations to War Memorial Stadium.

The Panthers, who were 0-2 when the storm hit, and didn’t fare as well down the stretch as they won just three more games and finished 3-6 after the loss to MPHS.
Unlike Moss Point, Pascagoula played only one day game in the aftermath of the storm, a home game against Jackson Callaway, because the Panthers had three straight road games as well as an open date on the schedule from Sept. 28th-Oct 25th.

That “Battle of the Cats” wasn’t the last football game of the 1979 season played in Pascagoula as Moss Point hosted the one and what ended up being the only “Singing River Bowl” in mid-November and the Tigers fell to Slidell High (La.) 7-3.
“It’s a football season I’ll never, ever forget that’s for sure,” Denmark, who has over 30 years experience coaching prep football, concluded. “Really, to me it seems like it was only yesterday. It was a trying time but an experience we all learned something from as well.”