‘It was our time’: Spring Valley football players, coaches reflect on 1973 state title
After 46 years the details and specifics might not be as clear, but the result is still the same for Tommy D’Eridita.
D’Eridita was a starting linebacker and scored the game-winning touchdown with a reverse on a kickoff to give Spring Valley a 20-17 win over Spartanburg in the 1973 Class 4A state championship.
It was the school’s first state football title and started a run of three straight championships for the Vikings. Spring Valley was the first school to win three straight Class 4A titles, which was the largest classification in South Carolina at the time.
“All I remember about the play was that I was going to get the ball,” D’Eridita said this week from his home in Florida. “That was the longest 96 yards I ever ran. The eruption of crowd was phenomenal. Teammates just jumped all over me. I was so tired from kthe ickoff and had to go back out there for the ensuing kickoff.
“But what a great memory.”
The 1973 state title team will be honored Friday as part of the school’s first hall of fame class. Spring Valley is celebrating the school’s 50th anniversary. Other inductees include NFL All-Pro Andre Roberts, former Pittsburgh Steelers Lethon Flowers and Willie Williams, three-sport standouts Monique Hennagan and Marty Simpson, and softball coach Dwayne Jones.
“They were just a tough bunch of kids who kept winning games and loved the game of football,” said Jerry Brown, who was the offensive line coach on the 1973 team and is currently the head coach at Wade Hampton.
Brown said seeds of the championship squad were planted in 1971 following the tragic death of Kenny Brown, who died following injuries suffered during a JV game against Lower Richland. Jerry Brown and other players on the team said Kenny was destined to be a star at Spring Valley and would have been a senior on the 1973 team.
D’Eridita, who played on Spring Valley’s freshman team that year, was in the stands watching the JV game and remembers Kenny getting sandwiched by two players.
Kenny’s death caused some players to give up football, but others used it as a motivating factor during their high school career.
“I remember being at that funeral. It was a terrible time,” D’Eridita said. “We were going to keep playing and honor Kenny’s memory.”
The Vikings missed out on the playoffs in 1972, and some of the players think that year’s squad might have been more talented than the 1973 team that won the championship.
The 1973 season started with a rigorous training camp. Shrine Bowl defensive lineman Larry Frierson, who went on to play at South Carolina, said the players spent two weeks at the school sleeping on the floor in sleeping bags and concentrating on nothing but football.
Frierson thinks Vikings head coach Joe Turbeville got the idea for it during his time as coach at Winnsboro.
“The chemistry during those two weeks generated the closeness,” said Frierson, who is the president of Total Office Solutions in Columbia. “A lot of the season had to do with those two weeks.”
Spring Valley went 9-1 in the regular season with the only loss against Sumter. One of the biggest wins of the season came against defending Lower State champ Lower Richland, and the regular season ended with a victory over AC Flora.
In the first round of the playoffs, the Vikings defeated North Augusta in overtime on Chuck Cross’ two-point conversion run on a botched snap on an extra point. Spring Valley followed that with a 21-14, come-from-behind win over hall of fame coach John McKissick’s Summerville team for the right to play Spartanburg in the championship.
The Vikings were big underdogs to Spartanburg, which came into the championship game averaging close to 60 points per game and had several Division I players on the roster, including quarterback Steve Fuller. Fuller went on to be a standout at Clemson and played seven seasons in the NFL, winning a Super Bowl with the Chicago Bears in 1985.
“They were a super power,” Frierson said of Spartanburg.
The game was played in front of a standing-room only crowd of more than 10,000 people at what is now Harry Parone Stadium, Spring Valley’s home field. Players and coaches remember fans seated on the hill in the end zones for the game. Firerson described it as a Clemson-USC type atmosphere.
“It was huge and loud and people were standing up. First time that you could barely hear the players standing next to you,” said Rodney Lamar, who was a member of the 1973 and 1974 teams.
The game was tied 14-14 in the fourth quarter before Spartanburg kicked a field goal to go up 17-14. That’s when Turbeville went into his bag of tricks. Turbeville, who won 239 games in his Hall of Fame career and died in 2016, called for a reverse on the kickoff return. A trick play was uncharacteristic for the ultra-conservative Turbeville.
The players and coaches said they had worked on the play all season but never ran it in a game.
The ball was kicked to Alfonso Samuel, who took it at about the 3-yard line and ran to the right side to the 25-yard line. D’Eridita took the ball and went back across the field toward Spring Valley’s sideline until he met a gauntlet of blockers who helped him go untouched into the end zone for the game-winner.
“That was the most beautiful wall (of blockers) I had ever seen,” said D’Eridita, who went on to play rugby at USC.
“Coach Turbeville was always prepared with something special even if we didn’t use it. That play was well-executed,” Jerry Brown said. “Coach Turbeville was so excited he followed Tommy all the way down the sidelines. What a play.”
That play and team helped begin the tradition of Spring Valley football that continues to this day.
“I think it was a it was our time … and our destiny,” Frierson said. “I think the turning point was when we beat Lower Richland. After that we said, ‘Let’s see what happens.’
“We weren’t the most talented team but had a lot of good football players and won a lot of close games. What an amazing feeling and an amazing bunch of guys.”
