1962: Corbin’s Remarkable Run to the State Championship Game

There are football seasons that live forever because of the championship trophy at the end, and there are others that become part of a program’s history because of everything that happened along the way. For the Corbin Redhounds, the fall of 1962 belongs firmly in the latter category. Corbin did not win the state championship that season, but more than six decades later, the 1962 Redhounds remain one of the most significant teams in the long history of the program.

The Redhounds advanced all the way to the Class 2A state championship game before falling to Danville, 13 to 6, at Stoll Field in Lexington. That final score left Corbin seven points short of another championship, but it tells only a small part of the story. During the regular season, Corbin had already traveled to Danville and beaten the Admirals, 18 to 6. In the state semifinal, the Redhounds defeated two time defending state champion Highlands, 10 to 0, ending a 34 game unbeaten streak that had made the Bluebirds one of the most feared teams in Kentucky.

By 1962, football had long since become part of the identity of Corbin. The Redhounds were not a program searching for tradition. They already had it. Generations of players had worn the Corbin uniform, and generations of families had spent Friday nights following the Redhounds. The program had produced some of the finest teams and players in southeastern Kentucky, including championship teams in 1939 and 1955.

The 1955 team was particularly important to the generation that eventually produced the 1962 Redhounds. Among the youngsters watching Corbin football during those years was Larry “Cotton” Adams, who was only nine years old when the Redhounds were making their championship run. Adams later recalled watching Corbin standout Calvin Bird return an opening kickoff for a touchdown and hurdle a defender near midfield. For a boy growing up in Corbin, those players were not distant sports heroes. They were Redhounds playing in front of the same community in which he was being raised.

Seven years later, Adams was no longer watching from the stands. He was a junior offensive lineman for a Corbin team preparing to make its own mark on the program.

The 1962 Redhounds established themselves as a championship contender during a regular season that included an important trip to Danville. Corbin defeated the Admirals, 18 to 6, a victory that became considerably more important as the season progressed. Danville would recover from the loss and eventually work its way through the postseason, putting the two programs on a collision course for a second meeting.

Before Corbin could worry about Danville again, however, there was Highlands.

Few teams in Kentucky carried the reputation Highlands brought to Corbin for the 1962 state semifinal. The Bluebirds were the two time defending Class 2A state champions and had gone 34 consecutive games without a loss. Highlands had beaten Lafayette, 21 to 13, for the 1960 state championship and followed that by defeating Madison, 12 to 0, for the 1961 title. By the time the Bluebirds arrived in Corbin in 1962, they were trying to win a third consecutive championship.

The matchup brought together two of Kentucky’s proudest football programs, but Highlands arrived with the championship streak and the reputation of a team that had forgotten how to lose. For Corbin, the semifinal represented an opportunity to reach the state championship game and an opportunity to prove that the Redhounds belonged with the best teams in Kentucky.

The atmosphere that night became one of the enduring memories of the 1962 season. Years later, Adams would remember the Highlands game as perhaps the greatest atmosphere he ever experienced at Corbin. That was no small statement from a man whose association with Redhound football eventually stretched across decades as both a player and coach.

The people of Corbin understood what was coming to town. They knew Highlands had won the previous two state championships. They knew about the unbeaten streak. They knew the Bluebirds were attempting to make another trip to the state final. The importance of the game was evident well before kickoff.

What happened once the game began became part of Corbin football history.

The Redhound defense did something few teams had been able to do against Highlands during its championship run. Corbin kept the Bluebirds off the scoreboard entirely. Highlands, the defending champion riding a 34 game unbeaten streak, did not score a point.

Corbin won, 10 to 0.

For Highlands, the pursuit of a third straight state championship was over. The unbeaten streak was over. For Corbin, there was one game left to play.

The significance of the victory was felt throughout the community. Corbin had not merely survived a close playoff game. The Redhounds had shut out the team that had ruled Class 2A football for the previous two seasons. Highlands came to Corbin as the defending champion and left without scoring.

It was the kind of victory that could define an entire season, and in some ways that may have been part of the problem.

Adams later reflected on just how much emotion surrounded the Highlands game. The Redhounds had spent enormous physical and emotional energy preparing for the defending champions, and the celebration that followed was understandable. Corbin had accomplished something that much of the state probably did not expect.

The season, however, was not finished.

Waiting in Lexington was Danville.

The Class 2A state championship game was played at Stoll Field on the campus of the University of Kentucky. For Corbin, the opponent could not have been more familiar. The Redhounds had already beaten Danville, 18 to 6, during the regular season.

That earlier victory gave Corbin every reason to believe it could finish the job. The Redhounds had beaten the Admirals on their own field and had just eliminated the two time defending state champions. One more victory would bring a state championship back to Corbin.

Danville, however, had something Corbin did not. The Admirals had a second opportunity against a team that had already beaten them once.

The championship game bore little resemblance to the first meeting.

This time Danville found a way to contain Corbin and reverse the result. The Redhounds managed six points, but the Admirals scored 13. When the game ended at Stoll Field, Danville had won the Class 2A state championship, 13 to 6.

For Corbin, it was a difficult ending to a remarkable season. The Redhounds had come within seven points of the championship, and the disappointment was made greater by the fact that they knew exactly what they were capable of doing against Danville. They had proven it earlier in the year.

The championship trophy went to Danville, but the 1962 season earned a permanent place in Corbin football history.

That distinction is important when looking back at the program today. The 1962 Redhounds should not be identified as state champions. They were the Class 2A state runners up. Their actual accomplishments are impressive enough without changing the record.

They defeated the eventual state champion during the regular season. They reached the state championship game. They ended one of the longest unbeaten streaks in Kentucky football at the time. Most memorably, they shut out a Highlands program that had won consecutive state championships and was trying to capture a third.

The players on that team also became part of the bridge between different eras of Corbin football. Cotton Adams is perhaps the clearest example.

Adams graduated from Corbin in 1964 and went on to play college football at Dakota Wesleyan in Mitchell, South Dakota, where he played linebacker for four years. Football eventually brought him home again. He returned to Corbin and became part of the Redhound coaching staff, beginning a coaching career that would connect the 1962 team to another championship era.

Under head coach Archie Powers, Corbin returned to the top of Kentucky high school football in the 1970s. The Redhounds defeated Mayfield, 6 to 0, to win the 1976 state championship. Four years later, Corbin captured another title with a 16 to 7 victory over Fort Campbell in the 1980 championship game.

When Powers stepped down after the 1980 season, Adams became Corbin’s head coach. The young lineman who had played in the 1962 state championship game was now responsible for leading the program he had grown up watching.

In 1982, Adams took the Redhounds back to the state championship game.

This time Corbin finished the job.

The Redhounds defeated Glasgow, 18 to 6, to win the 1982 state championship, giving Adams the championship as a head coach that had narrowly escaped him as a player 20 years earlier.

That connection is one reason the 1962 season occupies such an important place in Corbin history. The great Redhound teams were never isolated from one another. Boys watched older players and eventually became players themselves. Former players returned as coaches. Coaches taught another generation what was expected when they put on a Corbin uniform.

The 1939 and 1955 teams established standards that the players of 1962 inherited. The 1962 team carried those standards forward. The championship teams of 1976, 1980 and 1982 strengthened them for another generation.

That is how a football program becomes a football tradition.

The records from 1962 will always show that Danville won the Class 2A championship with a 13 to 6 victory over Corbin. Nothing changes that result. Yet anyone attempting to understand the history of Corbin football has to look beyond the final game.

The defining moment of the season may have occurred before the Redhounds ever reached Lexington.

It happened at home, with the people of Corbin packed around the field and the defending state champions standing on the opposite sideline.

Highlands had not lost in 34 games.

The Bluebirds had won the state championship in 1960.

They had won it again in 1961.

They came to Corbin hoping to make it three in a row.

They left with a loss and a zero on the scoreboard.

Corbin 10, Highlands 0.

More than six decades later, the championship trophy from that season belongs to Danville. The record book says so, and it always will.

But the 1962 Corbin Redhounds left behind something of their own. They gave their town a team that reached the final game of the season, defeated the eventual state champion once and brought one of Kentucky’s most dominant football runs to an abrupt end on a fall night in Corbin.

For the men who played that season and the people who filled the stands to watch them, 1962 was more than a runner up finish.

It was another chapter in the making of Corbin football.