By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL, Journal Sports
(NOTE – As the year draws to a close, the SBJ staff is sharing a few of our favorite stories from 2025. Here’s one from July 18.)
The 1960s were something of a Golden Age for high school football in this area. The leather helmet era was gone. New schools, thanks in great part to Baby Boomers, were suddenly on the scene and making an impact.
Three different schools won state championships in a two-year span, including a couple in the same week at the same stadium. Six times, a local team was in a state championship game.
Even more memorable were the great players. Especially the quarterbacks, such as Woodlawn’s Terry Bradshaw and Joe Ferguson, who would have long careers in the NFL. Fair Park’s John Miller, who beat out Bradshaw for All-City in 1965, went on to start in the SEC at Vanderbilt.
Great teams, great games, great players.
But you could make the argument that there was one player who captured the attention of local football fans as much those players — or anyone else.
And he was all of 5-feet-6 and 160 pounds.
You won’t find his name on the list of the Top 25 rushers in Shreveport-Bossier history. In fact, he’s not even the all-time leader at his own school.
But that’s not the point.
You had to see Jesuit’s (now Loyola) Tony Papa to fully understand his impact.
He was often the smallest man of the field yet he managed to have the biggest impact. His combination of speed, shiftiness and elusiveness had people talking every Friday night and into Saturday morning.
Headlines such as “Tony Papa Romps Again” and “Pint-Sized Papa” filled the local newspapers on a regular basis.
In the 18 games he played during his junior and senior seasons, he rushed for at least 100 yards in 12 of them, including seven in a row. His 2,845 rushing yards are still No. 2 on the Flyer career list.
“I think about how fortunate I was to play at Jesuit at the time that I did,” Papa says. “Playing for Coach (C.O.) Brocato and Coach (Frank) Cicero, men who were very inspirational to my life. They knew the game and the people who surrounded me were very important to me. We were winners because of the people around me.”
It was a decorated career, highlighted by All-State berths in both football and baseball (he was the starting shortstop as a sophomore on the Flyers’ 1964 baseball state championship team).
How special was Papa? He was voted onto the All-State football team as a junior despite playing in only six games.
That special.
Why did he only play in six games as a junior? Because of what would turn out to be the defining moment of Papa’s football career – the night of Oct. 23, 1964, in which he never even had a single rushing yard.
Playing at Minden, Papa dropped back to receive a punt along with teammate Ron Stephens on the fourth play of the game. Papa caught the punt and then ran the “criss-cross” and handed it to Stephens.
“I just kind of relaxed after Ron took off and when I did, my left leg just planted and some guy just cut me down,” he remembers. “He hit me and (the knee) was just like an accordion. It went out then back in. It tore that ligament”
Papa led the city in rushing going into the game with 1,058 yards, but he was lost for the year. The Flyers, who were ranked No. 5 in the state going into the game at 5-0-1, tied that game with Minden and didn’t win another game the rest of the season (losing two more and tying another) to miss the playoffs.
Given that season-ending knee injuries were much harder to recover from 60 years ago than today, it would be easy to think that Papa was never the same after that.
Actually, he might have been even better.
He was able to recover in time to play baseball that spring (making the All-City team) and when it was time for the 1965 football season, he was determined to pick up where he left off.
“God was good to me and I got my knee back in shape,” Papa says. “We were loaded my senior year.”
After two shutout wins to start the season, the Flyers were No. 1 in the state poll and stayed there for the rest of the regular season. Papa was a big reason why, with rushing games of 183 vs. Bossier and 180 yards in a revenge game against Minden.
“I still can’t believe we didn’t win the state championship game that year,” he says.
After two home wins to open the playoffs, the Flyers took on Morgan City at State Fair Stadium in the semifinals in an attempt to reach the first state football championship game in school history. Trailing the entire game but with a pronounced yardage advantage, the Flyers scored late on a touchdown pass to Papa, who then kicked the extra point to tie the game at 19-all.
But there was no overtime for high school playoffs at that time, so the winner was determined by first downs. After Papa’s score, both teams had 13 first downs, so it was a matter of who could get the next first down. On fourth-and-three, Morgan City used a short pass to move the chains and later picked up another to advance.
Papa finished that season with 1,274 rushing yards, averaging 8.3 per carry, and became the school’s first two-time All-State selection.
“I don’t think I was as good as a senior as my junior year,” Papa says. “There were some things I couldn’t do like I could before, like cut back. I didn’t plant with my left foot and try to go back across the field any more. I could do it with my right leg but not my left.”
He signed a SEC letter of intent with LSU and a Southwest Conference letter of intent with Texas A&M (as were the rules at the time) and decided to go with the Aggies for his National Letter of Intent after being impressed with Coach Gene Stallings, who he found much more personable that LSU’s Charlie McClendon.
But after a year at A&M – “things just didn’t work out,” he says – he had planned to transfer to Louisiana Tech. Papa had a conversation with Bradshaw (who had already been in Ruston for a year) and was able to get a meeting with new coach Maxie Lambright. But it was Tech assistant George Doherty who had been recruiting Papa since high school, so Papa called him to tell him he was ready to make the move to Tech.
“That’s when he told me he was going to Northwestern (State),” Papa says. “That’s how I ended up there.”
Papa played two seasons for the Demons (1968-69) and rushed for 689 yards on 150 carries.
After finishing at NSU, he came back to coach at Jesuit for three years (1971-73) before entering private business, mostly in insurance. Now 77 and still working, Papa says “I’m living the good life.”
He says he never watched the film of that fateful play in Minden until years later. But there are still other reminders.
“I still have that scar on my left knee,” he says.
Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahool.com
