Nelson Stewart remembers how cold it was that night.
He remembers Haynesville fans traveling in droves from the Arkansas/Louisiana border to New Orleans — a five-hour and 41-minute drive. He remembers eating lunch in the cafeteria, hearing bells and blaring horns from Haynesville fans as they circled the block around the school.
Isidore Newman was hosting the 1991 state football semifinals against the Golden Tornadoes. Stewart was a freshman defensive lineman on a team led by future Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning and his brother, Cooper, a senior, team captain and wide receiver at the time.
Newman had won the prior week over Kentwood on a drive orchestrated by Manning. Although Newman had a few successful teams in the 1970s, the school was not known for its football prowess.
“I can close my eyes and remember … that was the most people I’ve ever seen in the stadium,” said Stewart, now the coach at Newman. “I was a ball boy and I was a water boy for years and played (football) in middle school, but that’s really when I fell in love with Newman football and really started realizing how magical it was.”
But Newman’s storybook season didn’t end happily ever after.
Manning was intercepted on the potential game-winning drive by a Haynesville linebacker who had initially fallen down but got back up on his feet in time to pick off Manning before he could react.
“Just to come within a breath of the Superdome, that was bigger than anybody’s wildest dreams,” Stewart said.
Thirty years later, it’s still the closest Newman has come to winning a football state championship.
The Greenies had two more seasons with Peyton Manning at quarterback after 1991 and another three from his brother — two-time Super Bowl champion quarterback Eli Manning — in the latter half of the decade.
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Then from 2007-10,…
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