Gulf Coast-Pearl River series highlights

PERKINSTON — Here are highlights from the longest rivalry in Mississippi Gulf Coast football history:

• 1914: The first-ever meeting between football teams from Perkinston and Poplarville came all the way back in 1914, when Pearl River County Agricultural High School beat Harrison County AHS 51-0 on Nov. 26.
• 1926: The first Poplarville-Perkinston college football game was played Nov. 5, 1926, at the Gulfport Fairgrounds. The team from Poplarville won a hotly contested game 6-0.
• 1935: Perkinston beat Poplarville for the first time in 1935, when the Bulldogs ruined the Wildcats' homecoming when G.C. Golden caught a pair of touchdown passes for a 14-7 win. The Bulldogs finished the season undefeated but weren't eligible for the state championship because a game against Holmes had been canceled because of the death of a Perk student in a car wreck the day before homecoming.
• 1946: Perkinston beat Pearl River 25-6 in the Tung Bowl on Dec. 5, 1946, the first normal season after World War II. Coach Marvin "Red" Campbell's team went 8-3.
• 1948: Perkinston's Davis Melton's 12-yard run on fourth down late in the fourth quarter won the 1948 meeting 20-19 at Perk on Homecoming on Nov. 6, and the Bulldogs would finish undefeated to win their first national championship.
• 1966: On Nov. 12, 1966, Coach George Sekul beat Pearl River 33-0 at Gulfport's Milner Stadium in his first season in charge. It broke a 17-game losing streak to the Wildcats, and President J.J. Hayden jumped on the microphone in the pressbox to declare the following Monday a "Victory Over Pearl River Holiday." Sekul's team clinched his first state championship the following week.
• 2005: On Oct. 20, 2005, Gulf Coast faced defending NJCAA champion Pearl River, then the No. 1 team in the country, and won 55-47 to snap the Wildcats' school-record 23-game win streak.
• 2007: On the way to the 2007 national championship, Gulf Coast beat Pearl River 24-17 in the muck and mire at A.L. May Memorial Stadium. The Bulldogs would end the season 12-0 and share the national title with Butler.
• 2008: In 2008, Gulf Coast finished a season sweep of Pearl River by winning the MACJC championship 52-7, then the worst defeat in Wildcats history.

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