You had to be there.
That remains the sentiment of thousands of us who were at the jam-packed Citrus Bowl on a Rockwellian December night 44 years ago, when the Vero Beach High School football team won its first – and until now our only – state championship before a wildly cheering hometown crowd.
Many of us, though, shared a similar feeling last Friday night as we watched this year’s Fighting Indians – the most recent descendant of our 1981 state championship team – fight its way to the 2025 title game in a raucous, sold-out Citrus Bowl.
The Fighting Indians now get a chance to finish the job this Saturday night in Miami.
“Here we are, 44 years later, and the Indians are on the verge of winning it all again,” said attorney Brian Connelly, a defensive end and long snapper on Vero Beach’s 1981 team. “If only it could be a home game …”
But it’s not. The championship game this year will be played on neutral turf 147 miles from Vero.
That’s why it is easy to believe last Friday’s nail-biting 45-44 double-overtime triumph over Miami Palmetto in the semifinal – the last home game of the year in the Citrus Bowl – will be the source of 2025’s nostalgic lifelong memories for many of those not here in 1981.
“That was an incredible game Friday,” Vero Beach coach Lenny Jankowski said a couple of days later as he and his staff began preparing for the top-seeded Fighting Indians’ Class 7A championship showdown against Lake Mary at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Florida International University’s Pitbull Stadium.
“With everything at stake and winning the way we did in that situation, in that stadium, in front of that crowd … It’s a great feeling,” he added. “But this Saturday is the opportunity we’ve worked for.”
This is the opportunity these Fighting Indians have earned – Vero Beach’s first title match since the Billy Livings-coached “Little Rascals,” as they were affectionately dubbed back in 1981, upset Panhandle power Panama City Mosely in a championship game not decided until the final minute.
For those who don’t know:
- This year’s Fighting Indians (14-0) aren’t merely undefeated. Until Friday night’s slugfest was decided when they broke up Miami Palmetto’s all-or-nothing, two-point-conversion attempt on the game’s final play, Vero hadn’t been tested since a 21-13 victory over Fort Pierce Central in September.
- Only two of Vero’s regular-season games were decided by eight points or less – both on the road – and they blew out their last five opponents by scores of 42-13, 42-7, 53-14, 49-0 and 43-0.
- The Fighting Indians then followed up by winning their first three playoff games by scores of 57-10, 56-14 and 49-23.
As these outcomes might indicate, this year’s team is loaded with talented and versatile athletes, four of which committed during last week’s early signing period to play major-college football.
Offensive lineman Micah “Big Champ” Smith signed with Illinois, while wide receiver Xavier Stinson committed to Iowa. Both quarterback E.J. White and safety Jordan Crutchfield are headed to Florida State.
And Jankowski, who is in his 15th year as Vero Beach’s coach, said he expects to see more of his seniors receive football scholarships.
Certainly, talent and athleticism have been a significant factor in the team’s success. But what makes this bunch special, Jankowski said, has been the players’ commitment to work hard – and to each other.
“This has been the most enjoyable group of guys,” Jankowski said. “They respect each other, they trust each other, and they’ve bought in to what we’re doing. I know it’s a cliché, but they really have come together as a team, and as a family. That’s what makes this possible.
“Our players sacrifice a lot,” he added. “This is a year-round deal, and they work hard, because they know hard work isn’t optional if you want to be successful. As long as this season has been – we started playing games in August – they’re still working hard to achieve their goal.
“You’ve got to admire that.”
The effort the Fighting Indians gave against second-seeded Palmetto, which was not at all intimidated by Vero Beach’s daunting record or rattled by the hostile surroundings, was inspiring.
The visiting Panthers not only scored the night’s first touchdown, but they also played Vero Beach to a halftime tie before the Fighting Indians surged to 38-24 lead in the second half of a tough, hard-hitting, take-no-prisoners game.
Even after the Palmetto fought back in the fourth quarter to tie the score in the final minute of regulation time – and Vero Beach kicker Riley Swanson missed a chip-shot field goal that would’ve won the game in the first overtime – the Fighting Indians refused to get discouraged.
On the first play of the second overtime, White threw a screen pass to senior running back Jonathan Hillsman, who had run for two touchdowns, for a 10-year score that put Vero Beach ahead 45-38.
Palmetto answered with a touchdown, but Panthers coach Michael Manasco opted to go for the victory and attempt a two-point conversion, only to see Vero Beach sophomore defensive back Jamarion Hillsman break up the pass to send the Fighting Indians to Miami.
“Big night for the Hillsman family,” Jankowski said of the brothers.
It was the younger Hillsman’s do-or-die defensive play, however, that provided a fitting end to the most-meaningful football game played on Vero Beach’s home field in more than four decades.
“Watching that goal-line stand in the second overtime brought chills,” said Connelly. “It triggered memories of our goal-line stand in the state championship game.”
With good reason: Vero Beach also needed a fate-changing play by its defense to seal that season’s championship victory. After halfback Anthony Simmons’ 4-yard touchdown run put the Fighting Indians ahead, 10-7, early in the fourth quarter of that game, Mosely’s offense drove deep into Vero Beach territory in the game’s final minute.
But Fighting Indians defenders Will Hill and Willie Harris jarred the ball loose from Mosely running back Patrick Miller’s grasp and linebacker Bob Toomey recovered the fumble at the Vero Beach 25-yard-line with less than 40 seconds to play.
Quarterback Todd Fennell, who like Connelly also became a Vero Beach attorney, took a knee as the final seconds ticked off the stadium clock in 1981, igniting a wild celebration that seemed to spread throughout the county – and the legend of Billy Livings was born.
Livings had arrived from Montgomery, Alabama, in 1980, two years after leading Jefferson Davis High School to a state championship there. He wasted no time in becoming a folk hero here.
As gifted as he was a football coach, he was an even better public speaker who delighted the local news media with compelling stories and colorful phrases.
Livings referred to Rich Cunningham – a tough-to-tackle, all-state fullback who was unstoppable for so much of that 1981 season – as his “garbage truck,” because he usually had several defenders hanging onto to him when he ran with the ball.
Many of those Fighting Indians were undersized, prompting him to label them his “NCAA players.”
No Chest At All.
The Alabama native, in some lighthearted interviews, would also call his relatively smaller players “urchins” and, when describing their gritty effort, say they “sucked up their innards.”
A locally beloved figure, Livings retired as Vero Beach’s coach and athletic director in 2006 as the second winningest football coach in Florida history with 211 victories, 15 district titles and 20 playoff appearances.
As a football coach in Alabama and Vero Beach, he won 314 games.
The Citrus Bowl field was named in his honor in 2000, and he was inducted into the Florida High School Athletic Association Hall of Fame in April 2012 – six months after he suffered a stroke and died at age 75.
“I’m excited,” said Livings’ 89-year-old widow, Rosie, who attended Friday night’s semifinal and plans to go to the championship game with her son Matt, a sophomore on the 1981 team.
“That game Friday night was fun to watch, especially in that environment,” she added. “The way the game went, going to double overtime, everyone in that stadium was exhausted at the end.
“For these boys, I’m sure that game will remain as glorious to them as the championship game in 1981 was to those players.”
It says plenty about Livings’ legacy – and the wonderful small-town love affair between Vero Beach football and our community – that several members of the 1981 team were at Friday night’s game.
Many of them plan to be in Miami on Saturday night.
“Coach Jankowski and his staff have worked hard to bring the team this far,” Connelly said. “I remember the bonds we had as a team, and there is no doubt that this team is every bit as united.”
There is a difference, however: Unlike the Livings’ era, Florida’s school-choice laws have allowed players from outside our school district to transfer to Vero Beach, and a handful of the Fighting Indians’ best players this year came from St. Lucie County.
Among them are Smith, Stinson, Crutchfield and super sophomore Champ Monds, who was projected to be the team’s starting quarterback but has been injured for most of the season.
It would be naïve to believe the quality of Jankowski’s program and community support the team enjoys here did not figure prominently in the players’ decision to transfer to Vero Beach.
And these players were welcomed with open arms – by their teammates, the coaching staff and our community.
Less than 24 hours after their grueling semifinal triumph, in fact, team members accepted an invitation from organizers to participate in Saturday night’s Vero Beach Christmas Parade.
“It was great to see how excited the community is,” Jankowski said. “A lot of people here care a lot about what we’re doing.”
They should.
For those of us who were there, it’s difficult to imagine that Vero Beach will ever again experience anything like that enchanted football night at the Citrus Bowl all those Decembers ago.
You had to be there, and everyone in town was – or so it felt, anyway.
But this team is special, too.
These Fighting Indians have an opportunity to not only win the school’s second state championship, but they also have a chance to do something the 1981 team didn’t – complete a perfect season.
And, yes, the 1981 players are rooting for them.
Photos by Joshua Kodis
