Breckenridge High School - Class of '59 (Part 2)

In the period from 1951 to 1959, the Breckenridge Buckaroos football team won four State Championships outright and tied for a fifth. Throw in the 0-0 tie back in the oil-boom days (1929) and that's at least a share of 6 State Championships. And we regularly beat power-house teams such as Abilene High, Wichita Falls High and Brownwood in the process.

True, this record was eclipsed in the '60's by the Gordon Woods-coached Brownwood Lions and Southlake Carroll is way past that number in the modern era. But a little perspective is needed -  Brownwood's population in the '60's was about 16,000 people. The high school had nearly 800 students. Southlake Carroll today has more than 1,300 students - they have more full-time teachers than we had in my graduating class!

In the '50's  there were never as many as 400 students enrolled at BHS. Only 27 players suited up for varsity football in 1958 (the season of my senior year). Eight of those 27 were named as All State players. Eight of them!


Is it any wonder that any reminiscing about BHS in the '50's is going to focus on football? Organized football started in the Elementary schools back then. Go South Ward Wildcats! The High School coaches carefully supervised the Junior High program. The JV games had solid attendance as folks speculated over the next Varsity starters. Emory Bellard's Wish-bone formation - later introduced to UT - was developed here. The whole town lived and breathed football back then. The gym was full of townspeople for pep-rallies; on home-game Fridays school was over by 2pm and the band, the team and the entire student body marched up the hill to Walker street, then down to the  Breckenridge Avenue intersection and we blocked that intersection - the crossroads of the town - for an hour for another pep rally. Saturday playoff games? The town was literally closed for business.

But there was a dark side to football at BHS. High schools normally don't get to recruit players; they take the ones in their district. Need a player not in our district? No problem - just get some local businessman to offer daddy a job good job in town. Need a house? We can help you there. Still won't come? Let's send the banker who has the mortgage on your farm to discuss the situation with you. There were no transfer eligibility rules back then. You could play for Moran Consolidated one week and Breckenridge High the next. And at least one All State player did. I once thought these stories were exaggerated.  I learned during the reunion - from some of the players themselves - that they were not.


Another example of Football as King: there was a long-standing rule back then that if you married before you graduated, your high school career was over. Until Jerry Gibson and Judy Wright married. Jerry was the quarterback, you see. The rule got changed. A classmate who previously had been told she could not return was suddenly back in school. Only her husband could not sign her report cards - her mother had to do that. Go figure.

And my contribution to this little bit of history? I wrote the lyrics to the fight song. I'm confident that's what inspired the team to achieve such greatness. Back then, the Buckaroo fight song was to the tune of "On Wisconsin." as it was for about 2000 other high schools. "On you Buckaroos, on you Buckaroos, fight for victory." The movie "Giant" was released in that era and one day the band director passed out the music to the theme song from "Giant." I scribbled some inane words to the song, gave them to one of the cheerleaders, they taught the students the song at the next pep rally, and as they say, the rest...

Fortunately, I can't remember the words to my song, but if you go to a BHS pep rally today you can still hear them.