Jake Trussell was a sportswriter of some minor note in the Kingsville / Texas A&I area and this was his response to the State Championship game in 1958 - my Senior year. As you might expect, the article was not well received in Breck - especially the vivid descriptions of the barren wasteland and the "Gunsmoke" references. I recall that the local paper sent someone to Kingsville to report back on the ugliness of that area. Alas, Kingsville, while not in the Rio Grand Valley per se, is located in one of the more verdant areas of South Texas. Mr. Trussell may have had a point. For the record, we won 42-14.
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The Kingsville Record
Wednesday, December 24, 1958
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Breckenridge Was Tough And Mean Last Saturday As Buckaroos Beat Bulls
by Jake Trussell
For years I'd heard of Breckenridge and its high school football team, but not until Saturday did I learn the facts of life. I finally made a pilgrimage to Breckenridge, and as a long time writer on the the subject of high school football I think “pilgrimage” is the right word to use. No football fan will ever know how great high school football can be played until he's seen the Breckenridge Buckaroos perform on their home field.
After the Kingsville Brahamas beat massive Cleburne, I just couldn't imagine Breckenridge being any better than that giant Cleburne team. So I picked Kingsville to knock off Breckenridge 24 to 20. It was a classic example of ignorance being bliss.
I felt sure of my prediction until the fans' bus upon which I rode to the game came in sight of Breckenridge. But as I saw Breckenridge as the bus approached the town and then drove through it, I became vaguely uneasy. By the time I had gotten out of the bus, entered Buckaroo Stadium, and climbed to the press box, I had a deep down aching feeling that Kingsville was going to get the axe.
Mean and Tough
Breckenridge Saturday was the meanest, toughest, rawest, ugliest looking town I have ever seen – and it had a football team to match. The comparatively small town was sitting on barren, wind-swept, frost-bitten Northwest Texas hills. There wasn't a speck of green in sight anywhere. Separate portions of the town actually looked like sets out of “Gunsmoke.”
As our bus wheeled through the streets of this God forsaken-looking community, we noticed that there were no automobiles, pedestrians or stragglers on the streets. Everything appeared to be closed down. Breckenridge actually looked like a ghost town. “Where is everybody?” someone asked. A few minutes later we discovered the answer to that question. They were all at the football stadium, preparing to watch another slaughter. Once again, I use a word advisedly. “Slaughter” is the right verb-adjective to describe the way Breckenridge dismembers a visiting football team. And the staging is absolutely perfect.
What A Stadium
The Breckenridge football stadium looks like a combination rodeo chute – slaughter pen – concentration camp. Old, rough wooden bleachers surround the playing field on three sides. The football field itself doesn't have a single blade of grass on it. The softest thing on that gridiron Saturday was the line markings. It was as barren, and almost as hard, as if the two teams had been playing on a tennis court.
The football field is surrounded by a concentration camp-type fence, right off the edge of the field, and immediately behind the fence the thousands of screaming Breckenridge fans roar their approval of the Buckaroos and their disapproval of the visiting club. No wonder the the Buckaroos are almost invincible at home. The opposition is intimidated before a single play is ever run. If I was a coach and took a team into Breckenridge seriously expecting to win, I wouldn't step into that stadium without sub-machine guns and hand grenades. The implication automatically is that if you ever win a game there you'll have to fight your way out of town.
Quick, Quick, Quick!
On the field of play itself, the Buckaroos present the quickest, fastest, hardest hitting high school team you will ever see! The secret of their success is mainly two-fold. A great tradition of being a football town, and team speed as an eleven-man unit that is absolutely amazing. On their home field, the Buckaroos play as if they knew that, if they lose, they will each and every one be run out of town. Those Bucks aren't just playing football. They're fighting for a happy home and the right to walk down the streets of their own city.
Breath-Taking
Their speed as a team is breath-taking. One Kingsville fan came through with the best description of the way the Bucks operate. Said this fan, “They come up to the line of scrimmage, squat down, and then take off like a covey of quail.” Actually, the Buckaroos moved quicker erecting their offensive plays than any team I have ever seen, high school, college or pro. They waste no time at the line of scrimmage. They work the plays through the middle so fast that neither the fans nor the opposition know what's happening until the runner is in the secondary.
On the field of play the Buckaroos are good sports. They didn’t try “to get” Kingsville's colored athletes, as had been rumored in advance. They simply knock you into the middle of next week, then run back to the huddle to call the next play. They are too great a team to wast time on dirty football.
Prefers Kingsville
After it was all over Saturday, my reaction was as follows, I knew I'd finally seen the greatest in high school football. But if I had to live in Breckenridge to be state champions, I'd just stay in Kingsville and be runners-up. For one of the reasons the Breckenridge boys play great football is because of the simple and obvious fact that they have nothing else to do. The isolated, forlorn, and desolate cowtown-oil-town sits alone and overlooked by the rest of civilization. Until somebody mentions the game of high school football!
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1 comment:
It's a shame he wasn't there early enough to see the band marching down Walker St. to rally the whole town before the game. Wonder what he would have thought of that.
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