NOSTALGIA GLORY DAYS

NO ONE COULD claim that high school athletics were overemphasized when football got started in Dallas around the turn of the century. The superintendent of schools wouldn’t even let the boys practice on the school grounds, and the uniforms were made by the players’ mothers. The Perot Committee would have been ecstatic.

Before long, however, competition had become fierce, and a winning team was a source of intense neighborhood pride. Of the hundreds of high school teams that have been fielded in Dallas, 10 stand out above all the rest.

When Texas schools were organized into districts for statewide competition in the early Twenties, Oak Cliff High was the scourge of Dallas. Longtime sports enthusiast Field Scovell was an end for North Dallas High in those days. “One year Oak Cliff beat us 53-6,” Scovell recalls, “and we all went downtown that night and celebrated. It was the first time we’d ever scored on them.”

Ewell Walker, Doak’s father, was a young assistant coach for North Dallas. “We didn’t have anything but a bunch of ragamuffins,” says Walker, “so we would try anything to stay in the game. In those days, a substitute couldn’t talk until after the first play or it would mean a 5-yard penalty, so when Oak Cliff sent in a sub, our defense would try to strike up a conversation.”

1924 was Oak Cliffs finest year. Halfback W.C. Lynch was called “Will-o-the-wisp,” and Walker says that he was one of the greatest runners he ever saw. Roy Lumpkin, a running back on offense and a tackle on defense, called “Father” because he had been in school so long, could stiff-arm a tackier or run around him, depending on his mood. Fullback Ira Hopper was a line-smasher extraordinaire, and as a backfield complement, the three were unstoppable.

The Oak Cliff Leopards got better and better as the year went on, and on December 20, 1924, they met the Waco High Tigers at Fair Park tor the state championship. Waco was a football machine in the Twenties with 107 wins and only seven losses during the decade. In one bi-district encounter against Houston Davis, coach Paul Tyson’s Tigers scored 124 points. The 1924 team, which Oak Cliff had the dubious honor of facing, hadn’t even been scored on, but in an incredible feat, the Oak Cliff squad drubbed the Tigers 31-0 for the state championship, holding Waco to a net gain of 10 yards for the entire game.

Forest Avenue High was Oak Cliffs chief nemesis in the Twenties. School Superintendent J.F. Kimball had become concerned over the increasing incidents of poor sportsmanship at football encounters between local schools, which he attributed to the fact that the high school coaches had matriculated at one of the crude Texas colleges, such regional playoff to become the first Dallas team to advance to the quarterfinals since Lumpkin led the Leopards of 1926. The Tech Wolves then took a 13-0 win over Highland Park, in spite of a stellar performance by guard Billy Clements, who would later become Governor of Texas.

When the Wolves beat a powerful San An-gelo team on its West Texas turf in the semifinals, it looked as though a Dallas team might go all the way for the first time since 1924. But Coach Henry Frnka’s Greenville High School team-which was masterminded by a 15-year-old, 130 pound quarterback named Bert Marshall, beat the Wolves 21-0 in the state finals.

The Woodrow Wilson Wildcats of 1939 were touted as “the team of the decade.” The Wildcats were sparked by Howard “Red” Maley, a 175-pound triple threat quarterback who was raised in a Dallas orphanage. In high school, Maley was a better passer than Davey O’Brien, and he could also block, kick and plunge the line. His favorite passing target was Sid Halliday, an All-City end who later starred at SMU during the Doak Walker era.

The Dallas high schools had experienced another playoff drought, having lost the bi-district encounter every year since Tech last won it in 1935. But in ’39, Woodrow rode Maley’s arm all the way to the semifinals, where the Wildcats lost to Lubbock when Maley’s pass protection broke down.



THE FORTIES belonged to the Sunset Bisons. Guided by Coach Herman Cowley and later by Byron Rhome, Sunset won eight city championships between 1940 and 1950. A horde of standouts were produced by the Bison coaches during the Forties, many of whom went on to star in college, including Goble Bryant, Bill Blackburn, Earle Cook, Monte Moncrief, Hank and Dan Goldberg and future Dallas Mayor Bobby Folsom.

At the conclusion of the regular season in 1942, Sunset was the only undefeated, untied team in the state. Quarterback Arthur Burch and fullback Ned Welch were the team’s sparkplugs while Goble Bryant and Earl Cook the defensive stoppers. A great distraction hovered over the ’42 team, since many of the players could see a much more serious conflict waiting for them just over the horizon in the war with Germany and Japan.

When the Bisons beat Carter-Riverside in early December in the bi-district playoff, ration books had just been distributed to Dallas motorists, entitling them to four gallons of gasoline a week. But the quarterfinal encounter didn’t take much gas, just a lot of gumption. The opponents were the Highland Park Scotties, led by the great Bobby Layne, and were so stocked with talent that Doak Walker was playing on second string. But the Bisons beat the Scotties and then knocked off the powerful Amarillo Sandies to advance to the state finals.

The day after Christmas, dozens of trucks left the city loaded with Bisons supporters who couldn’t stretch their ration coupons all the way to the Capitol City for a showdown with Austin High School. But the door again slammed in the face of a Dallas high school when Sunset was beaten 20-7-the same score as the Dallas losses to Waco in ’25 and ’26.

In 1948, the Texas Interscholastic League set up what was professed to be a “Super Division” of the big-city schools from Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio and Houston. In reality, it was a ruse designed to rescue the city boys from the regular thrashings administered by San Angelo, Wichita Falls, Odessa or Abilene.

Sunset reached the state finals of the “City Conference” in 1949, where the Bisons were smashed by San Antonio Jefferson. In 1950, Sunset overwhelmed the other Dallas schools, placing seven men on the All-City 11. “Jarring” John Marshall and speedster as Baylor. But Kimball imported Oak Cliff Coach Howard Allen and Forest mentor Alfred Loos from fine northern establishments, and things just got worse.

The Forest Lions, using a total of 12 players, had actually edged Oak Cliff 6-0 in 1924, the year the Leopards won state. The stage was set for a grueling rematch in 1925, which was played in a sea of mud at Steer Stadium, in the river bottoms of Oak Cliff. The inspirational leader of the Forest 11 was J.C. “Abe” Barnett, a pass-snagging end and kicker. In the showdown of ’25, Barnett grabbed a touchdown pass and later drop-kicked the muddy ball through the goal posts from a difficult angle on the 25-yard line to give Forest a 9-0 victory.

The Lions edged Marshall in the first game of the playoffs and then played Cisco, another state power, to a 13-13 tie at Fair Park. “In those days, when you tied, you played over,” says Barnett, who still lives in Dallas. “They had just built a big dam out at Lake Cisco, and everybody in Dallas referred to the high school team as the Big Dam Lobos.”

There were few radios in Dallas then, so radio station WFAA broadcast the game to a special receiver set up back at the high school, and a small admission was charged to pay for the transportation of the band and the rooting squad to Cisco. Barnett caught a touchdown pass, kicked the extra point and intercepted a pass near the end of the game deep in Forest territory to give the Lions a 7-0 win, the first time Cisco had ever been beaten at home. Forest advanced to the state finals, losing 20-7 to Waco.

In 1926 it was Oak Cliff again. Lynch and Hopper had graduated, but Lumpkin had become a human touchdown factory, scoring 25 TDs in a seven-game schedule. The Leopards also had the Higgins boys (Jimmy and Frank), and Homer Balcom, who was described as “a towering tackle, more than six feet tall.” (Frank “Pinky” Higgins later played major league baseball for 15 years before becoming manager of the Boston Red Sox.)

Having grown weary of consistent physical thrashings administered by the Leopards, competing schools began to look for non-physical methods of retaliation. A protest was filed with state officials charging that Oak Cliff was abusing the rule that required athletes to pass three “solid” subjects a semester by counting typing as one of the solids. When this protest went for naught, it was pointed out that Lumpkin and Balcom hadn’t bothered to take their final exams the year before.

Superintendent Norman R. Crozier saved the day when he advised the state officials that there had been a smallpox epidemic in the city the year before and that it would have been foolhardy to expose these fine young athletes to such a risk by requiring them to mix and mingle with potential carriers in the exam room. Oak Cliff went to the state finals again, losing to Waco 20-7. Waco held Lumpkin, “the blond-haired monster” to a mere 109 yards rushing.



BY THE THIRTIES, Sunset High School had horned in on the monoply west of the river, and the name of Oak Cliff High had been changed to W.H. Adamson in honor of the school’s first principal. Tech, which had started out as Dallas High School and was later known as Bryan, had become the city power, with Woodrow Wilson as its staunch-est foe. During the early Thirties, Woodrow, as it was most often called, had future Ail-Americans Davey O’Brien and I.B. Hale, but Tech still won most of the championships.

In 1933, Tech was led by George “Red” Ewing, a small but powerful wingback who could block, kick and scoot around end. In Fred Harper and Buck Bailey, Tech had the two best fullbacks in the city, and Zed Coston was the best linebacker in the state. Tech beat Fort Worth Central 7-6 in the Joe Boring led Sunset back to the state finals, and for the first time since 1924, a Dallas school claimed a state football championship by beating the John Reagan Bulldogs of Houston 14-6. That crown has always been tainted by the gerrymandering around the eligible contestants in the big-city division. The following year, the “Super Conference” was abolished.



THE FIFTIES BROUGHT drastic changes to Dallas high school football. For the first time since 1928, new schools began to join the city district: South Oak Cliff, Bryan Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Kimball, Samuell and Hillcrest. Forest Avenue became James Madison, which competed in a separate district of black schools with Lincoln High and Booker T. Washington. But the top team of the Elvis decade was an old favorite, Woodrow Wilson.

Halfback Tommy Hall and fullback Bobby Ewell were the heroes of the crewcut crowd at Woodrow Wilson, along with end Ronnie Mason, who made All-State that year. Coach Jim Riley had played for Sunset in the mid-Twenties, where he had been known as “Roughhouse” Riley and had made All-State.

The 1953 Wildcats went through the regular season without a loss; in the playoffs, they beat a team from Fort Worth Paschal that outweighed them in the line by 24 pounds per man. The Wildcats advanced to the semifinals where they tied Odessa 14-14. It had been a long time since high school teams replayed tied games, but penetrations were even also, 4-4. By virtue of a 15-13 edge in first downs, Odessa advanced to the state finals where they lost to Houston Lamar. Since Lamar had lost a game earlier in the year, Woodrow was the only undefeated Class AAA football team in Texas that year.

Before long, South Oak Cliff was mass-producing talent at an even more rapid pace than the Sunset production in the Forties. SOC has turned out stars such as Malcolm Walker, Guy Reese, Mike Livingston, Harvey Martin, Wayne Morris, Stanley Washington, Michael Downs, Tim Collier, Donnie McGraw, Rod Gerald, Ricky Wesson, Danny Colbert, Egypt Allen, and the list is still growing.

In 1963, the Golden Bears from SOC were rated No. 1 in the state in the poll conducted by The Dallas Morning News, and were 10-0 going into their last game scheduled for the night of November 22. Because of the tragic events of that day in Dallas, the game was rescheduled for the following Tuesday. The Golden Bears closed out the regular season with a bruising 19-7 win over Woodrow Wilson, but they were in no shape for Paschal four days later, when they were upset in the bi-district encounter.

SOC has had several great teams, but the 1970 squad was the most successful. Donnie “Quick-Draw” McGraw was quarterback, and Wayne Morris played halfback on offense and in the secondary on defense. The Golden Bears rolled up more than 400 points on offense, and with the speed in their secondary, it was suicidal to try and pass against them. After playoff victories with the lopsided scores of 44-2 and 44-14, the Golden Bears journeyed to West Texas, the graveyard of Dallas high school teams, for a semifinal clash with Odessa Permian. Although they outgained Permian by a healthy margin, fumbles and penalties ended their season.

Wayne Morris and a host of great athletes returned in 1971, and SOC was expected to be even tougher than the year before, but someone forgot to tell the people at Carter, a new high school in Far South Oak Cliff. SOC was undefeated and ranked No. 2 in the state when Carter beat them. Led by quarterback Joe Rust, a gutsy passer who doubled as a defensive back, and Mike Baker, a powerful running back, Carter stormed through the city opposition and all the way to the semifinals against Wichita Falls.

This team had remarkable confidence and pride, especially after the SOC victory, and the players believed they could do anything. Unfortunately, the gun ran out at Wichita Falls before Rust had finished winning.

There have been teams since then that have ranked high in promise but that have not equaled those listed here in performance. To argue which of these teams might come out on top if we could hold the playoff of the century would be purely conjectural. But there is a measure we can use-the measure of success in how far the great teams went. Here’s how they stack up:

1. Oak Cliff, 1924. The only easy choice onthe whole list.

2. Forest, 1925. One of the top teams everfrom the standpoint of pure toughness.

3. Oak Cliff, 1926. A one-man team perhaps, but what a man.

4. Tech, 1933. Except for Sunset, the last Dallas team to make it to the state finals.

5. Woodrow Wilson, 1939. Best team thisside of West Texas.

6. Sunset, 1942. The greatest team from theBison dynasty.

7. Sunset, 1950. Our last “state champions.”It’s a shame that this team was protectedfrom the competition, because they went asfar as they could go.

8. Woodrow Wilson, 1953. The only undefeated team in the state that year and the lastone that Dallas has had.

9. South Oak Cliff, 1970. The best of a morerecent football dynasty.

10. Carter, 1971. The team that got the mostout of the least.

There they are, the best of the century. . .so far.