As I was sitting and watching a little bit of Brownwood and a whole lot of other 7 on 7 teams Saturday morning, I got to thinking about the more unique events and circumstances that have been held – at least that I’ve heard of and not seen – but heard of them.
My all-time favorite comes from Coach Gordon Wood. He said that he
witnessed a high school scrimmage that drew close to 10,000 people. I said, “Man, you’re shooting the bull. You’re lying to me. You’re telling me a fib or something, because it couldn’t possibly happen.”
If you don’t know, the UIL has a rule that no scrimmage can charge admission so nobody benefited from it except for the site of it. He was coaching in Stamford at the time. They had won the State Championship the year before and they were scrimmaging Breckenridge, which had won a State Championship the year before. He said that he thought both teams would be better that season. So, it was a highly anticipated scrimmage and the word got out at least in Breckenridge and Stamford. They thought it might, but it got out – I started to say world-wide – but it got out big time all over Texas.
Now, Breckenridge has a stadium of about what, eight thousand or six thousand something like that. It’s smaller than that now because they did something to the seating, but back then it would probably seat six or eight thousand in regular seating. Breckenridge’s stadium, if you don’t know, is in a laid-back community, I mean a REAL laid-back community. It’s actually built where it confines itself. It’s kind of open on one end but on the other end it’s the school buildings. Believe it or not, and unbelievably so, the people got on top of the buildings and there’s no telling how many were up there.
Anyway, I don’t know beans about the ballgame or the scrimmage, but I think it was about even and I think most people enjoyed it. It turned out that both of those teams, I don’t think either one of them won State that following year but they went about three or four rounds deep in the playoffs. That’s when one team got in the playoffs.
It was a great game though. Breckenridge and Stamford – I don’t think it’s in any record books. I know it’s not in any of the annuals or anything like that, so nobody knows about it except Gordon Wood and that’s about it.
He won enough games in Brownwood and enough State Championships, SEVEN, to give people the greatest impression of them all. By the way, he won NINE! He won two at Stamford and seven at Brownwood. It’s hard to believe the last one was in 1981! It’s time we did that again!
Until next time, so long everybody.
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‘Out of the Box’ with Dallas Huston is published each Monday morning at BrownwoodNews.com. Dallas was the radio voice of the Brownwood Lions and Howard Payne Yellow Jackets for more than 55 years. He currently is Pastor of Center City Baptist Church and hosts a Men’s Bible Study in Brownwood on Monday evenings. Your comments are welcome at [email protected].