1954 Bucks look to next season as uncertainty persists

Historically Speaking

As it turned out, the Bucks/Port Neches game was the last high school game for 17 Breckenridge Buckaroos. The Bucks would lose 17 starters off the 1954 team, which included several from the backfield, such as Clyde Harris, Bob Acree, Jake Sandefer, Dick Carpenter, Mike Kingston, Bobby Knight and Edwin Robertson. They also lost Gene Tosh and Jerry Brown, who both played a bit at center, and guards included Jesse Chaney and James Jones and tackles Wayne Gibbons, Jerry Cramer and W.L. Pevey.

The departing ends included Sonny Everett, Tommy Beasley and John Cotten. As things turned out, the Bucks also lost Coach Joe Kerbel because he didn’t want to go back down to coaching a 2A team. He went back on to coach at Amarillo that next season.

It was ironic that the 1954 3A State Football Champs for the third time in four years did not have a 3A district to call home for the 1955 football season. The Bucks had won the 3A State Championship in 1951, 1952 and now in 1954. The 3A classification had only been established since 1951.

The Texas Interscholastic League created the problem by assigning another team to District 3A-1, from the southern part of Lubbock. That made nine teams and the member teams thought that was too many games to play. As a result, the teams met and voted the Bucks out of 3A-1.

Two years previously, the Bucks had been voted out of District 3A-2 but got an invitation to District 3A-1 and had played there the last two years, 1953 and 1954.

Now, the Bucks had nowhere to play in 1955, unless they wanted to take the assignment to District 2A-9 and play in the category that matched their school population.

Ever since the 3A classification had been formed four years previously, the Bucks had applied and been invited to play in a classification above their school population and as demonstrated, the Bucks could play any 3A team and even some 4A teams, like Abilene or Wichita Falls, which the Bucks also had beaten.

It takes a unanimous vote to place a team into another classification higher than their school enrollment warrants.

It appeared that the Bucks were too good for their own best interests and would have to swallow a tough pill this time around. The Buckaroos were really a 2A school based on enrollment but had played convincingly at the 3A classification level since it was organized four years previously.

The Bucks had explored all the possible options and were left to go to District 2A-9 for the 1955 season. The teams they would play included Mineral Wells, Stephenville, DeLeon, Cisco and Graham.

The Bucks would have only three of the veterans or starters returning in 1955, which included Bennett Watts (QB), Jerry Payne (C) and Buddy Hamilton (RB). There were six others that didn’t play enough to qualify as veterans and they included Guards Larry Munnerlyn, James Stanford and Bill Taylor. Tackle Jack Thompson. End Joe Bob Jackson. Back Eddie Offield.

“We played all our games with 18 boys and brought along four from the “B” Team, who didn’t play, so we would look like we had a full team but were often outmanned and out-weighed but never lacked the desire to win,” Jesse Chaney said.

The Bucks greeted a new coach, who would make quite a reputation at Breckenridge and as he introduced a new offensive scheme, the Wishbone, which was up-graded and perfected by the Bucks and then later at the college level at Mississippi State University, when he left here. The Bucks also earned a chapter in his book, “Wishbone Wisdom.” The coach I am speaking of was Emory Bellard, who stayed five seasons, 1955-1959.

To put a final closure on the 1954 season, there was a 60-Mile Banquet held in Abilene because the Abilene Eagles had won the 4A title, Albany had lost the 1A finals to Deer Park in 1954 and had lost to Ranger in the finals in 1953 but were included and the Bucks had sealed the deal on the 3A title. All this along a 60-mile stretch from Abilene, along U.S. Highway 351, through Albany to Breckenridge. There were more than 300 tickets sold to the dinner and it was held Dec. 24, 1954 in Abilene at Hardin-Simmons University. Charlie Hall, the editor of the Breckenridge American during that era,

said, “It is said that the 1954 season was the greatest football season in the history of the Buckaroos, because the going was so hard all the way in view of quality met.”

Wait to you read about the 1958 and 1959 teams. Hold onto your hat. Thanks to Jerry Cramer and the use of his scrapbook on the 1954 season and those players who dropped me an email and gave me incite into some of the games that season. Thanks fellows. I appreciate the audience and hope I did it justice.

Jean Hayworth can be contacted at: news@breckenridgeamerican.com or at the B.A. offices at 114 E. Elm St.