FHPL Board Member I can only relate from my memories of early experiences and what I heard and still hear from other folks, young and old. We couldn’t wait to be involved with football in one way or another.
1962/1963—For us boys, it began in 5th Grade, because we were allowed to be part of “spring training” and have our own teams, coached by members of the “A” Team Jackrabbits and by the Assistant Varsity Coaches, led by Coach Randall Canup. And he had been/still was our 5th Grade Math and P. E. Teacher, so we knew (thought) we “had it made!”
5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th Grade football players all together made up the Jr. High Football Program in the spring, and at the end of the two or three weeks of practices, we had intra-squad games. To the best of my memory, 5th and 6th combined for one game, and 7th and 8th for the other. And, I think Alvin “Sonny” Kvapil, Ronald Montgomery, and/or Richard Norwood were head coaches of our 5th and 6th Grades group, with Coaches Canup and C. O. Phillips overseeing things. I don’t remember who won, but I don’t think I was on the winning team!
My main memory of the whole spring training is the first day, when, with a uniform and helmet that did not fit very right, I lined up with all the other boys, 5th through 8th, and we were divided into two lines for tackling practice. Coach Canup explained that when he said, “Down, set, hut,” and clapped his hands, the boy at the head of line one would tackle the boy with the football at the head of line two. My turn came too quickly, and I was facing 8th Grader, Bob Pinson (later to be an All-State Defensive End), and heard Coach’s “down, set, hut, clap,” and ran towards Bob as hard as I could; it was boy against man, and when I surprisingly tackled him pretty nicely, Coach Canup stood over this little 5th Grader, saying, “Way to go, Themer. Hop up and get back into line.” And as I staggered up and adjusted my “turned around crooked” helmet, I heard Bob, saying, “I’m sorry, Don, but if I didn’t go hard, Canup would have ‘run’ me!” (Bob and I had been neighborhood playmates earlier in life!)
Now, before we move on to the photos of the 1962 Forney Football Team and associated auxiliary groups, I want to tell you about one man who made this little guy (me) feel like a “big deal” when I was in 6th Grade, the year boys could play Jr. High Football but could not “letter” and get a football jacket to let “your girlfriend” wear!
We 6th grade boys practiced with the 7th and 8th graders, but we were mainly “cannon fodder” for them to run plays against and to practice tackling and blocking drills on, and to say, “Hey, 6th grader, get me some water or help me get my jersey off.”
One Tuesday night, there was no 7th grade game, only one combined Jr. High game, and we were winning. We 6th Graders knew we would not get to play!
Then, about the middle of the 2nd quarter, we were already winning by a touchdown or two, and Coach Gus Hernandez yelled out, “Hatley, Kelly, Brooks, Themer, Stark, Smith, Hensley, Dobbs, Tucker (I hope I named everybody.)—get into the game for your positions and send those guys over here to the sidelines.” We could not believe our ears. We were going to get to play in an 8th Grade game!
About three plays later, the guys we had sent to the bench came running back onto the field and told us to “get off the field.” We ran back to the sidelines and were immediately cornered by the Head Jr. High Coach, who asked us what the heck we were doing in the game. Quickly walking up came Coach Hernandez, a High School Coach who was just helping out the Jr. High Coach, and said, “I put them in there,” and our Coach said no more but, “O. K. If you told them to go in.”
The same thing happened with five of us again in the 3rd quarter and the other four of us in the 4th quarter. We got to play in an 8th Grade game! We won easily. Girls walked us off the field! We were “big deals.” We had no impact upon the game—neither winning it nor losing it—but we felt like “big shots.”
And, as Coach Hernandez often later said, “Everyone on the team is important!” And, we believed him! ***I have told this story before, so maybe some of you have already heard it!*** And now, on to the year of 1962 in Forney Football!
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