Teddy Roosevelt was re-elected President of the United States on November 8, 1904. A week later, Denison finally got its first victory ever against the Sherman Bearcats on the football field. The Yellow Jackets held on for an 11-5 win, and the Dallas Morning News wrote about the game.
The official working the game was a Roo. There's always a Roo involved.
Dave Campbell's Texas Football calls the Sherman-Denison Battle of the Ax the "granddaddy of them all". The rivalry is the oldest continually played matchup in the state of Texas. That shouldn't be surprising for those familiar with Grayson County history.
There's debate about the origin of the series. Some peg the first game in 1901. Others claim the first game in 1900, with records lost in a fire. Still others trace the first unofficial match-ups to the 1890s. That's the way it goes for institutions with a lot of history. It gets murky.
But what we can definitively say is that Sherman and Denison have been playing a LONG time, and that a Roo is usually involved.
There are strong historical ties between AC and both towns. Roo coaches can be found throughout the decades on both squads, and numerous Bearcats and Yellow Jackets have made the jump to AC as players.
Verde Dickey, a standout under Pete Cawthon, took over the reins at Sherman and led the Bearcats to one of their best seasons ever in 1932. After defeating Denison 19-6 to win a district title, Dickey and his Sherman team advanced all the way to the state quarterfinals. At the brand new Amon Carter stadium in Fort Worth, they fell to the Masonic Home Orphans 20-0.
Never heard of the Mighty Mites of Masonic Home? Let Jim Dent fill you in.
Never heard of Verde Dickey? Maybe you should spend more time at the AC weight room.
Congratulations to Coach Charlie Means and the Denison Yellow Jackets, who got the best of Sherman last week in the 119th edition of the Battle of the Ax.
Coach Means is a Roo. See? There's always a Roo involved.
The 1927 TCU Horned Frogs played 5 teams in the month of October.
Texas @ DKR Memorial in Austin.
Texas Tech in Fort Worth.
Austin College in Fort Worth.
Texas A&M in Fort Worth.
Baylor @ The Cotton Palace in Waco.
TCU didn’t lose a single one.
Against AC, the Horned Frogs jumped out to a commanding 20-0 lead just before the half. But after that it was all Roos. With offensive lineman Virgil Ballard leading the way, Pete Cawthon’s bunch began to chip away at the Horned Frog lead. By the end of the game, Austin College was down only 20-13. Their final drive came up just short. TCU survived. Virgil Ballard was inducted into the AC Hall of Honor in 1965.
The 13 points by the Roos that day were impressive. The Longhorns, Red Raiders, Aggies, and Bears combined for only 6.
Ballard was a freshman on the 1924 Roo team that upset Baylor at the Cotton Palace in Waco. Baylor would defeat Texas A&M on the same field the following week, and roll to a SWC championship. By 1950, the Bears had outgrown the Cotton Palace and needed a new home. That year was the first for Floyd Casey stadium. The Aggies came calling again in 1950 in the first edition of the Battle of the Brazos at Floyd Casey. It was the largest crowd ever to see a Baylor game, and the Bears won 27-20. The referee for that contest was Virgil Ballard.
Virgil Ballard and I have two things in common. We are both Roos, and we both learned to speak Spanish in Sherman. Ballard was a Spanish major at AC, and after a career as a football coach and official in North Texas (including at Texas Tech with Cawthon), he moved his family south after WW2 to the Valley. There, with his language skills, public service, and love of sport, Ballard became an intimate part of the community on the Texas-Mexico border.
For the better part of two decades, Ballard refereed high school football in the Valley. One of those games was an October 1, 1954 contest between the Yellow Jackets of Edcouch-Elsa and the Rattlers of Rio Grande City. His days as an official and school administrator were put on hold after he was elected Mayor of Mission, TX in the 1960s. After his passing, Ballard Street in Weslaco, TX was named in his honor.
Carlos Longoria was raised in Hidalgo in the 1980s, just a few miles north of the Rio Grande. When it came time to choose a college, he settled on a Texas school 555 miles away just a few miles south of the Red. How far was that Texas drive? An additional 555 miles of driving would have put Carlos in Columbus, Nebraska…. the home town of Frank Tooley.
Carlos was a starter in the secondary of the 1988 TIAA Champion Kangaroos, where he toiled alongside fellow defensive redshirts such Tooley, Bill Didlake, and Chris Medlin. The 1988 squad went 9-1 in conference, and the defense limited the opposition to 2 or fewer TDs in all 9 wins. They won the TIAA Conference title with a dramatic win on the road against Tarleton State, and lost in the playoffs to eventual NAIA D2 national champion Westminster College (PA). 4 members of the 1988 Roo defense are in the AC Hall of Honor.
After graduation, Carlos became Coach Longoria. For over two decades, he has coached football in the Valley. “Los” got his start at Raymondville HS, where he led the Bearkats to a 10-2 record and regional appearance in the 2000 Texas HS playoffs. When that Raymondville season came to an end just after Thanksgiving day, they were the only team south of Corpus still playing. Longoria came in 2nd place in McAllen Monitor voting for Valley coach of the year.
A small group of Roos has headed down to the Valley every year since the 1990s to support Coach Longoria and to cheer his teams. In addition to Tooley, Didlake, and Medlin, folks frequently making the trip have included Wayne Whitmire, John Talley, Sridhar Yaratha, Kevin Pittman, and me. We were there on the sidelines for the Raymondville-Hidalgo game during the playoff season of 2000, and have continued to head south as Carlos has moved to other schools such as Pharr, Rio Grande City, La Joya, and Ballard’s home of Mission, TX.
We were there in 2013, when his playoff bound Rio Grande City Rattlers took on Edcouch-Elsa……the very same matchup refereed by Roo Virgil Ballard over 60 years ago. Coach Longoria’s son Christian was a kick returner, and took it all the way back for a score. He crossed the goal line right in front of the Roo contingent. I think ol’ Virgil would have smiled. See video in the comments.
This weekend a group of us head back again (thanks Dianne!) Carlos is now coaching at Pharr San Juan Alamo (PSJA), just a short drive from Virgil Ballard St. in Weslaco. They’ll be taking on Edinburg-North, and we’ll be on the sidelines as usual, a bunch of Kangaroos en El Valle apoyando nuestro amigo como siempre. Football in Texas knows no linguistic or cultural boundary. Just ask Coach Ballard and Coach Longoria. Vayan Canguros.
The Great Depression took a toll on both Austin College & Trinity University. AC was barely able to scrape by thanks to some huge sacrifices and very creative financing. Trinity, located in struggling Waxahachie, fared much worse. To combat the crisis, the two Presbyterian Synods of Texas which governed Austin College & Trinity began to meet in 1941. Their proposed solution was a cost-saving merger of the two schools. While representatives of Trinity were enthusiastic about a merger, the idea created a huge amount of controversy and debate at AC. At the end of the year, the joint committee of the two Synods agreed to meet in order to move forward and make it official. They chose a date:
December 9, 1941
Immigration from Europe fueled America’s westward expansion, and Protestant denominations moved swiftly behind in order to win over new converts. The speed of the Presbyterian church, however, was more anemic than its Methodist, Lutheran, and Baptist cousins. Reaching the masses meant tent revivals and little concern about credentials, and the Presbyterian church was just too traditionalist, hierarchical, and devoted to the education and status of church elders (Presbyterian means “elder”) to keep up.
In the 19th century, a frustrated and more zealous group of Presbyterians broke with the church to form a splinter denomination, the “Cumberland” Presbyterians. The divisions between the Traditionalists and the Cumberlands were so strong that the latter felt the need to establish a Cumberland institution of higher education to combat the traditionalist school of Austin College in Huntsville. In 1869, Trinity was born in Tehuacana TX, near present day Mexia.
By the turn of the century, the frontier was settled and passions had cooled considerably. Trinity moved to the more vibrant Waxahachie in 1902, and played its first baseball game in Sherman against AC in 1903. The first football game came the following year, in 1904. By 1941, the Presbyterian rivalry was well established.
Trinity traveled to Sherman in 1941 for the annual season-ending Thanksgiving clash against the Kangaroos on the gridiron. 1941 was the inaugural year of Sherman Bearkat stadium, and AC came away with a 20-13 win against the Tigers. A photo of the game shows the Sherman Municipal building in the background, which still stands.
The November 28, 1941 edition of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times reported the game on page six, and mentioned that the contest might be the last meeting between the schools due to a potential merger. Page one was reserved for other news. The empire of Japan was moving into Thailand, and diplomatic efforts between Tokyo and Washington were breaking down.
The growing city of San Antonio had neither a public university nor a private protestant college within its limits, and was eager to facilitate a merged AC/Trinity college in the Alamo City. Trinity was deadset on moving to San Antonio, ideally as part of one merged institution but alternatively via simple relocation if necessary.
Austin College was not so sure. Rationalism dictated that a merged Presbyterian school in a growing urban area was wise, and the idea found support among some. But because AC was already nearing 100 years old and had already called Sherman home for nearly 7 decades, many were unwilling to move for emotional reasons. Some on the Board of Trustees were willing to consider a merger, “but only if it resulted in Trinity being absorbed into the older and stronger Austin College, not vice versa.”
A large contingent of AC alumni also expressed reluctance, and well-known professor George Landolt made his opposition known by noting his unwillingness to toss “all it [AC] has striven for in the past 92 years.” According to historian Donald Everett, those who resisted the merger “evidently had no alternative suggestions for relief of Austin College’s financial difficulties, rather they seemed to depend upon God to work out the practical side of their institution’s salvation.”
In spite of the heated debate, a preliminary vote was taken in the fall of 1941 by the two Synods. The merger was approved. A joint committee agreed to meet in San Antonio on Friday, December 9, 1941 to sign the merger in ink and to officially designate San Antonio as the site of the new Presbyterian school. It was all over but the shouting.
2,400 Americans perished on Wednesday, December 7, 1941 after the Empire of Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor. Nearly half of the 2,400 died when the USS Arizona exploded and sank within minutes. 78 Texans gave up their lives that day; all 78 were aboard the USS Arizona. The global conflict which had begun in the previous decade was now truly global.
For AC, the war changed everything. The December 9th meeting went ahead as planned, but the views of Austin College representatives had transformed overnight. There was concern that “war would negate the possibility of meeting financial requirements of the merger.” The supporters of an Austin College in Sherman, who had seemed to depend emotionally upon a higher power for some sort of salvation, believed that deliverance had arrived. The merger was shelved.
Trinity nevertheless accepted an offer from San Antonio for relocation. After a final commencement in 1942, the entire campus was loaded onto 30 railroad cars and shipped from Waxahachie to Bexar County. The school has since called San Antonio home for 75 years. Back in Sherman, the war did begin to assist AC’s financial health by way of a new relationship with nearby Perrin Air Force base.
The move to San Antonio ended a remarkable era of rivalry during the first half of the twentieth century, when the schools were separated by only 90 miles. After World War 2, Trinity dropped football for three decades. That move, plus the 360 miles separating the schools and a reluctance to compete in the similar conferences, put the rivalry on the back burner for much of the second half of the century. In fact, your humble author was not even aware of the significance of the Trinity rivalry during his Sherman days in the early 1990s.
But history reveals. From AC’s first win over Trinity in 1908 (another tale for another day) until the near merger in 1941, the Roos & the Tigers meet 33 times on the football field. The series record? 14-14-5. AC travels to San Antonio this Saturday to face Trinity in SAA Conference action. I plan to be there with my daughter. Hope to see you there.
Like AC-Trinity, the UT-A&M clash on Thanksgiving day is no more. Some of us hope it returns one day. One of the many reasons for the decline of the rivalry is the aftermath of the 1999 bonfire tragedy, and the University of Texas’s amazingly positive reaction to it. The UT student body poured out sympathy, the student body president praised A&M as a “family” in a way UT was not, and the Longhorn band’s performance of Amazing Grace & Taps at Kyle Field moved Aggies to tears.
The Roos & the Tigers are rivals. But it feels a lot like a sibling rivalry. At the end of the day, both institutions are Texan, both are Presbyterian-affiliated, both want the other D3 school to have its well-deserved place in the Texas sun. And if it were not for some decision made in Tokyo long ago, we might all be fellow alumni. If tragedy were to ever hit Trinity, you can bet that the Roos would honor the Tigers much like the Horns did in Aggieland back in 1999.
Still, it would be nice to see a win and hear the boys sing on the field. 😉 Go Roos! Beat Trinity.
Nobody could stop Jerry Bishop and Dick Hill on a clear November day back in 1963. The Kangaroos met East Central Oklahoma at Louis Calder Stadium for the last game of the season. The All-American QB Bishop and his WR Hill went to the air early and often all game long. No matter the route, the football refused to hit the ground.
Hill “caught them behind him, diving, off his shoetops, over his head, one handed twice (left and right), and accidentally.” And none of these catches were the highlight. Late in the game, Bishop threw to another receiver, but the ball was tipped. “Hill had just made his cut, and was not watching for the pass, when the ball, falling short of Robertson, hit Hill and wedged in the crook of his elbow. ‘I didn’t know the ball was coming. I didn’t know I had caught it, and the folks in the stands thought it was just a great one-handed catch,’ Hill laughed years later.
By game’s end, Bishop had thrown for 495 yards. Hill’s 17 catches accounted for 266 of those 495 yards. Both were NAIA single game yardage records (since surpassed) for a quarterback and receiver. Both were AC football records as of 1996, and likely remain records today.
1963 was a year when NAIA records were falling left and right, and newspapers across the country reported the record breaking pace later in the month. Bishop and Hill were included on the wire service piece. The Ogden (UT) Standard-Examiner decided to run with the article on Page 14 of a special, November 22, 1963 late edition. I doubt it was read, as few probably made it past Page 1.
Wayne Whitmire reminded me that intelligence files on the JFK assassination were being released this week, and whether I might dig into the files to find some secret Roo Tale lying within. Ironically, the files are being released today because of legislation provoked by Oliver Stone’s movie “JFK”, which was released when we both were at AC. Has it been 25 years already?
Maybe Abraham Zapruder’s movie camera was purchased in Denison. Maybe Lee Harvey Oswald played Kangaroo badminton in 1959. Maybe the grassy knoll was seeded with Anderson Clayton mayonnaise fertilizer. Or something equally exciting perhaps. :)
But that’s not really me. When it comes to the events after that sad day, I struggle with interest. This is due to two irreconcilable facts:
(1) I’m not going to go digging into the files.
(2) I find the credibility of both those who create the files and those who dig into the files suspect.
There’s no good way to square that circle. So we’ll just have to leave it at that. Besides, I have a bias against conspiracy theories. On this topic I am by default with Costner’s speech to Susan Sarandon in Bull Durham. Y’all will have to read the files and make your case. Even though all of your credibility is suspect. ;)
But I won’t pass up the opportunity to link that day in history to some mini Roo Tale. For this y'all can credit (or blame) Wayne.
Now if the files reveal that Trinity is involved in some nefarious way, I am totaling buying that. See y’all at Barbaro’s and the game on Saturday 11/4, if you are headed that way. I've got a little something written for the occasion.
My name is Marc Parrish. I’m a member of the Austin College Athletics “A” Board. I wrote earlier about Austin College’s (Sherman, TX) online celebration of Otis Amy and the 1988 Austin College Kangaroo football team. The team won a conference championship, and lost to the NAIA national champions in the playoffs. Otis ended the season with 280 career receptions, successfully owning the NAIA career record but coming up short in his attempt to match your 301 at Mississippi Valley State. It was an exciting year for all of us in 1988.
We are calling it the “12 Days of Roo Football Christmas”. We are going through the 11 game season over the first 11 days, followed by a final Day on December 12th………….the anniversary of Austin College’s NAIA championship in 1981.
I’ve sent you links below for the “Pregame” and first two days. I’ll continue to send you links as we move through the season.
Otis has already begun to write me, as have Austin College coaches and players and players from the national champion opposition. I’ve also mentioned my attempts to ask Jerry Rice, the greatest receiver in football history, to offer a few words. It would mean the world to Otis Amy personally, and Austin College fans in particular, if you were to acknowledge his tremendous career. It is absolutely true that after the 1988 season, you were the #1 collegiate receptions leader and Otis was #2. Day #1 above includes a newspaper article that mentions Amy’s chase for Jerry Rice’s collegiate record of 301 catches.
Otis’s story reminds me a bit of yours. He was from a small town in the south, and played for a small college. He participated in the NFL Combine and Draft day, but was frequently undervalued because of biases, especially the bias against small colleges. In spite of an impressive NFL Combine performance and comments from Cowboys VPs & GMs that he might be drafted in later rounds, in the end he went undrafted. Free agency was unsuccessful as well.
Otis is today a public educator and minister. We all celebrate his years at AC, and we’ll be celebrating him and the team over these 12 days. And if you were to join us with your thoughts, however brief, well, all of us (Otis included) would be ecstatic.
As we move through the 1988 season over the “12 Days”, I’m including Jerry Rice highlights of the 1988 San Francisco season. Day #1 included your 77-yard game winning TD against the Giants. Other days will include other Rice highlights. Day #12 will conclude with the 1989 Super Bowl victory over Cincinnati and “the drive” where you hauled in three pivotal catches.
I’ll be sending more “Days” to you as they are written. Thank you for considering this request to write, and I hope you enjoy the read.
