The '56 Gators won the district title with their win over Van Vleck. The were paired with the Orchard Badgers for the Bi-District Championship. Sugar Land won the coin flip, so they played the game in Sugar Land.
The Gators won in a romp, 53 - 13. In the newspaper account below, you'll see that Orchard was unscored on in district play. Sugar Land wiped out that scoreless streak on the 5th play of the game.
Many thanks to the Dot Hightower for scans of a program from this game. Check out all the ads.
The '51 Gators still had one game left in their regular season. They played Deer Park, who had a very good team. In fact, some of the old players recall the Houston papers thought Deer Park would win easily. You'll see below an article that appeared a few days before the game.
Notice that Deer Park has just a slight edge in points scored & given up over district play. Also notice the last sentence which points out the Deer run from the T formation, while the Gators use the Notre Dame Box. I was surprised that Sugar Land's team was 11 pounds heavier on average.
Who the heck is Raymond Hall? Anyway, the writer picked Sugar Land to win. I guess a few prognosticators who knew a good thing when they saw it, even if they didn't know his name.
As you'll see in the following recap, the Gators won in the last quarter, 21 - 14. I don't know if it's true, but the caption on The Chronicle photo claims to show Kenneth scoring the winning touchdown.
Back in late 2009 I interviewed some old Gator players & recorded their recollections of this big game. Notice J. B. Kachinski's recollection that Sugar Land's coaching staff made an important half-time adjustment that paid off. I have to believe there were few Class B schools in the early '50s which did that sort of thing.
(Update) YouTube had a problem with the earlier version of this video. I've reloaded another copy. It's working properly now.
