The Sugar Land Gators bull-dozed Barbers Hill in a District 22-B victory 60 years ago. Kenneth Hall provided much of the Gators' offensive heroics. George Salmon (not Almond) scored a touchdown on a 20-yard end-around play. Mickey Kachinski, a sophomore, was a defensive stalwart for the Gators.
As you can see from the newspaper clipping, the game was played in Mont Belview, which is on the east side of Houston, about half-way to Baytown. The article says about 1,000 fans sat in chilly weather to watch the game. I found the following clipping from The Texas Coaster among T. C. Rozelle's archives. It's actually the Richmond/ Rosenberg paper's gossip column for Sugar Land. It appears to be Ida Lee Krachala's first column.
Ida mentions football related items twice. The first says Gloria Ross (Hall) was crowned Sugar Land's homecoming queen at last week's game against Hardin.
The next item says the Quarterback Club chartered buses for Gator fans to make the long trip to the game in Mont Belview.
Ida mentions Deer Park is the next (and last) game of the regular season. There was a big build up to the last game. Deer Park was a relatively large school -- their student enrollment was already in the Class A category. (They would become a Class A school the following year. The UIL had a rule that a school must have two consecutive years of qualifying enrollment before moving up a classification.) Also, Deer Park was widely recognized as a football powerhouse. More about this next week, but most experts expected Deer Park to roll into Sugar Land & trounce the Gators.
Here's a link to Ida's complete column in case you'd like to read what was happening 60 years ago in Sugar Land. Sorry the scan isn't better.
Ida Lee Krachala's column.
