Timpson High School Football History
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- TIMPSON HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL HISTORY 1922 Team Picture F.M. Crump- FB-Class of 46 Mike Green-Class of 69 Scored 43 points in one game All-State Center First THS All-State Player Joe Mack Johnson-Class of 76 Eric Yarbrough-Class of 94 All-State 1st Team Running Back All-State 2nd Team Quarterback-1992 All-State 3rd Team Quaterback-1993 Michael Osby-Class of 94 WR/KR 2nd team All-State Patrick Earl-Class of 05 All-State RB Twice All-State Players Not Pictured Chris Thacker-Class of 95 Bo Brown-Class of 78 La Justin Yarbrough-Class of 04 3rd Team All-American Punter-1976 3rd Team All-State LB 1st Team All-State Punter-1976 Dennis Lilly-Class of 1976 Twice All-State LB Marlon Bryant-Class of 1995 Hon. Men. All-State-DB Lorzeno Young-Class of 2013 3rd Team All-State DB Demetris Mosley-Class of 1994 3rd Team All-State Date of Printing- TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Acknowledgements. -------------------------------4 2. Introductions. ---------------------------------------5 2. History by Year ---------------------- ---------------6 3. All-State Players. -----------------------------------65 4. All-Time Selects…………………………………………72 5. List of College Players.----------------------------74 6. Sports Writer.---------------------------------------85 7. History in Spreadsheet Form by Year. -------86 Scores Coaches Comments by players Condensed Articles Players 8. Selected Newspaper Articles…………………….182 9. Band Spreadsheets………………………………….220 PLEASE EMAIL ANY FOOTBALL STORIES OR COMMENTS TO [email protected] SO WE CAN INCLUDE THEM IN THE NEXT EDITION. WE WANT TO HEAR YOUR MEMORIES OF ANYTHING ABOUT TIMPSON FOOTBALL. THANKS. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In putting together these acknowledgements, we first apologize to anyone or organizations we may have inadvertently omitted. We are sure there are a lot acknowledgements omitted as our minds are not quite as nimble as when we were running down the halls and football field at Timpson High School. These acknowledgements are not in any particular order of importance. It just that someone has to be listed as first: Timpson Area Genealogical and Historical Society (TAGHS)-for providing most of the newspaper articles. David Pike-From the Class of 1958 who did all the searching on computer files at the TAGHS office for newspaper files and provided a sounding board when needed. Without David this history could not have been completed. Note that David passed away in 2017. Yearbook Staffs-Thanks to all the yearbook staffs throughout the years for putting together yearbooks with football player’s names, scores, honors, etc. Without this information, it would have been very difficult to list the names and the honors the players received on the field. People-Who sent their football stories and comments to us for this book. Most of these comments and stories could never be found in old newspapers. They had to come from people’s memory which might not always be quite correct, but were from the heart. Coaches and Teachers-What more can be said about them other then inspiring all of us that attended THS that dreams and goals can be reached on the field, in the classrooms and life. Thank- you. Joe Lee Smith-Mr. Smith graduated from White Oak in the 1950s and has written two books on the White Oak football teams. He is also a collector of scores of football games in East Texas. He does the record keeping manually and not on computer. He provided Ralph Corry with all the scores of the THS football games originally. Thank-you Joe Smith. INTRODUCTIONS Periodically a short history of football at Timpson High School has been written by various people or an account written by someone in the paper. This history will try to combine any known history with additional information gained through old newspapers, yearbooks and personal accounts. An integral part of this paper is the spreadsheet accompanying this paper that list most of the scores, players and things of interest since 1920. This history will cover each decade rather than by coach. As more information is supplied on the decade, then this information will be added to this history and reprinted. It should be noted that the period from 1970-2016 is not covered very well. This is due to two reasons: TAGHS at this time does not have newspaper articles covering this period and also time constraints on the author’s part. We have been working and putting together this history for over than seven years. We want to get several copies of the history out now and then get more comments from people. We will try to update this book every couple of years. 1920s-The Beginnings The following is an article written by Clinton McClellan and Elvis Perry in 1966. It seems as Mr. McClellan wrote the article with help from Mr. Perry: “In the fall of 1920 a Mr. Crimm from Henderson, Texas was elected Superintendent of the Timpson School System. He organized and coached the first team. I was only 14 years old at the time, and I witnessed the first game on campus. I had two cousins that were on the first team, Elvis Perry and John T. Ramsey. Did not have uniforms, played in the clothes they wore to school. The following lineup played the whole game.” Left End Willie Witcher Left Tackle Ben Sapp Left Guard Elvis Perry Center Lovis Todd Right Guard John T. Ramsey Right Tackle Wilber Compton Right End Oran Wilson Quarter Back Ben Law Left Halfback Jack Hartsfield Right Halfback Clinton Youngblood Fullback Norris Todd Substitutes John Richard Clement ? Whitender Only two players on the team had ever seen a football game, Ben Law and Wilber Compton. Three games were played that first year. Henderson 6 Longview 14 Henderson 7 Timpson 0 Timpson 0 Timpson 0 The following is an account of that first season by Elvis Perry. The first game we played in overalls and k….. as our uniforms had not come in. In the first game I had the breath knocked out of me three times. After the game the 200 pound guard I played against said “this is the first game what I never got a tackle. You had those long arms and legs around me so that I couldn’t move.” In the Longview game Jack Hartsfield started around the right end. When he saw he couldn’t go, he reversed his field and started around left end, but couldn’t make it, so he started running in the backfield. Must have run fifty yards. Sometimes toward one goal and sometimes toward the other. Both sides were trying to tackle him. He finally ended up with only about a one yard gain. Longview couldn’t run on us, they beat us with a trick play, a fake pass, halfback took the ball and ran for the score. Other touchdown was made with a pass. In the last quarter John T. Ramsey was moved to fullback, and we drove to the two yard line-and fumbled. That was the closest we came to scoring.” First Game The following is just purely conjecture on the author’s part about the first game. The game was either against Henderson or Longview. Most likely it was against Henderson due to the fact Timpson played them twice the first year. Whether it was at Timpson or Henderson is unknown. Likely one game was at home and one game was away. However one can only imagine on a bright fall weekday afternoon, several Model- Ts arriving at the Timpson’s school from Henderson and the boys getting out of the cars with one or two adults. These opposing players would have worn their uniforms to the game since there was not a field house that we know of at this time to change into their “uniforms”. One would have to think that some uniforms were overalls with maybe some extra cotton padding. If they had helmets they would have been made of leather without any face pieces and it is doubtful the helmets had chinstraps. Football Shoes???? One would have to think that there were none. Maybe the shoes the players wore to school if they even wore shoes were the ones they wore for the game. Were all the shirts/jerseys the same color? Again it is purely left to our imagination. At this time this is just all unknown. We do know that the Timpson team played in what they wore to school that day since the team’s uniforms had not arrived yet. Next one would have to imagine the football field. Most likely it was a flat piece of land beside the school. Maybe the first field is where the present field is today. Someone years later stated that it was Dan Bussey’s pasture next to the school with fenceposts for goalposts. The field was probably a mixture of dirt and gravel with a few grass burs thrown in to make it interesting. The yard lines and sidelines were marked maybe with sticks to line the field for the first game. The game itself was likely played on a weekday afternoon. Who refereed the contest is another question. It could have been the opposing coach. It could have been someone that had seen a football game at one time. One can only imagine the flag that was used and the whistle if one was available…..unfortunately all has faded into history except the article written by Elvis Perry and Clinton McClellan in the 1960s. 1920s Not much more is known of the 1920s except from several pictures and the names of the players that have been obtained from several newspaper articles. It appears the team struggled in the beginning but at least nine players went on to play college football.