Page last updated: January 8, 2007

    MAIN INDEX      SPORTS INDEX     1914

   The first time De Leon challenged for any kind of championship in football, the kickoff was delayed so that the fans would not have to miss the matinee performance of a tent show.  The last time De Leon challenged for a State Championship, one of the worst blast of sleet and freezing temperatures to hit Texas in years could not delay the game.  Football has become so much a part of De Leon that it is hard to realize that high school football had been played in Texas for over twenty years before De Leon field it’s first team.

    Dallas is credited with the introduction of football in Texas with the organization of a town team in the latter part of the 1880s.  In 1893 the University of Texas began playing football, winning two games from the Dallas Foot Ball Club.   The next year Texas A&M began it’s program while Galveston Ball High School fielded what is considered the first high school team in Texas.  Ball’s team was composed of both students and faculty of the school as well as students from the University of Texas Medical School.

     By the turn of the century, Dallas High, Galveston Ball and Houston Sam Houston were fielding teams.  In the smaller communities only a few schools added the game, though many had basketball, baseball and track and field.

     Comanche, which fielded a team as early as 1900, became a powerhouse in north Texas in those early years.  By 1904 Rising Star, Cisco and Brownwood fielded teams.  In 1905 Rising Star is known to have played Gorman, Carbon and Cross Plains.

     De Leon must have had a town team during those same years.  When interviewing Dean Rippetoe, a player on the 1914 De Leon team, he indicated that while he did not know when football began in De Leon, the first team to compete in the University Interscholastic League was the 1914 team.  In subsequent discussions with Byron Short about the first football team, he indicated that football had been played before De Leon entered the U.I.L.

    The only documentation of the “town teams” that has been located appeared in a 1935 De Leon Free Press article about a party held at the home of one time De Leon coach Lyman E. Forrest.  The article said that attending were “members of the football squad of 1905.”  One of the squad remembered that in a game that year, Comanche beat De Lon 4-0 with touchdowns counting two points.  The article went on to say that “its purpose was to report on a party not on a football game played three decades earlier.”  That is now our loss.

    In 1913, the University Interscholastic League set up competition in football, establishing the basic rules of the game, eligibility requirements and a playoff system.

    The simplicity of the eligibility rules contrast markedly with those of today.  To qualify, a player had to be twenty years of age or younger; must have had a three month attendance record in the school he was representing; had to be passing in three classroom courses ; and be an amateur.  But then as now, some schools just could not follow the rules.

     At the end of the season, invitations were sent to five teams to compete in the playoffs.  Comanche, Fort Worth and Amarillo received bids to represent the northern half of the state.  Houston and Corpus Christi represented the southern half of the state.  Before the playoffs got underway, it was discovered that Fort Worth had a player who had played on a college team for two years.  Although he was disqualified, Fort Worth was allowed to continue play.

    In the southern region, Houston defeated Corpus Christi to advance to the the state championship game.  Fort Worth rolled to victories over Amarillo and Comanche before the U.I.L. again discovered an ineligible player on the Fort Worth team.  Comanche was then selected to advance to the state championship game against Houston.

     That first state championship was played on December 13, 19123 at Clark Field, then the football stadium of the University of Texas.  Houston won the game 20-0.

    Disgusted with the continuing problems of ineligible players, the U.I.L. abandoned the football state championship playoffs and did not sponsor playoffs again until 1920.  Officially, the U.IlL. does not list a state champion prior to 1920.

     Even though the U.I.L. ended it’s involvement in a state championship playoff, the U.I.L. continued to sponsor football competition in the schools.  The following year, 1914, De Leon High School competed in the U.I.L. in football for the first time.