1937 Softball Champions

Top Row: Dorothy “Dot” Shaver, Vada Mull, Coach Stanley “Tiny” Morris, Ila Jean Carlysle, Morene Mull.

Middle Row:  Charlene Smith, Wyna Ruth Morris, Earline Morris, Zelda Buchan.


Front Row: Romalee Wright, Willie Faye Ash, Maurine Moore.




       This group of De Leon area girls accepted the challenge of what was considered to be the best girls softball team in the Texas in 1937 to compete in the state softball tournament Galveston in August 1937.  They placed third in the tournament.

      Galveston dominated southeast Texas and issued a challenge to any team to come to Galveston for the tournament.  The De Leon team did not play in a league but competed well against area teams throughout the oil belt and down toward Waco and coach Stanley “Tiny” Morris accepted that challenge.

       It was double elimination tournament and De Leon lost one game either in the semi-finals or finals by a 1-0 score.  The consolation game took place on August 15, 1937 with De Leon winning 6-1.  Pitcher Willie Faye Ash allowed only two or three hits in the game.

      “Tiny” Morris was probably the largest player ever on the Bearcat football team, weighing about 400 pounds his senior year.

      The team leased one of the school’s older school buses and Burl Terry agreed to drive the bus to Galveston.  It is thought that Sid Farrow accompanied the girls and did the cooking.  Each girl had to come up with $16.00 to help cover expenses and for several families that had more than one daughter playing it amounted to big money.  The girls took groceries and someone gave them some fryers which rode in a coop on top of the bus (a reserved seat to become a meal on Galveston’s beach).  The team stayed in a two story building near the beach.   They also made their ball suites.  The only thing that seemed to dominate the field more than Willie Faye Ash’s pitching were the mosquitoes which were thick in the park and grass.


       Compiled from article in the Free Press and Bill Livingston’s Dismal 30s in De Leon’s Monitor on June 30, 1999 and a response by Vada Mull Lewis in December 2, 1999 issue.