Sport: High-Power High Schools

The gym jiggled with the joy of 1,800 students. Ringleaders wheeled up a great brass bell and banged away with demoniac glee. The whole town (pop. 59,500) welcomed the clangor. The Eagles of Abilene High School were whooping it up for their game with Big Spring, and when Texas high schools play football, their home towns take a holiday.

In Abilene last week enthusiasm ran so high that the Eagles played as if they didn’t dare lose. They never stopped running until they had whipped Big Spring 32 to 0. With impressive ease they put themselves on top of the toughest schoolboy football league in the U.S.; their string of 44 straight victories makes them the Oklahoma of high schools.

Promises for Players. In 47 other states last week autumn vibrated with high school cheers that almost matched the Abilene excitement—but not quite. When fiercely partisan Texans turn out to root for the lads next door, they swell with an extra pride: they know that most of those players will always play for Texas. Tempted though they may be by the green-backed promises of out-of-state scouts, stars from Texas’ 900 league-organized high school teams make a habit of playing their college football at home. (Last season all eleven Abilene lettermen who earned football scholarships went to Texas colleges.) From the muscle foundry at Texas A. & M. to the modest athletic plant at Hardin-Simmons, Texas has more than enough football factories to find a place for its high school talents.

Outside the boundaries of the Lone Star Republic, where high schools and colleges alike recognize the rest of the Union, teen-age football players know no such state loyalty. Raw material from the coal mines of western Pennsylvania is as likely to turn up in Miami or Maryland as it is to be discovered at Pitt. Massillon, Ohio, a perennial producer of champions, sends its graduates all over the Big Ten. West Point’s bird dogs have always found fine hunting on the playing fields of Florida; Michigan State Coach Duffy Daugherty collects some of his burliest backs in the mill towns of Massachusetts.

Pushups v. Perfection. In Texas high schools, college-style coaches are wooed with high pay and flashy gifts. In 1954 Abilene town boosters went out in the open market to buy their youngsters a coach who could train winners. For a $10,100 salary (the U.S. average for high school coaches: $6,500), plus handsome bonuses and a high-priced side job as a TV football commentator, the Eagles got Charles Hinton Moser Jr., 39, a solid Missourian who played center for the University of Missouri and ripped up opposing lines in the late 1930s. A deep-voiced, ingratiating joiner, Coach Moser shook hands, made friends, and built a team whose drawing power earned the money for a brand-new $50,000 field house. After a winning season his first year on the job, Chuck was presented with a new Buick by members of the Eagles’ Boosters Club. In ’55 and ’56 his Buick was still in good shape; so he got a $3,000 bonus while his three assistants divided $3,000 more among themselves.

Abilene’s youngsters, like others all over Texas, are graduates of well-organized “Pee Wee” (fifth and sixth grade) football leagues. Having already learned to take their lumps, they get from Chuck a generous dollop of the kind of coaching they will get even more intensively after they earn college athletic scholarships. Moser’s assistant coaches, managers and quarterbacks get a mimeographed sheet of instructions before each practice session. There are movies of every game to be studied. To soothe the pains of workouts there are whirlpool baths and other expensive paraphernalia in the Abilene field house. But there is never a word to soften the painful urge for perfection. Even after they whipped one big opponent this season, Coach Moser’s Eagles were not allowed to forget the 20 points that had been scored against them. “You played a great game,” Moser told his team, “but you’ll all have to do 20 pushups after practice every day next week.” After they beat Big Spring, Moser let his boys off easy. “You did a good job tonight,” he said. “Stay out until midnight.”