Friday, April 26, 2024
Hood County News
LOOKING BACK IN SPORTS
Looking Back in Sports is a column that highlights articles retrieved from local newspaper archives.
85 YEARS AGO
DECEMBER 1938
In the Thursday, Dec. 1, 1938 edition of the Hood County Tablet, an article reported that the Granbury High School Pirates had “closed a successful football season by defeating the Tolar Rattlers 18-7,” on a Wednesday afternoon in Tolar.
“The game was considered one of the most important on their schedule although it was not a conference game,” the article continued. “Several of the Pirates hung up their suits for the last time.”
The article also noted that the GHS players “had to play hard football to stem off Tolar’s late rally, but the boys had been properly keyed to this by one of the best coaches Granbury has had the privilege of having in recent years.”
Despite that high praise for the GHS coach, the article failed to mention him by name.
The article also was not particularly keen on giving names of the first names of key players, either, as in this concluding sentence: “All of Tolar’s squad played a fine game with Blanton and Allen outstanding.”
79 YEARS AGO
DECEMBER 1944
The Hood County Tablet — at least in the mid-1940s — carried sports columns written by one of the nation’s most legendary syndicated sports writers, Grantland Rice. In Rice’s “Sportlight” column, published in the Thursday, Dec. 21, 1944 edition of the Tablet, Rice wrote:
“The Cotton Bowl at Dallas gets a championship contender in Oklahoma A&M with one of the star backs of the year in triple-threat Bob Fenimore. T.C.U. has been spotty, but good on occasions.”
Rice had also noted in the column that “The top bowl game, as it should be, is the Rose Bowl affair between Southern California and Tennessee — both tied but unbeaten — with prospects of a 93,000 or more crowd.”
76 YEARS AGO
DECEMBER 1947
In a brief, but comical, note from a column titled “This and That” by Norma Crawford in the Thursday, Dec. 4, 1947 edition of the Hood County News-Tablet, someone named C.O. Jarrard was quoted as saying that “the next time he goes to a game like the TCU-SMU battle, he is going to wear a helmet. It seems enthusiastic fans beat him over the head.”
Seems that some college football fans may not have changed a whole lot in the last 75 years.
70 YEARS AGO
DECEMBER 1953
The Thursday, Dec. 17, 1953 edition of the Hood County News-Tablet reported the results of the Granbury High School girls and boys basketball teams from a 22-team tournament in Decatur. The Lady Pirates won the tournament — their second consecutive tournament crown that season. The GHS boys brought home the consolation trophy.
Among the GHS girl players mentioned was Shirley Rains, who was the winner of the best all-around player trophy as well as taking a spot on the all-tournament team. Also, for the Lady Pirates, teammate Leta Nell Thomason was the high scorer among the girls in the tournament with 144 points in four games, for an average of 36 points.
For the GHS boys, Theron Don Tankersley was named to the boys all-tournament team after being the high scorer for the Pirates, and recording “one of the best averages for the boys in the tournament,” the article stated.
