Posted by Dan Jensen
Our years of glory began in 1954 and did not end until 19 straight district championships later. What was our basketball program like before that? Not so sparkling but part of the reason is that Coach Carlisle was drafted into the military before he could really get one established.
I want to share some tidbits from my dusty old book, realizing that so many of you have no clue or memory about those years. Count this as an extra credit history lesson.
I don't have anything on the first year of the Clear Creek consolidation, the school term of 1948-49. I was a lot more interested in the League City eighth graders than what was going on across the creek that year.
The season ending in 1950 was Coach Carlisle's first after a great football and basketball career at Southwest Texas, under outstanding Coach Milton Jowers. He arrived in Webster at age 21 and unmarried, leaving a year of football eligibility at the San Marcos college. Webster must have had quite an appeal.
The 1950 record was 18-10 and Alex Dolney, an all-state football end on a team that finished a game behind Alvin for the district championship, was the best basketball player too. He played center and had an unique underhanded shot that I have not seen before or since. He poured in nine points a game with a high of 25 as our leading scorer, but remember team scores were quite low then. We played Cedar Bayou, a school that later joined the Baytown school district, three times. Two of those were losses by 23-14 and 18-15.
We beat Missouri City, now a part of the vast Fort Bend school system, 27-15. Anyone remember Al Jochec, a good player from that team? We pronounced his name, "Jockey." He later married our Alwyn Timmins and I was a friend of his brother Glenn at Sam Houston State, where the led the Lone Star Conference in scoring his senior year. Some of our players other than Dolney, were Ronnie Cox, J. D. and Willie Cucco, Frankie Kagawa and Louis Balderas.
We were 15-14 the next year and 7-5 when Coach left for the Army on a 33-29 loss to Alvin after earlier losing a one point game to his brother Paul's Beaumont French team. Cox, Balderas and Kagawa were joined by Ralph Smith, Kennith Dismukes, Joe Barba and George Lugo on this team. The one who led the squad this year with a nine point average was senior Ronnie Cox. He hit a hot streak and scored 15, 12, 16, 14 and 11 points in one stretch.
In 1952, we had a losing record, 8-12. This was a dreary Elbert Pickell year. He had been a star football and basketball player for the Arkansas Razorbacks but just didn't connect with our players in either sport. He was probably younger then than all of us are now but he seemed quite old to us. Guess what the average was for leading scorer Ralph Smith? How did you know it was nine points? Others were Dismukes, Balderas, Barba, Keith Mathis, Bobby Galloway and Arthur Landriault. We may have had a winning record that season but Mathis got sick in midseason and missed most of the rest of the year. He had been all-tournament in the Webster tournament.
Coach came marching home in time for the 1953 season and we were 14-8 for the season and 4-4 in district play. Sophomore Boonie Wilkening's nine point average was good for only third this year as Arthur Landriault had 11 and Kennith Dismukes 10. Dismukes and Galloway were the only seniors but juniors Landriault, Barba, Billy Coleman and sophomore Wilkening were getting primed, along with B teamer Joddie Witte, to go on a 28 game rampage to start the next season and mark the beginning of our years of glory.
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