ILS1
10-31-2006, 02:07 PM
By Alan Trubow
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
SAN SABA — It was a ghost's arm. It had to be.
Maybe it was the spirit of Mollie French. Her remains, according to a San Saba history book, still are somewhere beneath Rogan Field. She could have been buried right around the 20-yard line.
Would she help the San Saba Armadillos like that?
After all, the Goldthwaite player never should have tripped. He was going to score an easy touchdown. Nobody was around him. Nobody could have stopped him. Nobody even tried.
But the coordinated, athletic running back playing for the team that went on to win a state championship just fell.
A ghost must've grabbed him.
It could have been Harriett Farr. They never moved her original tombstone from underneath the football field.
It could have been Nathaniel Burden. Records show he was buried there sometime in the 1860s — and still might be.
It certainly was one of the ghosts. It had to be.
At least it's the only explanation given when strange things happen at Rogan Field.
That's because it wasn't always a football field. First, it was a cemetery for members of First United Methodist Church. And when the cemetery was converted to a football stadium in 1935, a few . . . items were left behind.
"Not all of the bodies were moved," said Ronnie Schultz, who has been a San Saba assistant coach for 30 years.
"Whenever a player from the other team would trip out of the blue and help us out, we would just look at each other, laugh and say, 'The Graveyard got them again. The ghosts reached out and helped us one more time.' It was what everybody said when that Goldthwaite player just fell down for no apparent reason."
The history behind Rogan Field always has been there.
The mystique hasn't.
That reached its pinnacle in the early 1990s, when then-coach Brad McCoy, the father of University of Texas quarterback Colt McCoy, tried to use the stadium's history to San Saba's advantage. And most of the community embraced it.
The stadium became known as the Graveyard. It was San Saba. It was an intimidating presence.
That image, however, slowly faded away.
Today, to find evidence of the Graveyard legend in San Saba — a town of 2,600 on U.S. 190 northwest of Lampasas, about 112 miles northwest of Austin — you have to look for it.
"We don't hype it up like they used to," coach Joel Johnson said. "In today's world, you never know who will get offended by anything. It's just not something any of the recent coaches have done or any of the previous coaches. It was just McCoy's thing."
As a result, there are no signs boasting of the Graveyard's mystique. People don't talk about it the way they did in the early 1990s.
The land Rogan Field rests on belonged to Dr. J.D. Rogan, who donated it to First United Methodist Church in 1898 with an understanding that the church would be responsible for the upkeep. According to history books, the church failed to do this, and in 1910, the land was given back to the Rogan family by the courts, which recommended that it should be used as a recreational area in the future.
The future came in 1935, when the family turned it into Rogan Field.
James Harkey remembers moving the tombstones and caskets during the summer of 1934. Harkey, 86, was a freshman football player and a member of the first San Saba team to play at Rogan Field.
"We were glad to move the tombstones," Harkey said. "We were just kids. We didn't really pay any attention to what we were moving. We just wanted to play football. I'm sure there were some (bodies) left there. We were just kids, and we didn't know, care or were interested enough to make sure we moved them all."
Among those left behind was Israel Mathias Harkey, James Harkey's great-great-grandfather, who died in 1896. At the San Saba Cemetery, a tombstone with Harkey's name on it reads: "Here in spirit but remains interred at Rogan Field."
The Armadillos got their new football field, but pieces of the past kept popping up.
Like in 1960, when San Saba players digging water ditches discovered a little history.
"I was just in junior high then, but I remember when I walked by the field to go to the dressing room, I saw that they had dug up a few graves underneath the bleachers, some coffins," San Saba resident Jackie Shahan said. "It didn't really bother me at the time. I really didn't think about it."
In the early 1990s, when San Saba was building a new field house, pieces of old tombstones were unearthed, Brad McCoy said.
And the latest digging discovery was bones in the mid-1990s.
"When I got here, we had to put in a sprinkling system, and we dug up some bones," said Johnny Clawson, who has been the San Saba school district superintendent for the past 12 years. "Could they have been animal bones? Yeah. Could they have been human bones? Yeah.
"Who cares? It makes a good story. I, for one, hope they were human bones, because I really think the history of the field is interesting."
And, like on any football field, interesting things happen.
But when they happen in San Saba, people don't throw their hands in the air in shock. They look at each other with eyebrows raised. And they wonder . . .
"Could that have happened because of the spirits?" Clawson said. "People wonder out loud if it was a ghost's hand or arm that reached up and grabbed an opponent's leg to help the Armadillos."
The most storied examples came against rival Goldthwaite, which won a pair of Class 2A state championships in the early 1990s despite losing four straight times at the Graveyard.
The most fabled of those was in 1993, when an average San Saba team upset the eventual state champion 13-6. It was Goldthwaite's only loss of the season.
Thirteen years later, San Saba fans still remember "The Play."
"I think the people from Goldthwaite really bought into the whole Graveyard thing," McCoy said. "Our kids started believing in it, too. The whole community did. In that '93 Goldthwaite game, they had a receiver running wide open down the field. I mean, he was really wide open. The ball was perfectly thrown, and it should have been a game-changing touchdown. But he dropped the ball.
"There was no explanation except he dropped the ball. But our kids were saying, 'That was the work of the Graveyard.' "
McCoy, now a coach at Graham, played up the Graveyard's history during his tenure in San Saba from 1990 to '94.
"There were evenings where it was cold and foggy, and the chimes from the churches would be going off, and it created an atmosphere that we loved," said McCoy, who went 38-13-1 at San Saba. "But other people will tell you that this was weird.
"Really, we just wanted an edge. I don't think we became the Grim Reaper or anything."
Still, not everybody was happy about the way the Graveyard was being portrayed.
When a wood shop class created a big sign that read, "Welcome to The Graveyard" and placed it near the field entrance next to the Methodist church, some residents became upset. The sign eventually was moved into the visitors' locker room where, rumor has it, it was stolen by Goldthwaite students the week of that 1993 rivalry game.
The hype surrounding the Graveyard still bothers some San Saba residents.
"I don't like that name," said 92-year-old Elsie Millican. "It's not a graveyard anymore; it's a football field. There are lots of other cemeteries around here. Most of the people buried (at Rogan Field) were moved to other cemeteries. The families who had the money moved their family members. The people from families who didn't have the money to move ended up remaining there."
Eventually, McCoy decided it wasn't worth upsetting the community.
"At some point, I started to feel that we were taking it a little too far," McCoy said. "So toward the end of my time there, we started to cut back on the mystique of the Graveyard."
It turned out to be a good idea. Years later, McCoy had to return to the Graveyard as the head coach of Tuscola Jim Ned.
"I guess the irony was when I had to go back and coach the other side of it," McCoy said. "But I was able to tell my players how we created that atmosphere and built up the legend and the mystique to use to our advantage."
McCoy's Jim Ned teams easily won both games they played at the Graveyard. In fact, since McCoy left, most opposing teams have been victorious there. The Armadillos have had just one winning season and one playoff berth in the past 11 years.
Is it because the Graveyard hoopla has worn off?
"I don't think so," Johnson said. "I think we've had declining enrollment and other issues. We're one of the smallest schools in 2A. I think we're the only school in our district with under 300 students. But we've got a lot of talented kids coming up in the future. I can see this thing turning around."
But Johnson won't be bringing the Graveyard mystique along when that happens.
"It's just not something I'm going to use here," he said. "We've got a great field. It's one of the best grass turfs in the state. It's got everything you want in a small-town field. It's got character. It's got history. It's got tradition."
If you look a little deeper, it's got corpses, too.
You'll understand the next time one reaches up and trips an opposing player.
It's the only explanation.
Story Link (www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/10/31/31graveyard.html)
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
SAN SABA — It was a ghost's arm. It had to be.
Maybe it was the spirit of Mollie French. Her remains, according to a San Saba history book, still are somewhere beneath Rogan Field. She could have been buried right around the 20-yard line.
Would she help the San Saba Armadillos like that?
After all, the Goldthwaite player never should have tripped. He was going to score an easy touchdown. Nobody was around him. Nobody could have stopped him. Nobody even tried.
But the coordinated, athletic running back playing for the team that went on to win a state championship just fell.
A ghost must've grabbed him.
It could have been Harriett Farr. They never moved her original tombstone from underneath the football field.
It could have been Nathaniel Burden. Records show he was buried there sometime in the 1860s — and still might be.
It certainly was one of the ghosts. It had to be.
At least it's the only explanation given when strange things happen at Rogan Field.
That's because it wasn't always a football field. First, it was a cemetery for members of First United Methodist Church. And when the cemetery was converted to a football stadium in 1935, a few . . . items were left behind.
"Not all of the bodies were moved," said Ronnie Schultz, who has been a San Saba assistant coach for 30 years.
"Whenever a player from the other team would trip out of the blue and help us out, we would just look at each other, laugh and say, 'The Graveyard got them again. The ghosts reached out and helped us one more time.' It was what everybody said when that Goldthwaite player just fell down for no apparent reason."
The history behind Rogan Field always has been there.
The mystique hasn't.
That reached its pinnacle in the early 1990s, when then-coach Brad McCoy, the father of University of Texas quarterback Colt McCoy, tried to use the stadium's history to San Saba's advantage. And most of the community embraced it.
The stadium became known as the Graveyard. It was San Saba. It was an intimidating presence.
That image, however, slowly faded away.
Today, to find evidence of the Graveyard legend in San Saba — a town of 2,600 on U.S. 190 northwest of Lampasas, about 112 miles northwest of Austin — you have to look for it.
"We don't hype it up like they used to," coach Joel Johnson said. "In today's world, you never know who will get offended by anything. It's just not something any of the recent coaches have done or any of the previous coaches. It was just McCoy's thing."
As a result, there are no signs boasting of the Graveyard's mystique. People don't talk about it the way they did in the early 1990s.
The land Rogan Field rests on belonged to Dr. J.D. Rogan, who donated it to First United Methodist Church in 1898 with an understanding that the church would be responsible for the upkeep. According to history books, the church failed to do this, and in 1910, the land was given back to the Rogan family by the courts, which recommended that it should be used as a recreational area in the future.
The future came in 1935, when the family turned it into Rogan Field.
James Harkey remembers moving the tombstones and caskets during the summer of 1934. Harkey, 86, was a freshman football player and a member of the first San Saba team to play at Rogan Field.
"We were glad to move the tombstones," Harkey said. "We were just kids. We didn't really pay any attention to what we were moving. We just wanted to play football. I'm sure there were some (bodies) left there. We were just kids, and we didn't know, care or were interested enough to make sure we moved them all."
Among those left behind was Israel Mathias Harkey, James Harkey's great-great-grandfather, who died in 1896. At the San Saba Cemetery, a tombstone with Harkey's name on it reads: "Here in spirit but remains interred at Rogan Field."
The Armadillos got their new football field, but pieces of the past kept popping up.
Like in 1960, when San Saba players digging water ditches discovered a little history.
"I was just in junior high then, but I remember when I walked by the field to go to the dressing room, I saw that they had dug up a few graves underneath the bleachers, some coffins," San Saba resident Jackie Shahan said. "It didn't really bother me at the time. I really didn't think about it."
In the early 1990s, when San Saba was building a new field house, pieces of old tombstones were unearthed, Brad McCoy said.
And the latest digging discovery was bones in the mid-1990s.
"When I got here, we had to put in a sprinkling system, and we dug up some bones," said Johnny Clawson, who has been the San Saba school district superintendent for the past 12 years. "Could they have been animal bones? Yeah. Could they have been human bones? Yeah.
"Who cares? It makes a good story. I, for one, hope they were human bones, because I really think the history of the field is interesting."
And, like on any football field, interesting things happen.
But when they happen in San Saba, people don't throw their hands in the air in shock. They look at each other with eyebrows raised. And they wonder . . .
"Could that have happened because of the spirits?" Clawson said. "People wonder out loud if it was a ghost's hand or arm that reached up and grabbed an opponent's leg to help the Armadillos."
The most storied examples came against rival Goldthwaite, which won a pair of Class 2A state championships in the early 1990s despite losing four straight times at the Graveyard.
The most fabled of those was in 1993, when an average San Saba team upset the eventual state champion 13-6. It was Goldthwaite's only loss of the season.
Thirteen years later, San Saba fans still remember "The Play."
"I think the people from Goldthwaite really bought into the whole Graveyard thing," McCoy said. "Our kids started believing in it, too. The whole community did. In that '93 Goldthwaite game, they had a receiver running wide open down the field. I mean, he was really wide open. The ball was perfectly thrown, and it should have been a game-changing touchdown. But he dropped the ball.
"There was no explanation except he dropped the ball. But our kids were saying, 'That was the work of the Graveyard.' "
McCoy, now a coach at Graham, played up the Graveyard's history during his tenure in San Saba from 1990 to '94.
"There were evenings where it was cold and foggy, and the chimes from the churches would be going off, and it created an atmosphere that we loved," said McCoy, who went 38-13-1 at San Saba. "But other people will tell you that this was weird.
"Really, we just wanted an edge. I don't think we became the Grim Reaper or anything."
Still, not everybody was happy about the way the Graveyard was being portrayed.
When a wood shop class created a big sign that read, "Welcome to The Graveyard" and placed it near the field entrance next to the Methodist church, some residents became upset. The sign eventually was moved into the visitors' locker room where, rumor has it, it was stolen by Goldthwaite students the week of that 1993 rivalry game.
The hype surrounding the Graveyard still bothers some San Saba residents.
"I don't like that name," said 92-year-old Elsie Millican. "It's not a graveyard anymore; it's a football field. There are lots of other cemeteries around here. Most of the people buried (at Rogan Field) were moved to other cemeteries. The families who had the money moved their family members. The people from families who didn't have the money to move ended up remaining there."
Eventually, McCoy decided it wasn't worth upsetting the community.
"At some point, I started to feel that we were taking it a little too far," McCoy said. "So toward the end of my time there, we started to cut back on the mystique of the Graveyard."
It turned out to be a good idea. Years later, McCoy had to return to the Graveyard as the head coach of Tuscola Jim Ned.
"I guess the irony was when I had to go back and coach the other side of it," McCoy said. "But I was able to tell my players how we created that atmosphere and built up the legend and the mystique to use to our advantage."
McCoy's Jim Ned teams easily won both games they played at the Graveyard. In fact, since McCoy left, most opposing teams have been victorious there. The Armadillos have had just one winning season and one playoff berth in the past 11 years.
Is it because the Graveyard hoopla has worn off?
"I don't think so," Johnson said. "I think we've had declining enrollment and other issues. We're one of the smallest schools in 2A. I think we're the only school in our district with under 300 students. But we've got a lot of talented kids coming up in the future. I can see this thing turning around."
But Johnson won't be bringing the Graveyard mystique along when that happens.
"It's just not something I'm going to use here," he said. "We've got a great field. It's one of the best grass turfs in the state. It's got everything you want in a small-town field. It's got character. It's got history. It's got tradition."
If you look a little deeper, it's got corpses, too.
You'll understand the next time one reaches up and trips an opposing player.
It's the only explanation.
Story Link (www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/10/31/31graveyard.html)