The First County State Champs: 1963 Rangers

In Tuesday’s football season preview magazine in Tuesday’s newspaper we had a look back at the 1972 Schulenburg Shorthorn state champion football team, and we called them the first Fayette County football state champs. An alert reader called us to remind us that the Shorthorns were only the first public school state champs from here. The 1963 Bishop Forest Rangers won a private school state title back in 1963. Here’s some more information that team (pictured above) that we found in old editions of The Record from December, 1963.

“The Bishop Forest Rangers of Schulenburg, scoring the winning touchdown with but three minutes left to play, defeated Corpus ChristiAcademy 30-27, at Corpus Christi Friday night for theTexas Catholic Interscholastic League football championship.

The Rangers defeated St. Gerard of San Antonio 30-6 in the state Class AA semifinals the previous Friday.

Four members of the team were named all-district: Jimmy Kotrla, end; Leroy Stavinoha, tackle; Hugo Hollas and Donnie Christen, backs.

Honorable mention all-district selections from that team included: Frank Kocurek, Marvin Janda, Victor Vacek and Tommy Schobel.”