The 1923 Terrill School for Boys football season
100 years ago, here is a chronicle of their season that year: Week 1
As St. Mark's School of Texas in Dallas football kicked off its season in 2023 we did a parallel review, week by week, of the Terrill School for Boys: 1906-1946 football season 100 years earlier. In those days, high school (and college) football seasons usually began the last week or two of September. Now, the seasons start during the last week of August, commonly called 0 week these days.
In 1923, Terrill School was beginning its 18th season of football, having not lost a game to a team "in its class" but just one time since 1910. "In its class" refers to games against high school-level competition. Because of Terrill's dominance since the 1910 season, other than a 1922 loss to San Marcos Baptist Academy, its other three losses since 1910 were to college-level teams (freshman, reserves). All other games were victories save for ties vs. Kirkley School for Boys (located in Greenville), Fort Worth High School, and Southwestern Military School (Dallas).
The 1923 season also saw the debut of J. Monroe Sweeney as head coach. He was a 1917 graduate of Bethany College from West Virginia, and when he wasn't coaching football he was refereeing football games and umpiring baseball games all over the Southwest, both high school and college, as well as umpiring in a baseball minor league, the Texas League. He took over for the well-known Pete Cawthon, who spent two years as Terrill coach, but then moved on to Austin College and Texas Tech in the college ranks. He eventually ended up as a head coach in the NFL and retired as the athletic director at Alabama.
The opening game of the season was against the Buckner Orphans Home, played on September 21. There are just but a couple of games that we don't have final scores from for Terrill, but this is one of them. We do know that Terrill won the game, but finding that final score has been elusive. Additionally Terrill did not report the game on its season summary in the 1924 yearbook. It appears that this may have been a pre-season game and thus no write-up is available. If so that left Terrill with just a official five-game schedule, at least 2-3 games fewer than its normal schedules.
Thus the real opening game of the season will be next week, vs. McKinney High School, a game scheduled to be played in McKinney, which in those days was a long train ride from downtown Dallas.