On December 11, 1976, my dad and I were driving out to Randolph, he on the way to the commissary, and I on my way to the Base library in order to check references for a term paper on fuel cells I was working on for Mr. Verhalen’s Physics class at Judson. Approaching the Loop 1604 overpass as we drove along FM 78, we caught sight of the bus and car motorcade for the Churchill Chargers, enroute to Rice Stadium for a semi-final match-up with defending Champ Port Neches-Grove. Churchill won the game later that evening, and they won the Championship the next week.

As the Churchill motorcade passed a little further down 1604 and toward I-10 and the journey toward Houston, it passed Schaefer Road on the right, otherwise un-marked, if memory serves correctly, except for a generic TXDOT-style sign that said (and still says) "School Stadium." The sign and the venue indicated by it most likely went unnoticed by the Churchill faithful. This possible oversight was really no fault of theirs, because no one else seemed to know much about what lay at the bottom of the small box-canyon-like (that’s an exaggeration somewhat) location, except for the seemingly few people that had actually had some reason to have been there at some time or another in its relatively short, seemingly unnoticed history. Furthermore, what little anyone did know about the place was easily forgotten or "misplaced," so that it would frequently be the last place anyone would tend to think about. And, if a person had even, as a joke, said that the next team from the San Antonio area that would win a football championship after Churchill----and in only six years time----would be the team that played home games at that "School Stadium" described by the TXDOT sign, that person would have justifiably been invited to check into the State Hospital. Indeed, the Judson Rockets of Converse, Texas, had been consistently ranked close to last in the Harris Ratings in the three years since moving into the Class 4A ranks (at that time the highest UIL classification in Texas). Judson High School and Converse, Texas, were about the last places anyone thought of when it came to football (or anything else for that matter).

On the other hand, some subtle changes were in the works in those final days of 1976 and the early days of 1977, as there were actually a few people that sensed a high degree of potential for greatness for the Judson Rockets and Judson High School in general. Furthermore, as a foretelling of the possibilities, it seemed that "long shots" and "dark horses" and "hidden treasures" were suddenly coming out on top---either for real or in the theaters, as "Jimmy Who?" was just weeks away from being inaugurated as our 39^th President, and "Rocky" was topping the box offices. Little did anyone know that a real-life "Rocky" story was about to be written by the Judson Rockets.

Here is the best I can do in recalling the beginning of that story in as few words as possible, as well as describing the Rocketball experience in the seasons to come . This "History" is in no way exhaustive from the standpoint of team or individual records and honors. It is, however, an attempt to capture a certain moment of time in particular (the years 1977-83), but then link it with what went before and also what has come after. I urge others to provide a more collectively exhaustive rundown on Judson football.** Indeed, the main reason I felt compelled to put these pages up on the www is because, for far too long, Judson’s history has had no real presence on the Internet, and it’s a story that, I feel, deserves to be told. It’s a story just as compelling (more so, perhaps) as that of the Plano’s, the Permian’s the Temple’s. and the like. It is perhaps as good an example of any of how great things sometimes have very small beginnings.