Posts Tagged ‘D. Joe Williams UTEP El Paso Sports’

3 Aug

Looking Forward To Thrills of UTEP Football

Posted by EL PASO SPORTS in El Paso Sports, Ray Sanchez. Tagged: , , , , , , .

by Ray Sanchez 07.26.15

Are you starting to get excited about the upcoming UTEP football season? I am.

The Miners will play their first game in five weeks (Sept. 5) and I can’t wait to see. runing back Aaron Jonesaatonjones and kickoff return specialist Autrey Golden back in action. They’re so good Jones has already been named a preseason candidate for the 2015 Doak Walker Award presented annually to the autreygolden.jpgnation’s top college running back and Golden has been named the preseason Conference USA Special Teams Player of the Year.

To me, there’s no more thrilling sight in football than watching a back running through, around and over would be tacklers. Maybe it’s because of my high school experience.

 

I WENT OUT for football as a sophomore running back at El Paso High School. I weighed only about 135 pounds then but boy, was I fast. The first time I took a kickoff I blazed through my bigger, stronger – and slower — teammates like water through a strainer.

Unfortunately, on the first play from scrimmage I hit the line and a big lineman (170 pounders were considered big then) fell on my left arm and broke it.

I was taken to the hospital and a cast was put on. I expected to get a lot of sympathy when I got home but instead my mother (a typical strict, loving but no-nonsense Mexican mother) gave me the bawling out of my life. “I told you not to play that stupid game,” she groused.

She made me drop the sport.

But to this day every time I see a running back break loose for a long run I can imagine me in his shoes.

Bring on the football season!!!

 

TRIVIA QUESTION: What was Doak Walker’s full name and for which college and pro teams  did he play? Answer at end of column.

 

THERE’S HOPE again that the El Paso Golf Hall of Fame will be revived after a few years of being comatose. Rita Aguilar writes:

“The board of the El Paso Golf Hall of Fame is proud to announce that this year’s induction banquet will be held Nov. 17 at Coronado Country Club. As usual, we are requesting resumes for nominations … Resumes should be sent electronically in pdf format to:  epgolfhof@yahoo.com.  Deadline for resumes is Monday Aug 3. Resumes must include golf background and qualifications along with biographical information either as a player, coach, volunteer or any other golf related capacity.  Should also include any other civic involvement if applicable.  Referral and recommendation letters may be included within the resume and biographical information.”

 

ONE FELLOW I would love to see inducted is the late Ernie Ponce. Ernie, a longtime community leader, led the push to build Ascarate Municipal Golf Course at its present location, which is so much more accessible to the general public.

As the council member overseeing the Parks and Recreation Department, he also helped the construction of small playgrounds all over the city during his three terms from 1951 to 1957.

A graduate of El Paso High and the Alexander Hamilton Institute of Business of New York, he was also a successful businessman.

Many believe Ascarate Golf Course should have been named Ernie Ponce Municipal Golf Course just like the previous municipal golf course was named for A.S. Valdespino, its originator.

 

AND OUR condolences to Ron Gillett on the death of his wife, Elizabeth “Liz” Hughey Gillett. She passed away June 30. Born in El Paso November 6 1941, she attended Dudley School, Mesita School, El Paso High School, Mary Baldwin College and graduated from Texas Western College (UTEP). An exceptionally attractive lady, she was a tennis buff and she and Ron owned Dos Lagos Golf Course in Anthony for 29 years.

 

ANSWER to trivia question: His full name was Ewell Doak Walker Jr. He won the Heisman Trophy in 1948 while playing for SMU then played six seasons for the Detroit Lions. He was inducted into both the College Football Hall of Fame and the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

9 Feb

D. Joe Williams Deserves More Recognition

Posted by EL PASO SPORTS in El Paso Sports. Tagged: .

Imageby Ray Sanchez  01.05.14

The year 2013 was sad in one respect: So many of our former sports heroes passed away during the year. One of the most recent who passed away and who perhaps never got the recognition he deserved was D. Joe Williams.

UTEP has been credited with being the first university in Texas to recruit a black athlete. And it is so – for a major university. But D. Joe Williams was actually the first black athlete to be recruited by a Texas college, period.

Basketball player Charley Brown entered what was then known as Texas Western College in 1956 but Pan American College enrolled  D. Joe Will   iams to play baseball two years earlier, in 1954.

Williams lived with the cloud of not being recognized as the first Texas black college player all his life.

 

BUT WILLIAMS was anything but a rabble rouser. He went about trying to convince others that he was indeed the first in his usual polite, soft-spoken, mild-mannered way. He had little success.

Still, D. Joe Williams deserves to be called a legend in Texas lore.

In 1954 he participated on the Pan Am cross country, baseball and track teams, took third place in the Big State Conference in the 880 run and sixth in the mile and batted .265 in baseball.

 

WILLIAMS MOVED to El Paso in 1970 and lived and taught school in the El Paso area.  Highly educated, he taught science and coached at such local schools as Fabens, Montwood and Tornillo.

At Fabens, Williams’ 1973 cross country team won second in the state. During his five year tenure as head coach, his teams won district titles three years.

Williams was also a successful freshman and junior varsity football coach at Fabens and Socorro.

He died on Dec. 15 in an ambulance which was taking him to the hospital after suffering a stroke. He had suffered from heart, leukemia and other problems for some time.

Williams has been inducted into the El Paso Baseball Hall of Fame, the Texas Black Sports Hall of Fame and The Lower Valley All Sports Hall of Fame in Edinburg.

Perhaps the El Paso Athletic Hall of Fame will get around to inducting him, too, this year. He would be so grateful. Politely, of course.

 

TRIVIA QUESTION: Who won the British Open both in 1971 and 1972? Answer at end.

 

SPEAKING OF the El Paso Athletic Hall of Fame, start getting resumes ready for anyone you may want to nominate for induction. Meetings of the board of directors will begin this month .

Another person I’d like to see inducted this year is Gene Semko. The Burges High and UTEP grad is one of the most highly respected football officials in the nation. He has worked some of the most important games in college football, including a BCS championship contest.

And this past week, as Dr. Paul Huchton of El Paso noted in a letter to this writer, there was Semko working the Rose Bowl game between Stanford and Michigan State.

Semko has been nominated for induction into the El Paso Athletic Hall of Fame several times but has been passed over.

 

THE DRAWER in which I keep my crystal ball was rattling. I opened it and out popped the obnoxious orb. “I told you, I told you,” it gushed. “You’ve been criticizing me for picking the UTEP football team to have a winning season and didn’t but you’ve said nothing about how I predicted how the Dallas Cowboys would do.”

I shuddered. “Okay, go ahead and brag..”

It cleared it’s throat. “ I told you there’s something wrong with that organization, that as usual they would make a lot of noise, win some games, lose the crucial ones and flop at the end of the regular season. And that’s exactly what happened.”

I was in no mood to hear anymore. I picked it up, put it back in its drawer and slammed it shut.

 

ANSWER to trivia question: Lee Trevino.