Winning the District 27-4A football championship came with a bonus for the 1974 Carroll Tigers, one of the best CCISD teams of the 1970s.
The Tigers not only earned a playoff berth that year, they made history as the first Carroll team to win a football district title since the school opened in 1957.
Only league champions qualified for the postseason in those days, when Carroll and the other CCISD schools competed in the UIL’s largest classification.
Fifty years after cementing their legacy, the ’74 Tigers remain a close-knit group.
“It’s like a brotherhood,” said Richard Guerra, a senior linebacker and captain that season. “We’ve kept up with each other. The sad thing is that there was a lot of prejudice going on then, but we never saw it on the team.
“I get emotional just talking about the guys I played with. We were all real tight. When we were in junior high, we were all rivals. But by the time we were seniors, our goal was to take it all, to win district.”
Carroll finished 9-2 in 1974, winning nine straight games after losing to La Marque in its season opener. The Tigers bounced back from their only regular-season defeat with a 53-7 rout of Gregory-Portland, avenging a 34-0 shellacking the previous year, and went 8-0 in 27-4A play.
But the season ended abruptly with a 39-28 loss to a 7-3 McAllen team in the first round of the playoffs on a windy night at Buccaneer Stadium. Carroll was bedeviled by six turnovers – five fumbles and one interception – and the Bulldogs capitalized on four of them for touchdowns.
“The best team didn’t win that night,” said former King head coach Joey Allen, whose Mustangs lost to Carroll 28-14 that season. “But that happens sometimes.”
After all these years, the early playoff loss still gnaws at the Tigers.
“Coach Hamrick changed our whole offense before that last game,” said Paul Hagerty, a junior offensive tackle who earned All-State honors in 1974. “We were in shock when he did it. The snap counts were different. We were lost for the first half of the game.
“All season, we were punishing people on the ground. They couldn’t keep up with us, and we changed the offense and lost that game. Why would you want to do that? There are a lot of hard feelings to this day about that.”
Still, the defeat did little to detract from what Carroll accomplished that season. While failing to extend their season with a playoff victory, the ’74 Tigers already had secured a special place in school history before playing a down against McAllen.
“From my perspective, I don’t think about it that way that much,” said Felder, a senior running back. “We just loved the game and enjoying playing with each other. I just wanted to play.
“There was some talk about the history, and there was some motivation, but I didn’t think much about it that way. But to think back on that, I think it was a really great accomplishment, more so than we realized at the time.”
Senior safety/kicker Mark Reeves was asked if the Tigers were driven to win their school’s first football district title.
“Oh, by all means,” he said. “We worked our tail ends off. We had two years to get to know each other, since we were from four different junior highs (Tom Browne, South Park, Baker and Hamlin). We figured out we all had the same goal.”
CCISD high schools had only three grades back then.
Carroll dominated its district with a ground-eating veer offense keyed by steady senior quarterback Bobby Mandel and fueled by 1,000-yard rushers Felder and Bobby Finley, a senior.
The Tigers’ defense also was impressive, allowing only 11 points per game during the regular season. Headed by Reeves and junior nose guard Carl Tillman, both All-South Texas first-team picks, the defense featured eight players who earned postseason honors.
“You can use clichés all day long, but the bottom line is just hard work,” Reeves said. “Our defense just worked hard to get better as the season went along. We can go out to that practice field right now and we’d probably find some blood, sweat and tears out there.”
Now in their late 60s, most of the ’74 Tigers have retired and are grandfathers. But the memories of that special season have crystallized with the passage of time.
“We were thinking district championship when we were in the ninth grade,” said Mandel, who was a team captain with Guerra, Felder and senior defensive tackle David Pack.
“I remember we had a lot of camaraderie,” said Ernest Tasby, a senior running back and kick returner.
Bill Hamrick, now deceased, was head coach of the ’74 Tigers. His top assistant was offensive line coach Kenneth “Butch” Gilliam, who succeeded Hamrick as head coach in 1978.
Now 81, Gilliam made the trip to Corpus Christi from his Gonzales home in November for the induction of the 1974 team into the Carroll Athletic Hall of Fame.
“It was an outstanding group of kids, and it was because of their parents,” Gilliam said. “I see them 50 years later, and they are great people. To me, that’s a compliment not to the coaching staff, but to the parents. They are exceptional in life now, and they were exceptional in 1974.”
Running behind an outstanding offensive line, Felder and Finley gave the Tigers one of the most prolific tandems in Corpus Christi history. Nicknamed the “F&F Boys,” Finley and Felder rekindled memories of Miller legends Bobby Smith and Johnny Roland, who lined up in the same backfield in 1959 and went on to play in the NFL.
“Brent was more of a power runner, and I was more of a scat back,” Finley recalled. “But Brent could take it outside, too. We also had a pretty good offensive line. I’d tell those guys, ‘Once I get past the line, let them (defensive players) go.’ I didn’t want them to get a holding call. All I needed was for them to give me a little space, and I’d do the rest.”
Finley was named South Texas Player of the Year by the Caller-Times after rushing for 1,817 yards and scoring 108 points. His scoring total broke the CCISD record of 104 points, set by Smith in 1959.
Like his running mate, Felder also earned All-South Texas honors. He rushed for 1,246 rushing yards and scored 102 points.
Mandel completed 42 of 74 passes for 594 yards and four touchdowns in the Tigers’ run-oriented offense. While he finished the regular season with the best passing percentage in the district, it was Mandel’s deft execution of Carroll’s option offense that earned him All-South Texas honors.
“Bobby was not a big guy, and not a real strong guy,” Felder said. “But he was very savvy. He was also very confident. You never saw any fear in him. I just appreciated him for being the leader that he was.”
The Tigers’ offense averaged 406 yards and 34 points in 10 regular-season games, setting city records in both statistical categories. While the Tigers had a subpar offensive game in the loss to McAllen, they were outgained by only four yards (359-355). Finley led all rushers with 155 yards on 19 carries, and Felder ran for 119 yards on 12 attempts.
Hagerty recalled what it was like blocking for the F&F Boys.
“They loved running behind us,” he said. “There’s no better feeling for a lineman than when you see your running back making a play downfield. Whether he went over you or by you, he’s gone. Nobody is going to touch them.”
Hagerty was joined on the offensive line by senior center Gary Livingston, senior left guard Marc McCarthy, senior left tackle Jim Hoy and senior right guard Mark Campbell. Campbell, Livingston and McCarthy were all named to the all-district and All-South Texas teams.
Gilliam was effusive in his praise of Hagerty, a two-time All-State selection before playing four seasons at Texas A&M.
“Paul was probably the best offensive lineman I ever coached,” Gilliam said, “and I coached at some other schools that had great athletes, too. He was a great one-on-one blocker, but that wasn’t the only thing that made him great. It was the type of person that he was. Paul was an outstanding person.”
Hagerty credited Gilliam for helping him develop into a highly recruited college prospect.
“Of all my coaches, and that includes at A&M, he was the best coach I ever had,” said Hagerty, who earned All-America honors as a senior at Carroll.
The offense was rounded out by senior tight end David Gonzalez, junior tight end Scott Reynolds, junior wide receivers Brian Smolik and Rick Mandel (Bobby’s brother), and senior wide receiver Pete Prescott.
Other defensive starters besides Guerra, Pack, Reeves and Tillman were senior end Jim Fox, senior cornerback John Holcomb, senior tackle Charles Kelley, senior end John Lucas, junior linebacker Sid Lawrence, junior cornerback Greg Myers and senior safeties William Tilley and Clay Whites.
Tom Almond (offensive backs), Ron Arbogast (defensive line), Jim Creech (linebackers), Blair Farrar (defensive backs), Floyd “Punk” Rodgers (wide receivers), Willie Gawlik (special teams), Mike Kunstadt (special teams) and Gary McAtee (special teams) were the other assistant coaches on Hamrick’s staff. Almond and Rodgers are deceased.
Ten players from the 1974 team are deceased – Hoy, McCarthy, Pack, offensive tackle Mark Brown, defensive tackle Willie Collins, defensive end John Lucas, cornerback Greg Myers, safety William Tilley, nose guard Carl Tillman and defensive end Jimmy Zamora.
David Flores is a San Antonio-based freelance writer who writes about Coastal Bend sports history.
This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Carroll football made history with 1974 district title
