Friday, September 29, 2006
Posted by Monte Walker at 10:16 AM
When I started broadcasting McKinney ISD football back in 2004, I started looking for as much information that I could find on McKinney and McKinney North. It was rather easy to find McKinney North’s history, but it was a different ballgame when it came to the Lions of McKinney. It took me longer than I anticipated to actually take the time and sit in the library and look at every year of microfilm and verify each score in the history of the program. When I started, I decided to gather as much information at one time so I wouldn’t have to continue to go back and look at the same film on several occasions. Therefore, I was able to research each date of the games, scores, outcome, and location (even most of the stadium names).Being a history buff, this turned into quite an adventure into the past as if I were in some sort of a McKinney Lions time machine. I learned that the program goes way back to at least 1901 with a game with Sherman. I learned that the McKinney Lions were blue and gold long before the 1920s. I also learned that they were red and blue for a couple of years in the 1930’s (the colors of old Boyd High School). I learned that the first forward pass ever thrown in Texas was thrown right here in McKinney in a game vs. Greenville. I also read that the famous play - The Statue of Liberty was introduced to Texas here.
But I was probably excited the most when I started adding all of these wins together. I first ran a total of all of the games that I had researched and found over 500. I then thought - I wonder how many they have under the University Interscholastic League (which started in 1920)? I knew that the number of wins that I had researched and the number of games missing could put the Lions over 500 wins. At first, I was missing around 6 games that for some reason either wasn’t reported, or there were no microfilm for that particular game. I told someone in confidence about the situation and that we could be celebrating something special this season...that is, unless the Lions won the majority of those missing games. Fortunately, the opposing teams had records in their local papers and I was able to complete each game. I found myself hoping that the Lions had lost those games way back in the late 1920s just so we could have a fun celebration 80 years later. Once I had a complete and verified list of every game and every outcome, I realized that the McKinney Lions were sitting at 497 wins going in to this season. I was so excited. And believe me, before I told anyone, I checked my records and list about 50 times.
I completed the research on the night before the scheduled Fan Fest at McKinney High. I had talked with Coach McVey earlier in that day and told him of the situation and that I wanted to announce this to the Fan Fest crowd that night. As luck would have it, we had the first rain in months and it went unannounced.
Playing the record low-key for the past several weeks, it is now time to open the curtain and show-off the proud McKinney Lions history. There are so many people who are responsible for the opportunity for McKinney to win #500 tonight. I hope that the city of McKinney and all of the fans of the Lions will appreciate the winning tradition of this program and what this means to a community. I feel like discovering this event is worth all of the blurred vision from the midnight microfilm.
