Clarendon Broncos to play baseball in 2001

Clarendon High School will field a baseball team next spring following a vote by the school board last week.

The decision came in a unanimous vote of Clarendon CISD Trustees in their regular meeting Thursday, August 10.

School officials had been studying the possibility of adding baseball for sometime, according to CISD Superintendent Monty Hysinger. The enthusiasm of the Athletic Director Roger Hoeltzel and the coaching staff helped finalize the deal, he said.

“The athletic director said we could do it with our existing staff and on a shoestring budget,” Hysinger said. “And we have a group of students who really want to play.”

One of Clarendon’s newest coaches, Danny Brittain, will lead the Broncos onto the baseball diamond with the assistance of Coach Hoeltzel. Brittain was the head baseball coach for three years in Aspermont and was named coach of the year there. Hoeltzel played baseball in college, Hysinger said.

“I took this job with the hope that Clarendon would start baseball,” Coach Brittain said, noting he was glad it happened in his first year here.

“We have a lot of enthusiastic kids,” he said. “At least 18 kids may come out for the team.”

School officials say they plan to play their games at McClellan Field near City Park.

The Broncos will have a very small district this year, facing only Wellington and West Texas High at Stinnett, and should be a shoe-in for the playoffs since three teams advance from the district level.

Hysinger said the school plans to talk with female athletes to determine if there is any interest in forming a Lady Bronco softball team.

Meanwhile, the Broncos will start working out the first of February and will likely play their first game toward the end of that month, Brittain said.

School officials say they do not know when the last time was that CHS fielded a baseball team. Yearbooks in the school library don’t show baseball teams during the 1950s or 1940s, and no yearbooks are on file for the 1930s.

Clarendon High did however have a baseball team in the 1910s and mid 1920s. (Oddly, in 1926, the baseball team was called the Roosters while other teams were known by the more common nickname, the Bronchos.)