The story of Schreiner Institute football

The May 2025 issue of Schreiner University Magazine.
Click on any image to enlarge.

This week we received a copy of Schreiner University’s magazine in the mail at home. Its front cover features a young man wearing a Schreiner University football uniform, looking to our right, as if looking into the future.

The 1923 SI football team

But he’s also looking into the school’s past.

When Schreiner opened its classroom doors over 100 years ago, on September 18, 1923, it had six instructors on its first faculty: J. J. Delaney, president and instructor in mathematics; S. V. Carmack, English and history; C. C. Mason, agriculture and science; James C. Oehler Jr., Latin and mathematics; and J. C. Patterson, history. They were expecting 75 students that first year, and when 85 enrolled, the new school had to scramble to build dormitory space.

Two of the men had big jobs outside of the classroom: Mason was the commandant and instructor in military science, and Oehler was the director of athletics at the new school.

That means James C. Oehler, Jr., an Uvalde native, was Schreiner Institute’s first football coach, and his work began before classes started. On September 10^th, Schreiner Institute held its first ‘football training camp,’ and Oehler had 38 young men to show up. Oehler was optimistic: “prospects are bright for a fast squad at the Institute the opening year.”

Fortunately, most of the students had played football before.

Their first game was on September 28, 1923 against the “strong Junction High School eleven on the local school’s gridiron.

Texas Tech collection

“According to the advance dope a good game is in store for the fans. Junction is reported to be unusually strong and the Maroon and White squad has shown some good stuff in scrimmages…The Maroon and White will put a strong eleven in the field tomorrow. The team as a whole, although heavy, is fast enough to work the running and passing game as well as straight football in line plunging, and the chances are that the fans will see samples of each kind of tactics in tomorrow’s fray.”

Schreiner won that first game, 7 – 0.

For a brand-new school, Schreiner had a decent opening season: 4-2-1, outscoring opponents 101 to 50.

The Schreiner football program got a big boost in 1925, when H. C. ‘Bully’ Gilstrap became the school’s athletic director. Gilstrap had achieved athletic greatness at the University of Texas at Austin, lettering in three different sports in his first year of eligibility.

“We hope to offer Junior College athletes the finest opportunity in South and Central Texas for their athletic development,” Gilstrap told the Kerrville Mountain Sun.

Texas Tech collection

The stats suggest Gilstrap was correct. The next year, 1926, the Schreiner Mountaineers were undefeated.

A note on that ‘undefeated season:’ In October, 1926, Schreiner Institute played Texas Tech. Tech was established in 1923, but didn’t open its doors until 1925. In 1926 their football team was called the ‘Matadors.’

And while Schreiner claims an undefeated season, the game against Tech in 1926 was actually a tie, at 0-0, so Schreiner’s claim is factually accurate.

That game was played in a pouring rain at Fair Park in Lubbock, on October 2, 1926. An old football program from that game shows extensive water damage; a photograph shows both teams lined up against each other on a sheet of water.

The Schreiner team won the state junior college championship in 1935.

They won that title again in 1937, a year after Gilstrap left Schreiner. That team featured some prominent Tivy High School players, including two who’d played on the legendary 1936 Tivy Football team, including Preston Chambliss and Slick McCaleb.

Rex Kelly was another notable coach at Schreiner Institute, serving as a line coach through the 1940s and early 1950s.

In 1950, Claude ‘Chena’ Gilstrap, brother of ‘Bully,’ took the reins of the football program. Cliff Newell, in a 1989 article in this newspaper about Schreiner sports, had this nugget about Claude Gilstrap’s teams: in 1950, “one of the new players was a slender, bespeckled young man from Paris, Texas, who showed a depressing lack of speed for a wide receiver. His name was Raymond Berry, and he became the most famous football player ever to come out of Schreiner Institute.”

Berry had a long career in professional football, including playing for the Baltimore Colts, where he led the NFL in receptions and receiving yards three times, and in receiving touchdowns twice. Barry was invited to six Pro Bowls. Barry was also head coach of the New England Patriots in the 1980s.

The football program ended at Schreiner Institute in 1956, though one standout player from that season also had a career in professional football: Charley Johnson, who played for the Cardinals, Broncos, and Oilers. In the midst of his football career, Johnson earned his doctorate in chemical engineering, later he worked at NASA while in the U.S. Army Reserve, and was a professor of chemical engineering.

Football at Schreiner University has a rich history, and it will be interesting to watch the school work to reclaim some of its football program’s earlier glories.

Until next week, all the best.

Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who collects Kerr County historical items. If you have something you’d care to share with him, it would make him happy. This column originally appeared in the Kerr County Lead June 5, 2025

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