BIG GAIN: Quarterback Andrew Brewer gains big yardage against Union in the state championship game.
RALPH YOUNGER for Jenks Gazette
There was a time, albeit a distant and virtually forgotten time, when boys rode bicycles to school and John Kennedy was president, that Jenks was merely a blip on the high school football map.
Jenks, in fact, was hardly even recognizable as a Tulsa County suburb at the time.
The time was the late 1950s, early 1960s.
Jenks was a Class B school, when 2A was the largest classification.
Jenks reached the Class B football championship game in 1961, the same year “West Side Story” won the Academy Award and the same year Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle created “home run derby.”
Jenks was playing in the state finals for the first time. And it showed. Playing like a team in unfamiliar territory, the Trojans were thrashed by Lawton Douglass, 29–0.
It took a decade before Jenks would return to the title game.
Class 4A had become the state’s largest classification by 1971, but Jenks was no larger than a 2A school.
That year, Jenks was beaten, 14-6, in the finals by Watonga, a team that had won before, and would win again before Jenks could capture its first gold ball.
Today, Jenks is the third largest high school in Oklahoma, with an average daily attendance of 2,809.
That number is larger than the population of Jenks in 1961 when Clifford “Red” Rogers coached the Trojans to their first state championship game.
More than just numbers have changed in Jenks since 1961.
It has become a thriving suburb of Tulsa. Its school district takes in parts of south Tulsa, a well-heeled and influential area across the Arkansas River from Jenks. Plus, Jenks is home to the unique Oklahoma Aquarium, which is to tourism what the Trojans are to football.
And Rogers, who served two terms as Jenks’ head coach, now lives in Bixby, once considered the most hated of all rivals on the Trojans’ athletic schedule.
Rogers watched the growth of Jenks from his arrival in 1958 through his departure in 1977, even though his vantage point was interrupted for eight seasons while he coached at Oklahoma Military Academy in Claremore.
Before he turned the reins of the program over to assistant coach Perry Beaver in 1977, Rogers had built the foundation on which the Jenks dynasty has flourished and matured.
“Jenks is a great football town,” Rogers says. “It was when I was there. It was before I went there.
“And it starts out with the administration. Frank Herald was the superintendent back then, and Bob Sharpe was the principal. Both of them played at Oklahoma State, and both of them coached. They were just a great administration to work for.
“Plus, the town was real supportive.
“My wife has said that it was the only place I ever coached where she could sit in the stands and not listen to me being referred to as an idiot every 10 or 15 minutes.
“They were just good fans,” said Rogers, who was inducted into the Oklahoma Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 1982.
His coaching stints at Jenks ran from 1958 to 1961, and from 1969 to 1977. He won 100 games during that time, losing only 31.
“There was quite a bit of difference in those two terms,” he said. “Jenks just kept growing, and our facilities were improving, too.”
“We had a good football program, but nothing like they have now. I’ve never heard of anything like that. Even Ada, back in its heyday, was no better.
“It’s miraculous that they can do that year after year.
“The coaches have got to be outstanding. Winning as many times as they have. A lot of us could mess up, in spite of the excellent players.
“I salute the coaching staff,” Rogers said. “I know they’ve done an excellent job. Now, they’ve had the tools to do the job with, but they haven’t misused them. They’ve done an excellent job of coaching.”
Long after Rogers had retired, even after his successor, Beaver, had retired, Jenks established itself as the premier high school football program in Oklahoma.
Beginning in 1996, the Trojans of coach Allan Trimble won six straight Class 6A championships. They failed to reach the title game in 2002, but returned the next year and reclaimed the gold ball.
They opened 2004 as the preseason favorite and held tight until the very end, when the Trojans fell to chief rival Union, 27–17, in the finals.
In those nine years, from 1996 through 2004, Jenks has compiled a record of 111 victories and 11 defeats.
It is not unreasonable to suggest that the current program in Jenks can trace its origins to Rogers and to Beaver.
Beaver spent 25 years at Jenks, from assistant coach to head coach, from small town school to Oklahoma powerhouse. In 14 years as head coach, he won 110 games.
He has watched the community change, through growth, but he has seen the athletes change, too. And it is a key change, he says.
“When I first went to Jenks, it was like if you didn’t play football, or participate in something, you were on the outside,” Beaver said. “The kids participated because their parents said so. The kids participated because it was the thing to do.
“It’s got to the point now, and this is the one thing I like about it, that the kids play because they want to. They sure don’t have to, because they could be out riding around town in their Corvettes,” he said. “They play because they want to.
“You take a good, close look at the Jenks situation. The parents are successful, so the kids want to be successful. And the kids will do everything that needs to be done to be successful.”
Beaver, inducted into the OCA Hall of Fame in 1991, pointed to the decade of the ’70s as the bridge between two eras.
“I’ll tell you what really started the thing going is when they started busing in Tulsa,” Beaver said.
“Integration helped Jenks. People were moving out to the suburbs. Jenks was an independent school district, and the people just started coming.
“Academics were really strong in Jenks, and from there it just carried over to athletics. The town people supported the school, the academics, the athletics,” he said.
“We were real fortunate to get the clientele we had. We were getting the good athletes who were really motivated to do something.
“It was ’73 or ’74, somewhere along in there, I knew it was coming. We had six move-ins, and five were majors (future major-college players),” he said.
Certainly, Jenks was seeing an influx of players at that time, but the athletes, the quality of athletes, had never been an issue, Rogers and Beaver agreed.
“It’s a game of numbers,” Rogers said. “We had some players just as fast as they have today, but we just didn’t have as many of them. Where we might have a half-dozen top-notch players, they’ve probably got 30 or 40 now.”
As Beaver said, “The athletes have always been there.”
But with the population movement of the ’70s, fueled by the oil boom that carried into the early ’80s, there was just a larger talent pool from which to draw.
“I remember back when Putnam City had just one school,” Beaver said. “You know, they had 100 kids out for football. I said, ‘My gosh, I wish I had 100 kids that I could choose from.’
“Well, the next thing I know, Jenks had 120.”
And with the numbers came the wins.
Rogers took Jenks to the 3A finals in 1976, but lost to Oklahoma City Douglass, 7–6.
He left after that and turned the program to Beaver.
In his second season, 1978, Beaver had Jenks back in the championship game, but again the Trojans were defeated, losing to Duncan, 32–13.
Beaver said that might have been the breakout season for Jenks.
The Trojans rallied against every playoff opponent, except Duncan, to pull out victories.
Continued in the Mid-January 2005 issue.
