Former LA Tech coach Pete Fredenburg builds success at Mary Hardin-Baylor:
Mary Hardin-Baylor finds football success early
04:25 AM CST on Friday, December 17, 2004
By KEITH WHITMIRE / The Dallas Morning News
BELTON, Texas – The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, chartered by the Republic of Texas in 1845, went 152 years without fielding a football team. It took just seven years for the football program to play for a national championship.
Mary Hardin-Baylor will meet Linfield (Ore.) in the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl, the Division III national championship, Saturday in Salem, Va.
For 20 years, Mary Hardin-Baylor's administration debated whether to add football before fielding its first team in 1998.
There's no debate now, and not just because of the Crusaders' rapid success. The football team has provided a rallying point for the campus of 2,700 located just off Interstate 35 between Waco and Austin.
Starting defensive tackle Ryan Mosley walked into a class recently and saw the time, date and even the TV channel for the Crusaders' next game written on the board. And that was the day of a final.
"It's like we've arrived," said Mosley, who played at Mesquite Poteet. "Just because we're not the University of Texas or Texas A&M doesn't mean we can't play football."
To reach the Stagg Bowl, the Crusaders had to knock off one of the premier programs in Division III football. UMHB beat Mount Union, 38-35, in the snow of Alliance, Ohio, last week to advance to the title game.
Mount Union has won seven Division III national titles, including three of the last four. Last week's upset was Mount Union's third loss in its last 124 games.
ERICH SCHLEGEL/DMN
Coach Pete Fredenburg has helped make Division III football succeed at Mary Hardin-Baylor.
The Crusaders face Linfield College from McMinnville, Ore. Linfield beat another Division III power, Rowan, 52-0, in the semifinals. This will be the first time in 10 years the Stagg Bowl won't include Mount Union or Rowan.
Linfield's quarterback is Brett Elliott, who started eight games at Division I-A Utah before breaking his wrist last season. His replacement, Alex Smith, went on to become a Heisman Trophy finalist this season while Elliott has passed for an all-divisions record 59 touchdowns.
However, Elliott is the exception in Division III which does not permit athletic scholarships. Most of the players at UMHB are average-sized kids with a few more muscles from time spent in the weight room.
Starting linebacker Tim Walker played with Texas lineman Jonathan Scott and a handful of other future major-college players at Carter High School. He said at first he was skeptical of the talent level in Division III.
"Now I realize there's D-I talent here," Walker said. "There's just not a lot of size that the D-I schools are looking for."
Walker is just 5-5, 170 pounds, which is small even by Division III standards. But he stands tall among his former Carter teammates.
"When I go back home, I show them the rings I got," Walker said. "They get jealous because some of them don't have rings."
The rings are from two American Southwest Conference titles the Crusaders have won. This season, UMHB lost a conference game to Hardin-Simmons, 49-22. They later avenged that loss with a 42-28 win in the second round of the playoffs.
The win over Hardin-Simmons is memorialized with a picture printed off a computer that hangs in the lobby of the UMHB field house. It's a photo of a football game – the Georgia-Georgia Tech game, to be exact. But the scoreboard crawl across the bottom has the UMHB and Hardin-Simmons score.
This week's championship will actually be televised on ESPN2, and there will be at least two busloads of fans headed to the game. The only thing missing will be the couch.
The Couch Crew is the rowdy student group that commands the end zone section at Belton's high school stadium, where the Crusaders play home games. The couch tradition started before football began at UMHB, when students would carry an old couch to sit on during soccer games.
No one sits on the couch now. The students are too busy standing, cheering and banging on oil barrels painted in UMHB purple and gold.
"We support them not just because they're amazing athletes," Couch Crew member Will White of Navasota said, "but because they're our friends, too."
Athletes aren't separated from other students at UMHB. There are 145 players in the program – 172 showed up for fall drills – and like their nonathlete peers, they are paying for their education. About 90 percent of UMHB students receive some sort of financial aid.
UMHB coach Pete Fredenburg remembers coming out of the office after a long practice and seeing the starting quarterback doing the team's laundry.
"Because that was his work-study job," Fredenburg said. "That's the kind of commitment these guys have."
Fredenburg, 55, was an assistant for 14 years at Baylor, where he developed strong Texas recruiting ties, one key to the Crusaders' success. He also coached at LSU and Louisiana Tech. He's coached in major bowl games but says, "This is obviously the best of the best.
"The neatest thing about it is these kids give so much of themselves and have a burning desire to be successful."
While the Crusaders have become campus heroes, they don't have the luxuries their Division I counterparts enjoy. A nonconference game last season at Willamette in Salem, Ore., the first time UMHB ever flew to a game.Most of the time, the Crusaders bus to road games, including the nine-hour ride to conference foe Mississippi College in Clinton, Miss.
"You would think being short you'd have a lot of legroom," said standout running back Justin Bryson, who is 5-7.
Bryson, who has rushed for 1,843 yards and 15 touchdowns, said recruiting trips to UMHB are nothing like the lavish affairs some D-I programs shower on recruits.
"They don't feed us steak," Bryson said. "But on a typical football trip they might feed us chicken fried steak."
UMHB's success and accessibility to a large talent base in Central Texas might spawn thoughts of moving up to a higher level, such as Division II or I-AA.
"Absolutely not," school president Jerry Bawcom said. "This is philosophically where we belong. We've got a home in Division III and we feel we can be competitive, and not just in football."
Before football arrived, only 400 UMHB students lived on campus. Now, it's 1,100. UMHB has expanded its cheerleading and marching band programs. Admissions standards have been raised twice since the Crusaders began playing football. Enrollment is up almost 400 students since the debut of football.
Bawcom was asked what those who questioned whether UMHB should add football would say today.
"I think they would whole-heartedly approve," Bawcom said.
E-mail kwhitmire@dallasnews.com
ROAD TO THE STAGG BOWL Date Opponent Result Sept. 11 Willamette (Ore.) W 25-22 Sept. 18 at Texas Lutheran* W 36-27 Sept. 25 Louisiana College* W 68-16 Oct. 2 at Mississippi College* W 49-3 Oct. 9 Howard Payne* W 62-24 Oct. 16 at Sul Ross State* W56-7 Oct. 23 Hardin-Simmons* L 22-49 Oct. 30 at East Texas Baptist* W 60-33 Nov. 6 at McMurry* W 73-23 Nov. 13 Austin College* W 70-13 NCAA PLAYOFFS Nov. 20 at Trinity W 32-13 Nov. 27 at Hardin-Simmons W 42-28 Dec. 4 at Wash. & Jefferson (Pa.) W 52-16 Dec. 11 at Mount Union (Ohio) W 38-35 Dec. 18 vs. Linfield (Ore).
*American Southwest Conference game
MARY HARDIN-BAYLOR
Founded: The school was chartered by the Republic of Texas in 1845 as the Female Department of Baylor University. The school became coeducational in 1971.
Location: Belton, pop. 14,623
Enrollment: 2,706
Namesake: After being known as Baylor Female College and Baylor College for Women, the school took on its current name in 1934. The name is in honor of benefactors John and Mary Hardin who helped the school survive a fire and the Great Depression.
AREA PLAYERS No. Name Pos. High School 2 Tim Walker LB Carter 5 Josh Kubiak DB Granbury 9 Nick McPhaul CB Lake Highlands 17 Eric Henri DB Lake Dallas 25 Gary Richardson II WR SL Carroll 29 Tramell McKenney FB Irving 38 Clayton Burris DB Lake Highlands 46 Brian Blair TE Coppell 70 James Tillotson OL Euless Trinity 99 Ryan Mosley DT Mesquite Poteet
Note: Only players on the current playoff roster listed
Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl: Mary Hardin-Baylor (13-1) vs. Linfield (12-0), 10 a.m. Saturday at Salem Stadium in Salem, Va. TV: ESPN2.
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