The Legacy of the Lost Lettermen: Aggies through and through

Watch Lost Lettermen, a short film from TexAgs Production Group about the 1981 Texas A&M men's soccer team.

They were passionate, driven and competitive. They were dedicated, determined athletes who proudly wore the Texas A&M uniform. It was just the wrong uniform.

In one promising season, they laid the foundation of what could be, but never was. They were 7-and-forgotten.

In 1981, its inaugural — and only — men’s varsity soccer season, Texas A&M was 7-4-3. The Aggies were unbeaten in Southwest Conference play and challenged powerful SMU for the conference championship.

The future appeared bright. Then, the future disappeared.

Long before cash poured in from luxurious 100,000-seat football stadiums, national television contracts and conference networks, college athletic departments often struggled to generate revenue. Back then, football coaches earned relatively modest incomes.

That is until January of 1982 when Texas A&M lured Jackie Sherrill away from Pittsburgh for a then-unheard-of six-year, $1.7 million contract.

Funding that salary and all the other upgrades the football program needed wouldn’t be easy for an athletic department that often struggled to build revenue. Not too long before, A&M was playing an annual football game against LSU in Baton Rouge so as to get a big payday.

Tough decisions loomed. Cuts would have to be made.

The following August, soccer coach Telmo Franco was unceremoniously notified his program was reverting back to “club sport” status.

“On the day we got the news, I was driving to practice and heard on the radio that the sport had been dropped, and that's how I found out, on the car radio driving to practice,” said Paul Winston, the team captain. “Literally the rug was pulled out from underneath us.”

Young men who came to A&M from as far away as Peru and El Salvador to play big-time collegiate soccer — some who had turned down scholarships to other programs —  were suddenly without a varsity team.

“I was especially upset for some younger freshmen guys that were recruited to play soccer, and their careers were cut right there,” said Ernesto Walsh, a star player from El Salvador.

Coach Franco immediately left Texas A&M. Some players did, too. But most stayed. They played club soccer. They attended class. They received their Aggie rings. They graduated. They remained loyal to Texas A&M.

Whether Texas A&M remained loyal to them is subject to debate. Of course, A&M is not the only university to drop a program for financial reasons. Several universities of dropped baseball. Some have ended football programs.

However, for 35 years those soccer players have been denied recognition as lettermen by A&M.

Maybe they’ve been dismissed or forgotten because they played just one season. But former football players Isaiah Golden and Darian Claiborne were listed as All-Time lettermen despite playing just one season. Soccer players like Eduardo Palomo and Ernesto Walsh played one varsity season, graduated from Texas A&M and went on to successful business careers. Golden and Claiborne played one season and went to jail.

Then there is the argument that the ’81 soccer team was never officially declared a varsity sport, and therefore, the players were never officially lettermen. That argument would be hard to win in court, though. There is too much evidence to suggest otherwise.

An Oct. 7, 1981 headline in The Battalion declared: Varsity status awarded to A&M soccer programs. In the article, Interim Athletic Director Wally Groff was quoted: “I’m going to treat them as I would any other athletic team.”

Perry Hawley

Members of the 1981 Texas A&M varsity soccer team and head coach Telmo Franco gathered on campus in September for a reunion and the premiere of Lost Lettermen.

An Oct. 8, 1981 article in the Bryan-College Station Eagle reported: “Wally Groff, interim athletic director at Texas A&M University, announced both men’s and women’s soccer would be elevated to intercollegiate status on a one-year trial basis.”

Southwest Conference soccer standings listed A&M finishing second to SMU with a 4-0-3 conference record.

A Texas A&M soccer pamphlet included a message from Groff, which read: “The Athletic Department at Texas A&M University proudly recognizes the newest member of its intercollegiate family — Soccer. The popularity of soccer in the United States and particularly in Texas has been overwhelming in recent years. Consequently, we are pleased that the coaches, administration and fans of Texas A&M University have had the foresight to elevate soccer from a club to an intercollegiate sport.”

Despite what seems to be overwhelming evidence, some at A&M dispute that soccer was ever a varsity sport and, therefore, that the players were ever lettermen. That’s bothersome, even hurtful, to those former players.

“No matter what happened with the program, no matter what the agreements were — the he-said-she-said between Coach Franco, between Jackie, the athletic department, Wally Groff, all of those folks — that’s fine,” Winston said. “The way the program ended … it ended. But for that one year we were varsity athletes at Texas A&M. Take everything else out of the equation, we were varsity athletes and we deserve to letter.”

Sherrill’s hiring and salary might have meant the end of the soccer program, but it would mark a new beginning for the football program. Four years later, the Aggies won the Southwest Conference football championship for the first time in a decade. It was the first of three consecutive conference titles won under Sherrill. Sherrill was also 5-2 against Texas, a record not lost on the former soccer players.

"I was thinking about this subject,” Walsh said recently. “I said, 'If our varsity status provided some funds to beat t.u., that is fine and okay with me. I'm even-steven.'"

Were they lettermen? Probably. Are they Aggies? Definitely.

Watch Lost Lettermen, a short film from TexAgs Production Group about the 1981 Texas A&M men's soccer team.