Desi Najera’s football career almost ended before it really began.
The former senior all-state quarterback for the 1969 Brownsville High Golden Eagles was all but ready to give up football as a freshman a few years earlier at Faulk Junior High (now Faulk Middle School) so he could walk home his girlfriend after school.
Najera figured he couldn’t have it both ways — either he was going to be practicing with the football team when the school day ended or he’d be escorting young Miss Carmen Guerra, also a freshman, to her residence several blocks away from the Faulk campus.
“That was very nice of him, right?” said Carmen, looking back to those long ago junior high days of 1966 and Desi’s after school offer.
No doubt about it, Najera was clearly smitten by Cupid’s arrow.
“I met Carmen and it wasn’t long before I asked her if I could walk her home after school,” Najera said. “She had to get permission from her dad. I walked her home a couple of times and I was ready to give up everything (including football for her).”
That’s when Faulk coach Frank Gonzales stepped in to save the day.
Recognizing Najera’s talent for playing football, particularly as a /running back/quarterback, Gonzales came up with a compromise solution.
“‘I remember Coach Gonzales saying, ‘I tell you what I’ll do for you,’” Najera said. “He said, ‘I’ll give you 15 minutes to walk her home, then you can run back over here as your warmup, get dressed (into your football gear) and meet us on the field.”
It was an unexpected arrangement that sounded almost too good to be true to the young athlete.
“I said, ‘Yes, that’ll work,’” Najera told his coach, elated in knowing he could keep his girlfriend and play football, too.
“It was my freshman year, I was getting older then, and it was that time in the mid-1960s when I first really started paying attention to girls,” Najera said. “It sure was great of Coach Gonzales to allow me to do that.
“I wouldn’t be here today (being interviewed about my football days) if it wasn’t for my junior high coach,” Najera added.
Gonzales believed the young athlete had a bright future in high school at QB. Najera had played all his junior high games at running back until his last one as a ninth-grader when he was switched to signal caller and threw a long touchdown pass while running the ball well on QB keepers.
That showing confirmed what Gonzales had thought all along about Najera. The Faulk coach soon suggested to Brownsville High coach Joe Rodriguez that he might want to give Najera a shot at playing QB in high school.
Sure enough, Najera received his chance at QB and flourished in his role as a three-year starter for the Golden Eagles. As a senior in 1969, he earned second-team all-state recognition after passing for approximately 1,300 yards and rushing for more than 1,000 yards while scoring a ton of touchdowns.
With his agility and speed, Najera led the 1969 Eagles to a 10-2 record as Brownsville High reached the Class 4A state regional round of the playoffs after winning the District 26-4A title.
In the process, Najera, playing at 6 feet, 175 pounds and wearing jersey No. 11, became known in Brownsville football history as one of the city’s best all-time QBs.
And what became of young Miss Carmen Guerra?
On June 30, 1972, she became Mrs. Desi Najera. The couple’s 45-year marriage has produced six grown children, all of whom are college educated and working at professional jobs.
But that’s another story.
SIMPLY AN AMAZING TEAM
The 1969 Eagles were by no means Brownsville’s first football squad to win a district championship, but their team is considered one of the city’s all-time best. It was a squad that went 10-2 overall with a 6-1 mark in District 26-4A at a time when only one school from each conference advanced to the playoffs.
Just like every other successful team, it was a group of talented players, mostly seniors, who came together to achieve a common goal.
The players from the 1969 team are pretty much all in their mid-60s now, and many have retired. Despite the passage of time, they recall their high school days and their landmark season of 48 years ago as if it was only yesterday.
Najera, one of 11 players to sign a scholarship to play college football from the 1969 team, is well-remembered because he was the dual-threat quarterback who passed for approximately 1,300 yards and rushed for more than 1,000. As a senior that year, he rushed for 19 touchdowns and passed for 12.
Najera always emphasizes that he was surrounded by many standout teammates throughout the lineup who all contributed to the success the Eagles enjoyed that season.
Most notably, there was Ruben Fernandez, a tough-as-nails fullback/defensive back who wound up earning first-team all-state honors for his play in the secondary. Fernandez went on to play at Sam Houston State for one year before hanging up his cleats and graduating from the University of Houston in 1974.
A team that averaged 37.2 points per game during the regular season, the Eagles ranked as one of the state’s top-scoring squads, if not the most prolific. Najera tied for the Rio Grande Valley lead in scoring that season with 118 points. Fernandez, also the Eagles’ kicker, was third in the Valley with 109 points. Fernandez kicked five field goals as a senior.
“We were all great teammates since the time that we were sophomores and we formed lifetime friendships,” said Fernandez, who taught and coached at Hanna for 30-plus years and is now retired and in the process of moving from Austin to Phoenix. “We had a great group of players who paid the price. It was basically a team that was together for three years.”
When Joe Rodriguez took over as Brownsville High’s coach before the 1967 season, a vast majority of upperclassmen loyal to previous coach Jack Schultz left the team. That meant the starters in 1967 were just about all sophomores, a group that included Fernandez and Najera.
Thus began a journey to a district championship two seasons later.
“We had 24 sophomores (in 1967) and we went 0-9,” said Rodriguez, who later became Brownsville ISD’s athletic director and a multi-term school board member. “The only thing that kept us from being 0-10 was Hurricane Beulah (in September of that year).
“We got massacred, really,” Rodriguez added. “But we told the players ‘Those who stay will become champions,’ and they did.”
The turnaround started in 1968 when the Eagles went 6-4 and played for the district title. Although they didn’t get it, losing out to Alice, they were motivated to do even better the following season as seniors.
“The seeds of success were planted in the offseason with our intensive weightlifting program and with a lot of running and conditioning,” said Mike Goode, a center/outside linebacker for the 1969 Eagles who now works as a land manager for an oil and gas business and lives outside of Magnolia, Texas. “The kids who were skinny as sophomores beefed up and we became a really good team.
“We came back from 0-9 to go 6-4 (as juniors),” added Goode, who went on to play center at Rice University before earning his college degree in 1974. “We had the word ‘Remember’ taped on our helmets (in 1968). The guys developed a real sense of pride. We were out for vengeance (after going 0-9) and we freaked people out.”
The Eagles won their final three games of 1968 and came into the 1969 season on a roll, outscoring their first four opponents 144-25 by defeating Laredo Nixon (24-0), Mercedes (40-6), Weslaco (40-19) and Kingsville (40-0). The Eagles’ record increased to 7-0 with wins against McAllen (64-28), Harlingen (27-0) and Alice (31-22).
A 27-22 setback against Pharr-San Juan-Alamo marked Brownsville High’s only regular-season loss. The Eagles rebounded with victories against Edinburg (36-7) and San Benito (48-0) to take a 9-1 record into the playoffs.
“We believed in each other and we didn’t want to let down our teammates,” Goode said. “We always expected to win every time we took the field.”
Added Mike Casas, a defensive end/tight end who now is retired and living in Jersey Village outside of Houston, “We stuck together the whole time. The coaching staff was basically the same (during those years) and they got us to do the best we could.”
Out of high school, Casas and fellow linemen Walter Adams and Joe Petrarca signed to play at West Texas State. Casas eventually graduated from the University of Houston in 1975.
ALL-DISTRICT HONORS
Najera, Fernandez and teammate Charlie Hernandez, a flanker, earned unanimous all-district selections in 1969.
Other Eagles receiving all-district honors that season included linemen Casas, Adams, Petrarca, Lalo Sanchez, Richard Olivares, Mike Saldana and Joe Gaspar, linebacker Goode, flanker Danny Salinas, defensive backs Albert Trevino and Lonnie Robinson, and running back Johnny “O” Olvera, a sophomore who topped 1,000 yards rushing and wore jersey No. 0.
Also on the Eagles’ roster were tight end Eddie de los Santos and defensive lineman Cesar Moreno.
“It was one of the most satisfying times of my life playing on that team,” said Olvera, who now lives in Keller, a suburb of Fort Worth. “It was just a great experience. It was a well-oiled and established senior team when I came to it and I was able to join in and add the right type of oil to help them out.”
Along with Rodriguez as the head coach, the coaching staff included Albert Ortiz, Ramon L. Rodriguez, A. Hector Garcia, Gonzalo Garcia, Tom Chavez, Lorenzo Sanchez and Leo Garza.
Najera gives a lot of credit to the coaching staff for the team’s success.
“Coach Joe knew the potential we had and the coaches molded us,” Najera said. “They were like our second dads and they kept us together.”
In the playoffs, the Eagles came from behind to defeat Corpus Christi Miller 25-15 in bi-district before a packed crowd of 10,000-plus fans at Sams Memorial Stadium. Miller had a talented team with three future NFL players.
The Eagles then lost to Seguin 47-14 in the regional round to finish the season 10-2.
A memorable play from the playoffs took place against Miller when the Eagles trailed 15-10 and faced a fourth-and-two situation from their 39-yard line with 9:14 remaining. During a timeout, Najera came to the sideline to talk to Rodriguez and it was decided to try to run for a first down rather than punt.
Najera remembers telling his coach, “Let me run it, I can make it,” meaning he could get the first down.
So the call was made as Rodriguez replied, “Are you sure? OK, run it.”
The speedy, shifty quarterback kept the ball out of the Eagles’ Houston Veer and ran to his left, which was the short side of the field. He put a move on a defender at the line, saw an opening and sprinted 61 yards down the sideline to the end zone.
“I knew I could get the first down, but I wasn’t expecting to go all the way,” Najera said. “I told (running back) Johnny (O) not to clamp down too hard on the ball (on the possible handoff) because I might be keeping it myself and taking off.”
A two-point conversion pass from Najera to de los Santos gave the Eagles an 18-15 advantage.
Two minutes later, Fernandez scored a TD on a 1-yard plunge and booted the extra point to make the final score 25-15. A fumble recovery by Trevino at the Miller 24 following a muffed punt by the Bucs set up Fernandez’s insurance score.
The Eagles again won the coin flip and returned to Sams the following week to play Seguin in front of another 10,000-plus fans in the second round of the playoffs.
This time, however, the magic came to an end for the Eagles. The two teams were tied 14-14 at halftime, but the Matadors pulled away in the second half to win 47-14 and the Eagles’ memorable campaign came to a close.
Almost 50 years later, the players still smile when they think about their 1969 season and like to recall even the smallest of details.
“Eddie de los Santos and I alternated at tight end and we brought in the plays, but Desi was always changing them,” said Casas jokingly.
THE GREAT DEBATE
Brownsville has witnessed its share of standout quarterbacks over the years, and the question arises, who should be considered the city’s all-time best player at the position?
It’s an ongoing discussion with no clear answers.
Candidates for the honor come from various eras with different styles of play.
Just a few of them who could be considered in the conversation are Brownsville High’s Larry Kveton (1959), Brownsville High’s Eddie Vaughan (1962), Pace’s Danny Alvarez (1980), Pace’s David Bryan (1981), Porter’s Adrian Moya (2008) and Rivera’s J.J. Sanchez (2010) along with current signal callers Kai Money of St. Joseph Academy and Gustavo Vasquez of Brownsville Veterans Memorial.
Then of course, there are the two players who frequently dominate the discussion of who is/was the city’s top QB — Desi Najera of the 1969 Eagles and Billy Garza of the 2003 Porter Cowboys.
Because of the talent they showed in high school, Najera and Garza, a 3,185-yard passer with 38 TDs as a senior, each attracted plenty of interest when recruiting time arrived. Najera went to Texas A&I and Garza chose the University of Illinois, although “Billy the Kid” eventually finished out his college career playing for the Javelinas at Texas A&M-Kingsville, which previously was A&I.
Najera, a 1970 Brownsville High graduate, perhaps went through one of most active college recruitments of any city athlete before or since his time in the spotlight. From an Eagles team that sent 11 players on to play in college, Najera himself received 26 scholarship offers and personally shook hands with iconic coaches Darrell Royal and Bear Bryant during the recruiting process.
Najera decided to stay close to home and attend A&I, where he played for the Javelinas two seasons. As a sophomore QB, he started against Trinity University in 1971 and passed for 192 yards while rushing for 141 yards. His combined yardage of 333 yards set an individual school record at the time for single-game total offense and earned him recognition in Sports Illustrated’s “Faces in the Crowd.” The magazine awarded him a golden bowl, which has become a prized possession.
But Najera’s time at A&I ended after only two years. He gave thought to transferring to a college in Livingston, Alabama, or going to New Mexico Highlands, and even visited Monterrey Tech in Mexico. But those playing possibilities never panned out.
“I guess the Good Lord had other plans for me,” Najera said. “I don’t have any regrets.”
He returned to Brownsville, got married in 1972 to his freshman sweetheart Carmen and started a family. He became a Brownsville fireman just like his father, Israel Najera. It was a career that spanned almost 20 years in the fire department before he went to work as a manager for Cameron County. He later taught at his son’s (Desi Jr.’s) Christian school.
In 1995, Najera earned his college degree from the University of Texas at Brownsville with a major in kinesiology and a minor in history.
He retired in 2015 and continues to work from time to time as a substitute teacher in Brownsville ISD.
Yes, the years have passed, and once in a while when he’s substitute teaching, a football coach at one of the local schools will want to introduce him to a group of younger student-athletes who come from a much different generation.
Najera usually goes along with the coach’s wishes, and tells him, “I don’t think they really know or care who I am, and that’s OK. They weren’t even born yet (when I played).”
Desi says life is good and he and his wife are enjoying retirement and the freedom they have to visit their six children in and out of the Valley.
He’s heard all the comparisons between himself and other Brownsville QBs, particularly Garza, regarding who was the best. He has no opinion on the matter other than to say he is honored to be part of the discussion.
Najera, who turns 66 in November, never saw Garza play for Porter back in the early 2000s, but he went to see “Billy the Kid” play for the Javelinas in 2008 or 2009 in Kingsville. Garza also later played Arena ball and now coaches at Pace.
“Billy had the arm,” Najera said. “I remember thinking they could have maybe utilized him more (with the ball). He could run it, but of course, nowadays they try to protect the quarterback a lot more and you don’t see them carrying the ball all that much. I missed out watching him in high school, but I knew he was a playmaker. I’d read the articles in the paper and I knew he had a lot of potential.
“Billy had good height, a good arm and good running skills,” Najera added. “I was impressed with his ability to run the offense.”
All in all, Najera said he simply feels grateful to have played football when he did and have the teammates and coaches he had.
“I feel blessed to have been a part of that 1969 team and those teams of the previous two seasons,” he said. “The guys became great men. They were disciplined, dedicated and awesome teammates. I still respect the camaraderie we had and the efforts that were put into that team, individually and together. It was all a team effort. We didn’t see ourselves as individuals.
“We all had our job to do and we did it,” he added. “I really feel blessed and happy to have been a part of it and to learn the important lessons we learned. Those are the kinds of things that follow you through life and you always carry them with you.”
Roy Hess covers sports for The Brownsville Herald. You can reach him via email at [email protected]. On Twitter he’s @HessRgehess