Phelps noted that the Lions emblem faces both forward and back, making it a fitting day to do some of each. He handed the microphone to Roger Holtkamp, who has been coming to the Pigskin Preview off and on for 48 years — first as a high school senior, later as a coach.
It started, Holtkamp said, with a “skinny little, tough, gritty high school senior” named Donnie Buckalew, who came to that first one with his father, Don Buckalew. The elder Buckalew — Buckalew Chevrolet owner, Conroe ISD board president and later a Lions International Director — who got things done, Holtkamp said, and “he didn’t wait on somebody else.”
When a shipment of jerseys arrived in the wrong shade of old gold and the superintendent refused to reorder, Buckalew saw to it that the team took the field the next week in new uniforms. “He did that for the community. He didn’t do that for him.”
Then there was the man whose name the event carries. Buddy Moorhead went 29-4-1 as head coach in a tenure cut far too short. Holcomb remembered a panel of coaches offering careful predictions until Moorhead got to the microphone: “Hell, I don’t know what y’all talking about. We’re going undefeated.”
Eight head coaches followed: Jim Rapp of The Woodlands, in his 36th year with the program; Tyler Blackshire of Oak Ridge; Taylor Cobb, new to Caney Creek and a 2003 Oak Ridge graduate who played for Coach Holtkamp; Michael Buro at College Park; Shaun McDowell of Grand Oaks, coming off the program’s first playoff win; Brandt Cooper of Montgomery; Cale Melton, new to Lake Creek; and Cedric Hardeman of Conroe, in his ninth year.
What stood out wasn’t the depth charts. Everyone turned quickly from personnel to purpose. Buro called football a counterweight to a culture built on self: “Pour out of yourself into your teammates.” Melton put it plainly: “It’s bigger than football. It’s about what they are 10, 15, 20 years down the road.” Hardeman builds Conroe’s program on ACTS — accountability, compete, trust, sacrifice — aimed less at Friday nights than at producing “successful husbands” and “successful community leaders.” Phelps summed the morning up in a list: discipline, effort, toughness, respect, ownership, leadership. That, he said, is “what these men are working to build in the next generation.”
Donnie Buckalew had the last word. In 1976, Conroe met the Longview Lobos for the regional championship at the Astrodome, needing one extra point to win. They missed. Forty-three years later, at a funeral reception full of former teammates, someone spotted the kicker across the room and called them out. In Texas, nothing about high school football ever really ends.
Club President Sharene Carr thanked the coaches and paid tribute to the Buckalews, then left a door open. “I believe the spirit of Pigskin is too meaningful to completely disappear. Perhaps one day you’ll see it reimagined in a new way for a new generation.” Fifty years, she said, “belongs to everyone who played a part in making it happen.”
The Conroe Noon Lions Club meets weekly at the Lone Star Convention Center. Visitors are welcome. For more information about membership or the club’s Community Partner program, visit conroenoonlions.org.