The Legacy of Freeport Football
Fifty years after Freeport High School fielded its first football team, the players who started the program returned to campus this month — a reunion of men who had never played the game before 1976 and cleared rocks to build their own field.
Before Freeport had a football program to remember, its first players were clearing rocks to make a field. The team the school created in 1976 was a team of kids who had never played football, a team that struggled, a team other schools looked down on, and a team that had to fight to make a name for itself. The community had already decided who should lead it: Aubrey Rentz, who arrived at Freeport in 1963, coached the boys basketball team to a state championship in 1968, and had played his college football at Troy State University. When Freeport decided it wanted a football team, it wanted Rentz to run it.
The program he started became one piece of a coaching career that spanned four decades. Rentz started both the football and softball programs at Freeport and was the first head coach of each, coached the football team’s first three seasons, and stayed at the school until his retirement in 2003, per the Florida High School Athletic Association, which inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 2008. The Freeport High gymnasium has carried his name since 1995 — the Aubrey Rentz Gymnasium.
The first year was the hardest part. Building the football field from scratch was one obstacle, but the bigger one was that most of the players had never played before. Larry Burleson, number 61 and a defensive tackle, stood next to his original jersey and helmet at the reunion, lightly touching the plaque engraved with his name, and recalled how it began: “the first year was challenging. You had to create not only a team but the field. For most of us, our first experience with football was here under Coach Rentz and under Coach Moore.”
The stories around the tables kept coming back to discipline. Mike Burleson, Larry’s older brother, recalled the one time he skipped practice and Coach Moore’s response: “I’m not going to care enough to put you in the game Friday night.” He sat on the bench the whole game. “I have learned that lesson. I’ve thought about that lesson all this time,” he said. Player Mark Isaacs said the discipline the coaches instilled got him through the military, and Steve Melvin pointed to what stayed with him: “the camaraderie with the teammates and everything else playing together, getting to know everybody.”
The gathering had the marks of a milestone — blue icing from the celebration cake, plaques, and pictures of the players’ young selves, laughter over a grainy team photo as men tried to point out where they stood and, fifty years on, to remember their numbers. Freeport High has been marking the anniversary through Homecoming, announcing that members of the inaugural 1976 squad would serve as grand marshals of the parade and honorary captains at the game.
Coach Moore, on the verge of tears, told the room what the first seasons meant to him. “I’ve never been around a team that I’m more impressed with than what you guys did that first two, three years in football with absolute zero background,” he said, telling the players he hoped they realized what a remarkable accomplishment it was. A former player called out from the back, addressing the coaches in the room: “For better or for worse, we are your legacy.”
The program’s new head coach, Bobby Johns, was there to see it, and told the gathering he wished his current players could have been there to see what tradition means. “They don’t understand; this is what tradition is,” said Johns, whose first season leading the Bulldogs began with a weight-room-first rebuild of the program. While some of the first team’s members are no longer here to share in the reunion, the program’s lasting achievement was never only what happened on the scoreboard — it was the legacy and friendships a team of first-time football players built from a rock-strewn field fifty years ago.
Originally reported by Mid Bay News, with background from the FHSAA Hall of Fame and Early County News. Image: Mid Bay News.
