Truckin' on the Western Branch

DID YOU KNOW? Why Churchlanders are “Truckers”? At least two other schools—Norwalk High in Norwalk, Ohio, and Clintonville High School in Clintonville, Wisconsin—share the Trucker nickname. But both of those were named for local truck factories that were major school benefactors. In Churchland, the name honors the truck farmers who devoted their lives to “making truck”—

vegetables, fruit and flowers, notably daffodils. The truckers loaded their market crops onto barges and schooners in the Elizabeth River to be carried to metropolitan markets and railheads in Baltimore and points north.

Images by Sheally

Bill Leffler, longtime sportswriter with The Virginian-Pilot remembered that Charles “Shotgun” Brown, football coach at Churchland High during the championship years of the mid-1950s, was not happy with the Trucker name and sought to have it changed. When the question was put to a student vote, however, the football players were the only ones voting for a change. The name continues today. Why a Bruin is the Western Branch High School mascot? According to retired principal Art Brandriff, the students who opened the new school voted for the Bruins from a choice of names that included the Trojans and the Eagles. Ironically Brandriff, who is color blind, selected the navy blue and old gold school colors after seeing a Sports Illustrated magazine cover that featured a New Orleans Saints’ helmet and liking the colors he thought were blue and gold. Only 15 years later did he discover that the Saints’ colors are really black and gold.

“But actually I like the navy and gold colors better—always have,” Brandriff said.

That the Churchland Truckers’ 1954–55 record of an undefeated, untied, and unscored upon football season still stands? Sixty years after their record-setting season, the surviving players continue to meet twice a month for lunch, a bit of banter, and a few nods to their glory days with the late Charles “Shotgun” Brown as their coach. Slade Phillips was the assistant coach and assistant principal. Now 92 years old, Phillips still drives many of the players to lunch. Captain Robert Carney Powers, USN retired, moved to Churchland as a sophomore in high school and played center on the team for Shotgun Brown. Powers wrote and published a novel, The Perfect Season , based on the team and remembered— Thirty guys were on the football team and we played both ways—with no face masks. Fifteen really knew how to play; the others just filled out the uniforms. I weighed 155 on a good day, but in 1954 we had the big guys, the Jolliff farm boys. We loved Shotgun—he was a character, tough and mean. He taught us a work ethic and a dedication that influenced us for the rest of our lives—you never walked in uniform, you ran. Summer

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