It Was A Ghost Town…
For 85 years, all the city of Chandler knew was its original high school. The success may not have always replicated the fervor, however.
On Valentine’s Day in 1912, Arizona was christened as the 48th state in the U.S. Later that year, a small town of Chandler was established by Dr. Alexander John Chandler.
A school of his namesake opened two years later, and in 1918 the school’s inaugural graduating class consisted of just three members — Nora Chitwood, Bruce H. Robinson and Ernest J. Koch Jr.
Chandler High School has come a long way since, becoming one of the state and nation’s most esteemed secondary institutions and evolving just as the nation has. The school catered to the needs of an entire, vast city that was largely dependent on cotton farming.
The school, who used the Wolves as their mascot, had no real claim to athletic accomplishment through their first 35 years. That is, until the Clarence Skousen-coached Wolves football program posted its first state championship with an undefeated 1949 campaign.
The team, led by senior running back Bobby Tarwater and a stout defense that allowed no more than 21 points in a game all season, ran through their class and made easy work of most of their schedule.
In a state expected to be dominated by Tempe High School, the Wolves rallied off dominant victories over Globe and Eloy, also holding off close victories over programs such as Florence to enter the final game of the regular season undefeated.
Fittingly, they would face Tempe, who also stood undefeated. With no playoff system in place, the game would decide who would claim the Arizona Class B state championship.
After jumping out to an early 7–0 lead, disaster struck for the Wolves. Tarwater, the team’s leading rusher and captain, suffered a broken collarbone. They fumbled twice near the goal line before the end of the half, but were sparked by a blocked punt in the second half as they would hold on for a 14–7 victory.
According to the Chandler Arizonan, “the edge [was] more convincing than the score indicates.”
After the win, the Chandler High School yearbook, the Wolf Howl, stated, “This is a team that will go down in the history of Chandler High as one of the greatest.”
It was the last taste of success seen at the school for years.
Four years later, a new home was found for the football program. Just a short walk away from the main campus of Chandler High School was the new “frosting on the cake that is CHS,” Austin Field. The facility was named in honor of W.G. Austin, a Chandler High School alumnus and former school administrator and football coach.
Sitting at the northwest corner of Nebraska Street and Erie Street, the new facility was nestled amidst the surrounding neighborhoods of the school, instantly becoming a unique venue to watch high school sports.
The beautiful new field would age a generation before it witnessed a winning football program, taking almost 30 years to make their first playoff berth after Austin Field was built. It took a journeyman coach and along with his son, a quarterback who would go on to have a much different role in the program’s history than originally anticipated.
Delvin Schutes had moved him family around quite a bit in his coaching career. By the time his son, Deke, was approaching the age when he was to attend high school, he had already lived in two different states. But he had no clue where he was headed next.
“We were from Oklahoma originally, then my dad coached in New Mexico for a while,” Deke Schutes said. “Then the principal in New Mexico, Howard Conley, went to Chandler High. Chandler wasn’t doing well every year, so he’d be calling my dad to ask if he wanted to coach Chandler. So between my seventh and eighth grade year, my dad says we’re moving out to Chandler.
“So of course, I wanted to find out about Chandler, and not only had they not won championships since 1949, they hadn’t been to the playoffs since 1949. I was wondering why in the world we were going there for? They don’t win.”
The status quo would not stay for long, as while the Wolves were ineligible to make the postseason in 1981, they made it all the way to the state quarterfinals in Delvin Schutes’ second season as head coach.
At the time, that was like winning a state championship for the city of Chandler,” Deke Schutes said. “I mean, they hadn’t been to the playoffs since 1949. If you made the playoffs back then, it wasn’t like it is today where 16 teams made it. They didn’t have 16 teams making it, because there was like 50 teams in the region. Now you have 28 teams, and 16 that will make it. It wasn’t like that back then, so everybody in the whole city of Chandler was going nuts.”
It was two years later when Deke himself was at the helm of the Chandler offense, with Delvin Schutes’ option offense taking the Wolves all the way to the state semifinals. In that matchup against Tucson Sahuaro, Chandler trailed 14–7 with just about two minutes remaining. After the Wolves scored again to cut the deficit to one, they went for two and a win that would send them to the state championship game. It failed, robbing Chandler of a state title bid.
Regardless, the Delvin Schutes had changed the outlook of the program.
“It became where Chandler was a school that had to be reckoned with,” Deke Schutes said. “It was no longer the team that you were like, ‘Oh we’re heading out to Chandler? We’re going to win that game.’ I think my dad was, he ran the option, he was kind of new to this area running that type of offense that he did and I think that because he was such a good coach he kind of put Chandler on the map.
“When I was playing, everybody was really into Chandler football because they had been winning games and being competitive and making the playoffs, making the semis. They hadn’t done that in 40 years, so it gave them something they could be proud of.”
Once Delvin Schutes stepped away from the football program, the Wolves again slipped into obscurity. It took until Jerry Loper took over in the mid-1990s that Chandler again returned to that state semifinal game, falling to Mountain View in triple overtime in 1996.
Before they knew it, disaster would strike again.
