Oral History Interview with Raymond Clement, July 6, 1983 Page: 7
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Clement
7
thought it would be, you know, because I was a number one
athlete in Bowie High School, and everybody knew I'd be
All-American and all-everything because nobody could play
the game like I could. That's the way, you know, a small
town hero develops. So I come down here, and I found out
that I was a little ol' bitty kid. All of a sudden, I look
around, and everybody is bigger than me, older than me,
meaner than me, louder than me, tougher than me, better than
me. At least they've all got me convinced of that. So
after one week of it...to back up on the story, well, I
remember Odus Mitchell's first meeting. He called us in
down there, and he said, "All right, freshmen, I want you to
know we didn't bring you down here to be cannon fodder. We
brought you down here to educate you and to teach you." And
then from that moment on, we were cannon fodder. But (chuckle)
we were promised we wouldn't be. That's all we did, was line
up...and we had about twelve freshmen that could play, and
they put us on defense, and they'd run three ball clubs at
us--team number one, team number two, and team number three.
And play after play, hour after hour, they'd run those people
at you; and if you'd make a good play, the upper classmen
would come over and say, "You damn freshman, if you do that
again, I'll whip your ass after the workout. Do you under-
stand?" Now, hey, I hadn't had to go through that, where if
you do good you're fixing to get assaulted. And so we got
called all sorts of names, harassed, and picked on. I guess--
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Marcello, Ronald E. & Clement, Raymond. Oral History Interview with Raymond Clement, July 6, 1983, book, July 6, 1983; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth223649/m1/9/?q=%22%22~1&rotate=90: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Oral History Program.