Rusty Russell became famous as the football coach at Masonic Home, a school for orphans in Fort Worth. The “Mighty Mites” often played and defeated schools with much larger players and enrollments. Starting in 1932 Masonic Home was allowed, by a special vote of Fort Worth’s 7A district schools, to “play up” and join the district. Competing in the state’s largest classification, Russell used a wide-open spread offense to negate his team’s lack of size. His brilliant 16 year run at Masonic Home that included – a class B title in 1931, a loss to Corsicana in the 1932 state championship game on penetrations, and three other trips to the semi-finals. Russell served as President of the Texas High School Coaches Association in 1935-36. He later coached at Highland Park from 1942-1944 where he tutored Bobby Layne and Doak Walker. After serving five seasons as an assistant coach at SMU Russell accepted the head job from 1950-1952. Russell also coached at Schreiner College (1953) and Victoria Jr. College (1954-1960) and Howard Payne (1962-63). He is a member of the Texas Sports Hall of Fame (198. Russell was inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in 1971. 1) and the THSCA Hall of Honor (1961). Russell’s career high school coaching record was 181-40-14.
In 1942 Rusty Russell found himself in the unique position of serving as head coach at two schools during the same season. After signing a contract with Highland Park to coach the 1942 season, Russell agreed to continue coaching the Masonic Home “Mighty Mites” on the weekends halfway through the season because they could not find a coach during the war. His two teams might have met in the playoffs but Masonic Home lost out in a three-way tie for the district title. Russell said of the unique arrangement “I just couldn’t let the fellows down at the Home.”
