Montrose Sports Association


On June 25, 1978
Town Meeting I was held at the Houston
Astroarena, adjacent to the Astrodome, with close to 4000 attending.
From this landmark networking effort a number of community
organizations were founded, including the Gay & Lesbian Switchboard,
the Montrose Counseling Center (now, just called the Montrose Center),
the Hispanic Caucus and the Montrose Sports Association.


Clippings          Bowling          Newsletters          Photos

The MSA quickly came to include a number of different sports categories,
including bowling, softball (men and women's), tennis, volleyball, golf,
racketball, billiards, and perhaps others. And things flourished...for a while.

There's not clear documentation of what caused MSA to end, but I gather
there were strong personalities at play. And also, it must have been
difficult to corral a number of different sports players into one organization.
For example, tennis players may not care a whit about softball, so may not
have seen a reason to care about an umbrella group.

While I could find a great number of clippings about individual sports, there
was not much about the overall MSA organization and any problems, but here
are three early articles with general information. These go up to 1980. And then,
skip ahead to 1986 for an interview with founder Nick Escobedo on their tenth
anniversary. A year later it is obvious things are declining, as related in a letter
letter to the editor from Bowling League President Phil Blakeway.

In 1983 the Montrose Softball League Association (MSLA) broke away
from MSA, forming its own organization, still going strong.

  

Founding dates get fuzzy, especially with different sports. Nick may have been
correct with volleyball starting in 1976, and bowling in 1979, but MSA had its
incorporation (see previous article) in May 1980.


a year later...

TWT Guide listings for organizations give MSA listing for the week of July 3, 1987
and then, gone the next week...so I am taking this as the ending point of MSA as
an umbrella group.