Harry Breeden, A Man Among Boys: The Player Who Put Central High Football on the Map

CENTRAL — Football, bright lights, fall breezes, blood, sweat, and sometimes even tears.  This is the story of a man who paved the way for Central Wildcat football.

In 1946, Willard Jackson was given the okay to start the first-ever football team for Central High School.  In doing so, he had to find some talent who knew anything about how the game of football was played.  In those days, Central was mostly farms.  Coach Jackson knew he had to have something to build around but he didn’t know what until he hung the sign up for the first football practice.  After stapling the sign on the bulletin board, he made a quick turn around and ran right into the biggest guy on campus trying to read what he was putting on the board.

Coach asked, son, what is your name.  My name is Harry Breeden.  Would you like to play football?  Yes sir, I would!

Coach Jackson knew that if this young man had any kind of talent he had a big man to build around.  Boy, was he right!  Coach Jackson listed him at 6’3” and 235 pounds, knowing the whole time that he was at least 6’6” and 260 or more.  But, in those days, that was the coach’s secret.

The first thing the coach had to do was order him a football helmet, because none of those on hand fit his head!  It didn’t take many practices before the scouts from other high schools were watching #23 — the big man for Central.

After practice one day, a car drove up to Harry’s house off Hooper Road. A man from a respectable business that is still operating today offered Harry a brand new car and free gas if he would come and play ball for Istrouma High School.  You know, that had to be hard to turn down, coming from a small and not well off farm with just chickens and cows.

But Harry looked at the man and told him that “Central is where my heart is!”  From then on, he was known all over as “Big Harry.”  He went on to be Central’s first All-State lineman, played offense at right tackle, nose guard on defense, held the ball for kicks and when the team was struck down with boils, he blew open holes from the fullback position for a much-needed score to win the game.

The opponents tried everything from double teaming to triple teaming to try to stop the big man.  They even brought in junior college players in one game before getting caught and having to forfeit the game.

Big Harry went on to be the first student athlete to receive a sports or music scholarship to any college from Central High School.  He attended LSU and played for the Fighting Tigers.  With all the limelight and the things that go with the fame of being an LSU football player, it never changed Harry Breeden.

He was a true Christian gentleman who served God and his church, Zoar Baptist Church, where he was a deacon.  Always visiting the sick in hospitals and serving the needs of the pastor, he never forgot his home.

For Big Harry, it wasn’t just about football.  It was about God, home, family, and Central.

He set a standard for future Wildcats that lives on today.

Harry O. Breeden, Sr., died on Feb. 29, 2009.