Titusville High School football and the back-to-back state titles of 1982 and 1983

Titusville High School’s best football years came in the early 1980s, when it won Florida’s Class 3A state championship in 1982 and again in 1983. Titusville played three state finals in four seasons under coach Al Werneke, all at Draa Field in Titusville, according to the Florida High School Athletic Association’s championship records:

Season	Class	Result
1980	3A	Gainesville 21, Titusville 10
1982	3A	Titusville 33, Osceola 0
1983	3A	Titusville 28, Palatka 21

The coach who’d done it before

Werneke arrived with two state titles already. The same FHSAA records list him as the coach of Glades Central in Belle Glade when it won Class 3A in 1971, beating Haines City 13-10, and again in 1972, beating Milton 14-7. That makes four state championships at two schools. On the way to the 1980 final his Titusville team beat Glades Central, his old program, 13-6 in the sectional round.

The playoff runs

The record book’s year-by-year summaries show how lopsided the two title seasons were. In 1982 Titusville outscored four playoff opponents 116-14 and shut out three of them. In 1983 it was 126-28, with shutouts in the first two rounds.

Round	1980	1982	1983
District	Titusville 19, Bartow 0	Titusville 33, Lake Wales 0	Titusville 29, Fort Pierce Westwood 0
Regional	Titusville 31, Venice 0	Titusville 21, Naples 14	Titusville 36, Southeast (Bradenton) 0
Sectional	Titusville 13, Glades Central 6	Titusville 29, Homestead 0	Titusville 33, St. Thomas Aquinas 7
Final	Gainesville 21, Titusville 10 or 15	Titusville 33, Osceola 0	Titusville 28, Palatka 21

The 1980 final is printed two ways in the same FHSAA book: 21-10 in its list of championship games and 21-15 in its playoff summary for that season. Either way, Gainesville won.

The county’s titles

Titusville’s two championships are part of a long Brevard record. The FHSAA lists these state titles for other Brevard schools:

School	Seasons
Melbourne	1966 (2A)
Merritt Island	1972, 1978, 1979 (4A)
Palm Bay	2000 (6A), 2002 (4A)
Rockledge	2001, 2002 (3A)
Cocoa	2008 (3A), 2009, 2010 (2A), 2016 (4A), 2022, 2023 (2S), 2024 (2A)

Every playoff season since 1980

Since 1980 Titusville High appears in the record book’s playoff listings in ten seasons. After the title years it has won at least one playoff game in four more seasons, and the last two seasons ended against Brevard neighbors.

Season	Class	How far	Last game
1980	3A	State final	Lost to Gainesville
1982	3A	State champion	Beat Osceola, 33-0
1983	3A	State champion	Beat Palatka, 28-21
1984	3A	Regional playoffs	Lost to St. Petersburg, 21-9
1988	4A	Sectional playoffs	Lost to Niceville, 45-7
1995	5A	Regional first round	Lost to Seabreeze, 38-0
2014	5A	Regional quarterfinal	Lost to Bishop Moore, 24-7
2022	2S	Regional quarterfinal	Lost to Palm Bay, 44-27
2023	2S	Regional semifinal	Lost to South Sumter, 44-7
2024	3A	Regional semifinal	Lost to Eau Gallie, 44-7

The 1988 team won twice before Niceville, 19-0 over Seabreeze and 27-24 over Oviedo. In 2023 Titusville got its revenge on Palm Bay, 13-7, a year after losing to the Pirates, and in 2024 it beat Merritt Island 17-14 before Eau Gallie ended the season.

Astronaut High

Titusville’s other high school, Astronaut High, reached a state final too: it lost the 2000 Class 3A championship to Glades Central, 20-10, the FHSAA’s records show. It was Astronaut’s only trip to a state final: 57-0 over Hernando, 16-10 in overtime over Jefferson, 38-0 over Jesuit and 21-7 over Palatka in the semifinal. The year before, Astronaut had reached the state semifinals and lost to Suwannee, 31-14. In the years since, the school that has ended its seasons most often is Cocoa, in 2009, 2018 and 2019. The city it plays for had grown from 6,410 people in 1960 to 30,515 in 1970.

Further Reading

• Florida: A Short History by Michael Gannon