WAUNAKEE…THE EARLY YEARS

I was working on a future blog when I ran into some very interesting facts about the Waunakee football program. What I found pointed me toward looking up early history of the program in the Wisconsin State Journal and the Capitol Times newspapers. First, I was trying to get season by season records for the school. I emailed the athletic department for help and they said that their historian would get in touch with me but alas, he never did. I looked for old year books online and only found one at Yearbooks - High School, College and University Yearbooks Online (e-yearbook.com) and that was the 1949 edition but the brief story led me to a big discovery. In the brief recap of the 1948 season, it was mentioned that after playing 6-man football for several years that in 1949 they would begin playing 11-man (Sorry I’m not politically correct but I grew up with the term 11-man and not 11-player. I’m calling it “man” for now).

Next, by chance I found a link to the school’s football records that went back to 1947. This link gave me the information I needed for their season by season 11-man record. It was quite impressive to look at the history. I knew really only the Pat Rice coaching history and that has been spectacular but what the school teams of the earlier years blew me away. So, I dug deeper and did searches on Historical Newspapers from 1700s-2000s - Newspapers.com looking at the 1930’s and 40’s. The first mention of Waunakee football was in 1939. Now, I digress a bit.

On May 7, 1938, Walter Ott of Coleman talked about his “invention”, 6-man football. He was a guest speaker at what was billed as the First Annual Football Clinic in the University of Wisconsin field house. Athletic Director and head Football Coach Harry Stuhldreher instituted the clinic as a way to help all coaches in the state to learn more about the sport. Both of the Madison papers touted the event and expected that there would be between 450 and 500 coaches attending at least one day of the event. Stuhldreher would speak as well as Harvard coach Dick Harlow, Green Bay East coach Tom Hearden, Milwaukee Washington Lisle Blackbourne, Russell Leksell of Rhinelander. Harry Conley of Superior Central and former Badger freshman coach Glenn (Pat) Holmes who was now at Oak Park H.S. in Illinois. Other notable speakers were on the schedule as well. The clinic was expected to draw coaches from Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota.

While Ott was billed as the inventor of 6-man football he actually was just the first in Wisconsin to adopt the new game from information he learned from the sport being played in Nebraska where it was actually invented by Stephen Epler of Chester, NE. in 1934. Epler’s experiment: 90 years later, six-man football still small-town king - Flatwater Free Press. The version of the sport became popular in the 1930’s and 40’s and is still played in several states in particular Texas.

After the clinic some schools with low pupal numbers in this state adopted the new football version. Looking at some old Waunakee yearbooks the high school only had between 120-150 students during the period of 1939-48. In fact, in the 1949 yearbook I only counted 150 students and 10 teachers. With the help of three people from the Waunakee public library I got more details on the history of the school. It opened in 1904 and before that high school students took a train to Lodi for classes. In 1935 there were 69 students in school from Waunakee and Westport. By 1939 the school had 75 students with some coming from Springfield, Dane or Vienna. It was now time to play football.

6-man became very popular in the southeast region of the state, but it also did well in the northern part of Wisconsin. 1939 rolled around and teams covered by the Madison papers were embracing 6-man. Necedah, Wonewoc, Elroy, Hillsboro, Deerfield, Cambria, De Forest, Brooklyn, Poynette, Black Earth and Waunakee started that year. In fact, Waunakee defeated Deerfield 32-20 as Sam Murphy scored twice and dropkicked an extra point in their first ever game on September 22. The next week turned out to be a disaster as they lost to De Forest 31-0. The number of area teams were limited that season, so teams often played each other twice. It was a start. Verona, Arena, Spring Green, Mazomanie, Sauk City, Prairie du Sac, Lodi South Wayne, Argyle, Hazel Green, Shullsburg, Benton, Belmont, Camp Douglas and Viola all joined in and there were multiple conferences…the Juneau County 6-Man, Blackhawk 6-Man, the 6-Man Independent and later in 1941 the Suburban 6-Man Conference was formed and some former 11-man schools from the Tri-County, the Duel County League and the State-Line League dropped down to 6-man. Over the next few years some schools would move back to 11-man and others would play both in the same season. In 1950 most schools had dropped 6-man and as I have said, moved back to 11-man football but in the Madison newspaper coverage area 8-man was introduced with Montfort, Highland, Barneveld and Livingston forming the Iowa County League.

After a final 4-2 6-man record in 1948 the school opened their 11-man play in 1949 with a 14-0 loss to Mazomanie. They would go on to a 1-5 season. From 1949 to 2023 (75 years) the Waunakee Warriors have had only 10 losing campaigns. The school started slowly, going 3-3-1 in 1950, 1-5-0 in 1951 and 1-7-0 in 1952. But, in 1953, after three coaches over the past four years the school brought in a future Wisconsin Coaches Association Hall of Famer, Richard “Dick” Trotta.

Dick Trotta…WFCA HOF photo from a Waunakee HS Yearbook

Dick Trotta grew up in Kenosha and upon graduation he was inducted into the army where he served in the Pacific. Upon leaving the service he attended UW-Madison where he played baseball and in 1953, he took a coaching/teaching job in Waunakee and made an immediate impact. His first season the Warriors went undefeated, 6-0-0. The next season was a downer, going 1-5-3 and he broke even in 1955 as his team went 4-4-0. From then on, his teams were nearly unbeatable.

I have to admit that before doing some special research, as I said earlier, I had never heard of Dick Trotta. Doing research on Waunakee I learned of the great record that his teams put up between 1957 and 1963. One of those teams, 1961, was not on the list that I had in my book of undefeated, untied and unscored upon squads. During those seven seasons Trotta’s teams went 50-2-1, they had a 42-game unbeaten streak (42-0-1). The unbeaten streak and the 1961 year surely are fabulous accomplishments:

1961 Waunakee Team…Nov. 3…Wisconsin State Journal

Coach Trotta’s teams were known for their defense. During the steak Waunakee shutout 31 of their 42 opponents and had 36 shutouts during the 56 games over the above seven seasons. Only four of the 56 games found the opposition scoring in double figures. During the 1957 year the Asian Flu hit world-wide. Millions of people were affected but mostly it was just a mild to semi-serious sickness that was often short lived. However, in some African and Central/South American countries, there were a number of deaths. Wisconsin and the rest of the country had its share of deaths but certainly not as bad as the 1918 Spanish Flu. Games in Wisconsin were affected with a number of postponements but also some cancellations. That was the case with, first, the Sauc City game. Sauk played without eight men, including their two starting tackles and their two backups. The next week, the game against Spring Green was cancelled because both sides had a number of sick players.

Grotta posted a 73-17-4 record in 12 seasons with six conference titles. While at Waunakee he also coached baseball (Eight seasons and a 94-16 record and seven conference titles) and basketball (Seven seasons). Some newspaper and his citation on the WFCA HOF web page has his teams with 43 wins in a row but as you can see above it was 42. After the 1964 season, Grotta took an administrative position as the school principal and then the next year he became the district administrator. He would move on to take a job with the Wisconsin Department of

Public Instruction. Outside of coaching he pitched softball for many years and participated in the Senior Olympics. Tragically, he was struck by a car and killed in 2007 at age 84 while crossing the road after getting his mail. The person swerved to miss Grotta but was unable to do so.

What Richard Grotta built in his time at Waunakee a tribute to his school his players and other coaches who followed. HOF coach Gayle Quinn was hired by Grotta to succeed him, and the program thrived under his leadership as well. After Quinn it has been Pat Rice, and each has tried to pass on the legacy of what Trotta started.

A special thanks goes out to Anne Blackburn, Rebecca McDonough and Sam Kaufmann of the Waunakee Community School District for getting me information on early Waunakee village/high school history.

I also wish to thank Emily Harkins at the Waunakee Public Library for supplying me with lots of yearbook information used in this blog.

Without their help I could not been able to get a feel for the early days of the school football program.

THE SEVEN YARD RULE AND A BIT MORE ON EARLY OSHKOSH

The seven-yard rule:

In the last blog I discussed some major rule changes in the early days of “modern” football.  I say “modern” but as I said in the blog it would be a while before the game would reflect the game of today. The game was evolving slowly from a rugby scrum to a more polished offensive attack.

An April 2, 1898 article in the Oshkosh Northwestern newspaper told of an Appleton convention of over 100 teachers and administrators that gathered in a semi-annual event of the Northeastern Teachers Association.  Among the topics there were discussions on manual training, something about semi-annual promotion (I’m not sure what this was about), and there was a talk on the phases of kindergarten work.  One person, Oshkosh high schools Prof. White talked about safety in foot ball and he campaigned for the new seven-yard rule.  As a result, the principals voted unanimously in favor of the new rule that had been semi-adopted in the state in 1897. There was so much enthusiasm by the attendees that they decided that they would do all in their power to influence the clubs of what was called in the story the state league.  Evidently this rule was not, at the time, enforced by the fairly new WIAA. 

So, what was the seven-yard rule?

Up to this time, the rules of the game had a team on offense required to gain five yards in three plays. By making it seven yards it was hoped to open the game up more and to help do away with so much roughness. Instead of, as today, four downs to get a first down, the teams of the era had only three downs. Hence, if you weren’t close to picking up the first down in two plays, you punted. Games were often a matter of a punting match unless a runner was able to break away from the scrum. The game was often a series of line plunges going for a few yards.

Maybe Menasha High School wasn’t at the meeting, or the football team reneged on the adopted rule change. Several weeks before Menasha was to meet Oshkosh, a list of demands was presented to them to clarify the rules of the game. Oshkosh had heard that Menasha was using the five-yard rule. While Menasha was able to generally agree to the format outline presented to them by Oshkosh, they would not agree to the seven-yard rule. Messages were exchanged but no agreement could be reached and so the game was called off. Harsh words in the Oshkosh Northwestern were written:

“The Oshkosh High school, wishing to please the more refined patrons of the game, decided at the beginning of the season to adopt the seven-yard gain, although this was left entirely optional to the rules”.

“From the stand taken by Menasha it is evident that the team is not in favor of a clean, open game, but desires the former “slugging matches” which have so materially injured the sport by reducing science to pugilistic brutality. The Oshkosh team regrets that Menasha has no desire to elevate foot ball that point where a consensus of opinion in its favor is obtained, thereby regaining the patronage it has lost because of its roughness”.

Back in September Oshkosh High school released a season schedule, unusual for the era by most schools. Often teams set up their first two-three games then scrambled each week to add more opponents. What is also unusual is that, for the most part, the schedule was played as reported.

*The game against Ripon College’s 2nd team could have been considered a loss anyplace but Oshkosh. In a moment you will learn why.

**A note later about the Normal 2nds from November 5 concerning Menaha.

First, a note about the schedule.

At this time Appleton High was more commonly known as Ryan High of Appleton. The seven-yard rule controversy occurred in October with Oshkosh’s attempt to make sure Menasha “played by the rules”. As you look at the original schedule Oshkosh wasn’t scheduled to play Menasha until mid-November. The war of words occurred about five weeks in advance of the game which was cancelled by Oshkosh. The second game against Neenah was moved to November and a game with Ripon College’s varsity was added as was a November 5th game vs. Oshkosh Normal (UW-Oshkosh today). And yes, some colleges in the 1890’s didn’t have set schedules as well.

The game against the Ripon College 2nds was a controversial event as Ripon left the field in a huff in the middle of the second half (They were playing 35-minute half’s, no 12–15-minute quarters at the time. But the length of the half’s could vary between 25-35 minutes. The problem developed at the location of the game which had a, then, regulation field…110-yards, with goal posts BUT the goal posts had no cross bars. Crazy. For some reason the crossbars had been removed. The officials had to judge, when a field goal or extra point was attempted, to determine if the proper height was obtained for a score. As the game progressed each team missed a field goal kick. In the newspapers opinion there was no question that the goals were missed. As the second half opened Ripon was ahead 11-5. Then, Graves of Oshkosh scored a touchdown, and the score was now 11-10. Gilkey of Oshkosh made a try for the extra point, tying the game but Ripon complained to the officials and when their protest was turned down Ripon left the field. A representative for the Northwestern newspaper reported that the section that held the goal cross bars had a small piece of pipe sticking out. The kick appeared to him that the ball hit the piping and if the crossbar had been in place the ball would not have gone over. By Ripon walking off referee Larish of Oshkosh awarded the game to Oshkosh with a score of 11-0.

Next, I found an unusual November story in the Oshkosh newspaper. Not only was the early September school schedule but I located a season recap that was confusing. The story appeared in the November 29 paper. The story offered the scores of the games that the team played but left out the loss to the Normal school and yet they claimed to be undefeated, winning 10 games with two of them being forfeits. The second Berlin game was in fact a forfeit but the recap listed a second Green Bay game that was also declared a forfeit win. Do the math. If you look at the dates of the games played, always on a Saturday, when could they have played Green Bay, or at least receive a forfeit? The team played every Saturday from the last Saturday in September to the third Saturday in November. No open dates. The November 24th game was on Thanksgiving, a Thursday. There was no time to schedule an eleventh game so I conclude that Oshkosh only played, with a forfeit included, 10-games. I also found a season ending recap, again unusual to the era, in the Green Bay Press-Gazette and there was only the mention of the Thanksgiving score.

One additional note. The last game of 1897 was on Thanksgiving and Oshkosh defeated Waupaca 12-4. The story from the November 29, 1898, recap of the season stated that Oshkosh had been undefeated for 11 games. It ignored the loss to Normal. Later, in the 1900-1910’s Oshkosh would claim that they were state champions in 1908-1913 even though they were considered statewide as the 1908, 1910 and 1912 champs. It’s true that they were often undefeated against other high school teams, but they often lost, and sometimes badly to college teams.

How good was the Oshkosh football program? In addition to the nine games the first team won, the seconds were 4-0-0, the thirds were 3-0-0 and the fourth team was 2-0-0. Having four teams (11-14 players on each team to allow for substitutes) was also VERY unusual. Most schools had only pictures of the varsity (First team) and occasionally the second team. They were certainly one of the top teams in the state, but the best was Milwaukee South Side (Later South Division), a team that went undefeated, untied, and unscored upon with an 8-0-0 record. That team would be later rated, when early teams were evaluated by national prep experts in the early 2000’s, ranked as the mythical national champion as well as the state mythical champs.

More on the seven-yard rule:

The seven-yard rule must have been brought up by Oshkosh Normal, even though it wasn’t reported in the paper. The Normal 2nds played Menasha on November 5th and was destroyed, 39-0. What might have happened if Oshkosh and Menasha had met?

A few years ago, a blog from someone in Menasha used the two articles from the Northwestern that I referred to earlier concerning the seven-yard rule. Check it out: MENASHA: That Seven Yard Rule (menashabook.blogspot.com)

Thanks for reading.

INJURIES AND FOOTBALL RULES THAT LED TO GREAT CHANGES IN THE GAME

As David Maraniss wrote recently in his book “Path Lite By Lightning, the Life of Jim Thorpe:

“Before 1906 there were rules in football, but few to tame its ferocity.  The game seemed a case of unnecessary roughness.  Teams would line up head-to-head with no neutral zone and bang away at each other, hold, scrap, lock arms for brutal-like flying wedges, slug, bite, pile on and attack with deadly force.  Helmets, more like thin leather straps on bonnets, had been around since the 1890’s, but were not yet mandatory, and few players wore them.  From 1901 to 1905 there were 71 recorded deaths in football.  In 190.5 a Union College back, Harold Moore, died from a cerebral hemorrhage after being kicked in the head while trying to tackle a New York University runner.  He was one of 18 players who died that year.  An unofficial casualty count of the 1905 season read like a military after action report: deaths, 18, partially paralyzed, 1, eyes gouged out, 1, intestines ruptured, 2, backs broken, 1, sculls fractured, 1, arms broken, 4, legs broken, 7, hands broken, 3, shoulders dislocated, 7, noses broken, 4, ribs broken, 11, collarbones broken, 7, jaws broken, 1, fingers broken, 4, shoulders broken, 2, hips dislocated, 4, thighbones broken, 1, brain concussion, 2, and these numbers are likely an underestimate”. 

 The number of concussions is certainly understated.  And this list was only information from colleges.  The Chicago Tribune counted 19 college deaths that year.  The number of deaths and injuries were higher in high schools, grade schools and with “town” teams.  The documented deaths occurred with the U.S. population in 1900 set at about 76.3 million people.  By 1910 it had jumped to 92.2 million.  If you half the numbers there were about 84 million in the country in 1905.  With the reported number of deaths, 18 or 19 in colleges alone.  Reform was defiantly needed in the rules.  In 2022 there were a reported 11 deaths nationwide.    

Like the origins of baseball, football in America goes way back to the “Old World” (Europe) as well as the “New World”.  A form of rugby was played in many countries in Europe.  The ancient Greeks played a variation of the sport and they may have been the earliest ones to do so.  The Romans may have brought the game to Brition when that island was occupied.  A reference in a book written in France in 1147 mentions a similar game.  Looking at newspapers from the 1880’s and early 1890’s in Wisconsin, before there were high school teams, adult squads formed in some towns and they would become the "town team". “Foot ball” was played at a fair, picnics and other celebrations. The rules were often inconsistent.  That’s where Walter Camp, a football player from 1876-82 at Yale, stepped in and for the next 50 years ruled the college sport.  After graduating from Yale, he worked for in the family business, the Manhattan Watch Company but each year he had his hand in the college game.  Camp authored many books and pamphlets on the game as well as naming his All-America teams.  His influence was immense and early in his writings he thought that the only good teams and players were those from the East.  The players and teams in the south and west (Wisconsin was considered the west) didn’t know the sport like those from the Ivy League schools. Their feeling was that any school west of the Allegany Mountains or south of the Potomac River played substandard football.

The first attempt to take the game away from its origins of the multiple forms of rugby and to adopt a commonly accepted way of playing American Football was in November, 1876 when a group of young men from Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Columbia formed the Intercollegiate Football Association.  Walter Camp of Yale gathered the group as committee to regulate the game the proper way, the Eastern Way.  The rules slowly changed year by year as the game was evolving but it was still a game totally different from what we know today.  Moving from kicking to more running and from a free-for all scrum to a line of scrimmage with one team at a time possessing the ball.  The sport moved away from team captains assessing penalties to having judges and referees.  Plus, eventually eliminating endless line plunges to the advent of the forward pass in 1906.  The advent of their being a coach also developed.  Often times the team had no official coach but a team manager who set the schedule and helped with the players in drawing up plays.  For the colleges the new major forces on the sidelines were Amos Alonzo Stagg, Pop Warner and John Heisman to name a few. 

After the 1905 season, one which saw President Teddy Rosevelt’s son, Theodore Jr. being injured while playing at Harvard, the “Rough Rider” bowed to additional outside pressure as well and called a meeting on the sport.  Representatives from various colleges and others (Maybe Walter Camp, considered the “father of American football”) attended.  Now Teddy thought that the sport was a “manly” one but the number of deaths and injuries reported was putting pressure on him to ban the game.  He ordered the representatives to come up with a way to make the sport safer. They came up with three major changes: 1) Instead of a first down being five yards it was moved to 10 yards. 2) A neutral zone between the offense and defense was authorized. 3) The adoption of the forward pass would allow teams to move the ball down the field easier and not have the defenses bunched up so much.  Beginning in 1906 the number of deaths went down a little at first and then dropped to an “acceptable” level.  Some years there would 10-15 deaths and others only five or six from actual playing, not including those deaths from practice.  And, the equipment got better for more injury protection.

Some coaches welcomed the use of the forward pass but others thought that it made the game a “sissy” or “parlor” game.  One of those who opposed it was the “king” of the sport, Walter Camp.  He thought that passing was undignified.  But in fact, while playing for Yale, Camp inadvertently threw a pass as he was about to be tackled.  Yale was penalized with a loss of a down.  For several years Heisman had been lobbying for the forward pass and along with other supporters he got his wish. While Heisman, Stagg, Warner and a few others got the new rule change, other coaches held back in its use.  The pass itself didn't immediatly eliminate many deaths buit as time went on, it helped.

In 1908 the playing field was 110-yards from goal line to goal line.  It had both parallel and horizontal lines so as to look like a gridiron, a term still used today. If a player left the game, even with a minor injury, they couldn’t return so most of the 11 starters played the whole game.  The game clock could be 70-80 minutes with a halftime.  The two teams would decide the length before the start of the contest.  Offensive linemen could take handoffs, catch and run with the ball.  The goal posts were on the goal line.  The team on offense had three plays to get a first down, not today’s four and they had to gain 10-yards.  There had been rules earlier, in the 1880’s and 1890’s about a first down being five yards and I’ll mention this later.  The kickoff was from mid-field.  If you kicked off and the ball went nthrough the goal posts it counted as a field goal.

Scoring changed over the years as well. In 1883 a touchdown was equal to only two points; a field goal was five points and a kick conversion was four points.  This put a premium on kicking, hence the name football. From 1884-97 a touchdown was worth four points, the field goal stayed at five points and the extra point kick conversion dropped to two points.  Between 1898 and 1911 a touchdown became worth five points.  Between 1904 and 1908 the field goal dropped in point value to four points.  But, since 1898 the extra point conversion kick has remained worth one point.  In 1909 the field goal value dropped to the current three points and in 1912 the current touchdown score of six points began. Suffice it to say, since 1912, all of the scoring has remained the same except for the two-point run/pass conversion instituted in 1958.  The safety was originally worth one point in 1883 but changed to the current two-points for the past 141-years.     

Why all this talk about college football changes you might ask?  Well, high schools generally follow what colleges do as far as rules and innovations. It may take a few years to institute the changes but high schools and colleges are very similar.  Also, it was the colleges in 1876 that formed the modern rules.  There were no professional teams until the early 1900’s.  The last major rules changes from the original rules set in 1876 occurred in 1883 and that is what high schools would follow.

A couple of notes before I close my blog. 

First, I will write about the seven-yard rule vs. the five-yard rule next time.

Second, Look up Eddie Cochems on Wikipedia.  Look for other stories about his innovations in the passing game on the internet.  He came from a big family in Sturgeon Bay.  His is often a forgotten but important part of the game.  Yet, the school, Sturgeon Bay High School, has no plaque or picture honoring this great football pioneer.  That’s a shame!! Write you congressman or senator…in this case the AD, the principal and the school board as ask that they consider doing something to honor him.  

I’m off my soap box now.  Hope you liked what I wrote and if you have time, read “Path Lit By Lightening: The Life of Jim Thorpe”.  It has so much more about American history than just recounting Thorpes athletic prowess.