1946…A SEASON WITH VARIOUS NOTES…PART 1

World War II finally ended in September 1945 with the signing of the Japanese surrender.  The 1945 season went on as usual with many returning veterans taking up their former or new coaching positions.

This is about 1946, a year that saw long win streaks end, begin or continue.  Many interesting stories…here, they will be brief…about those streaks, players and coaches.

In 1945 the Associated Press, through the Wisconsin Football Coaches Association, presented the first “official” All-State football team.  The A.P. also filed recaps to all the newspapers that handled their services.  Each Saturday or Sunday many papers around the state published the A.P. recap of the top games of Friday.  A person reading the recaps could learn a lot about the top teams and players.  Besides the All-State teams many people didn’t get info outside of their local area until this time.  In 1945 the A.P. also started another storyline by keeping track of the undefeated teams starting in week five.  It was mainly just a list with very little additional info.  In 1946 things changed as the A.P. began including additional information about some of the undefeated teams.  The A. P. posted their undefeated list on Tuesdays and a recap of what was entitled “The Weekly Prep Honor Roll” highlighted the top efforts from the previous weekend that included an additional Honor Roll list of those nominated by the team coach or sportswriters from their area.

 Now, on with the stories.

First, the streaks. 

The great Wausau 46-game winning streak, coached by Win Brockmeyer, was snapped in game two by a good Ashland team, 13-7.  The Lumberjacks ended the year with a 5-1-2 record.  Their conference winning streak of 70-games would continue until a 13-6 loss to Stevens Point in game three of the 1949 season.

Gale Quandt was guiding his Tomah Indians to an undefeated 8-0-0 season and was in the midst of a 33-game unbeaten streak.  The streak began with a 6-6 tie to Westby at the end of 1942 and would conclude in game two in the 1947 season with a 13-0 loss to Reedsburg. Tomah won four consecutive West Central Conference championships under Quandt.

Cedarburg, under the tutelage of Vince Cibik, lost their season opener 8-0 to West Bend but the next week there was a 6-6 tie against Port Washington.  That game started a 30-game undefeated streak of 27-0-3 that ended in the 1949 season finale vs. Greendale, 14-13.

The other big streak was done by Two Rivers (As recounted in my stories “A Tale of Two Rivers”.) a team that finished 1946 with a 9-0-0 record and 29-game win streak.  Coached by Ed Hall in 1942 and continued by Harry O’Mealy from 1943-46.  O’Mealy left Two Rivers after the 1946-47 school year and while the Raiders posted a 6-2 record in 1947, they lost the season opener to Manitowoc39-12 to end the win streak.  The 1946 Two Rivers team scored the second most points by any other state high school team with 260.

The Team that scored the most points was Madison Edgewood which put up 287 in an 8-0-0 regular season.  The Crusaders elected to play a “Charity Game” against Chicago Mt. Carmel.  On Sunday November 17, after all other state high school’s season had concluded.  Coach Earl Wilke had his team leading 14-7 before they collapsed, losing 30-14 as Mt. Carmel’s star back, Patsy Rocco scored four times in the fourth quarter.  He ended with all five Mt. Carmel’s touchdowns.  The loss ended the Edgewood 24-game streak.

After going 6-0-1 in 1945, the Oconomowoc Cooney’s (Now more politically correct…the Racoons) was 8-0-0 in 1946 and the streak would eventually reach 20-games, ending in mid-season, 1947.  The 1946 team was coach Vince Licht’s third undefeated team since he took over the program in 1936. 

The Undefeated List:

At a time when the Associated Press introduced the first official All-State teams in 1945 the Press also released seasonal lists of the top teams in the state.  Their lists were of unbeaten teams for the year.  Each season from 1945-1954 the lists included both public and private schools and included those teams that had ties.  The A.P. not only released the lists but included information about team winning streaks.  They released the lists starting about the fifth or sixth week of the season, concluding with the final tally in early November. The lists covered teams starting at having a 5-0-0 record to those that would finish with a 9-0-0.  This information helped lead me write stories on a number of schools in my book or in my blogs including Two Rivers, Cedarburg, Milwaukee Messmer, Ladysmith, Racine St. Catherine, Milwaukee Marquette, Wausau and Green Bay West.

There were also several interesting facts.  One, or actually in several seasons in the Milwaukee City Conference there were multiple undefeated teams as the schools were playing round-robin schedules each year.  At one point the City Conference had as many as 12-14 teams with each playing seven league games and maybe a non-conference opponent. In 1945 Milwaukee Washington had an 8-0-0 record followed by Custer and North with 7-0-0 years. 1950 saw Milwaukee East (Riverside) and Milwaukee Pulaski share the conference title with 8-0-0 records.  1952 three teams were undefeated.  Boy’s Tech (Bradley Tech today) won the title by going 8-0-0 but Washington and Rufus King were close for second place with 7-0-1 records.  Almost 11,000 fans watched Washington and King play in a season ending game as they played to a 13-13 tie.

The 1949 list showed 22 schools with records waring from three schools, Ladysmith, La Crosse Aquinas and Lake Mills with 9-0-0 records to Sturgeon Bay which posted a 6-0-2 season total.

The first list, 1945, showed that 21 state schools had undefeated seasons.  Three of those schools had ties including one with two even matches. 

With the 1946 season drawing to a close, by October 29, there were 21 teams still undefeated.  The list had been trimmed from 39 in week five to 30 and 26 at the end of the next two weeks.  In the final weekend the list had dropped to only 12 undefeated squads.

Below is the 1946 final A. P. listing.  It should be noted that only one Wisconsin school, Madison Edgewood, had one more game to play.  

Eau Claire Leader-Telegram   November 14, 1946

As stated before, Edgewood lost to Chicago Mt. Carmel so, in the end there were only 11 undefeated 11-player teams in 1946.

In 1946 some of the schools played 8-player and some played 6-player ball.  Several of the top non-11-player teams were Cameron, DeForest and Mazomanie.  Cameron, playing 8-player ball breezed through an 8-0-0 year and scored 355 points. Like Edgewood DeForest, 7-1-0 in 1946 dropped their final game to Mazomanie after the 6-player poll was released. DeForest started with 6-player football in 1938, coached by Chet Carlson.  They were the 1946 Suburban Six-Conference champs.  Over nine seasons they had posted a 47-10 record.  Mazomanie started 6-player in 1941 and at the end of the 1946 season they had posted a 30-4 record.

Next time I will cover the 1946 A. P. All-State Team and brief stories about players and odds and ends on the year.