A NOTE ON A 1926 GAME

I was excited when I read the email on May 28 from Newspapers.com that new papers had been added to the web site.   Would there be some from Wisconsin?  There were 200 new papers from multiple states and Canada that many would be glad to delve into history.  I scrolled down the list and found seven from the Badger State with one LaFarge and a newer Green Bay paper.  BUT there were five from Kewaunee!  Why would I be excited about Kewaunee?  Well, in recent year since the offensive end/defensive back Greg Rabas days (1974-76) and then the late 1990’s their passing attack has been formidable. The school has made it to the playoffs many times and even to a state title game.  Some potentially good stories might be in the various papers.  But nothing recent was on my radar.  What I wanted to look at was how the school and the local Kewaunee newspaper covered the 1926 Kewaunee vs. West De Pere blowout loss.  How bad was it?  It was a 126-0 loss that the STORM took at the hands of the Phantoms.

Sure, there’s a Monday, October 25, 1926, story in The Green Bay Press Gazette story (The games Kewaunee played were on Saturday’s and the Gazette didn’t publish then a Sunday edition).  But this is just one side of the loss that saw many state records being set.  I wanted the Kewaunee side of the loss.  What I found was profoundly disappointing.  Besides the high school not having any yearbooks from that football year (In the 1927 book), The same was with the public library and any local historical society offices.  Nothing there.  Now, I looked at The Kewaunee Enterprise from Newspapapers.com for information.  Published every Friday in 1926 (Later, every Thursday through 2007) I looked in at the October 29 edition.  Nothing.  What do you mean there’s no story?  Not even a score.  No mention.  Crickets. Why?

Well maybe it was the embarrassment of a season that most wanted to forget.  The STORM opened with a 42-0 loss to Manitowoc on September 25.  The next week, October 2, they lost 16-0 to East De Pere, then on October 9 there was a 19-0 defeat at the hands of Two Rivers.  October 16 the team was handed a 56-0 drubbing.  All four games have a one or two short paragraph blurb in the paper about the losses. The October 23 blowout story should have been printed in the October 29 edition, as I wrote above, but there was nothing to give an insight.  The STORM will finally score the next day on October 30, the final game, in the 23-8 defeat to Algoma.  The STORM allowed 282 points in six games.  The Enterprise didn’t even mention the head coaches name in the six game stories and there would of course be no season recap.  There was no pre-season or post season info.  The paper just moved right into the basketball season.  I’m just disappointed that The Enterprise was so spare in reporting the football stories.

You may ask, what did The Press Gazette have to say?  Multiple paragraphs.  Below is a recap of that story now taken from my book, “The Great Teams” along with info on the star of the game, Gilford Skinandore:

"Gilford Skenandore – Oct 23, 1926"

“In a crushing defeat of Kewaunee, West De Pere Nicolet’s Gilford Skenandore set a single game Wisconsin state scoring record as he ran for four touchdowns, returned four punts for scores and kicked all 18 of West De Pere’s extra points for a total of 66 points. He did this all on a water-soaked and very muddy field. Weighing only 136 pounds, “Skinny” and his teammates beat Kewaunee 126-0. All his extra points were dropkicks. 

Green Bay Press-Gazette 25 Oct 1926

The four punt returns for touchdowns and the 18-extra points are also Wisconsin state records. The scoring distances in the game story printed in the Green Bay Press Gazette seems to have been revised several days later but it appears he returned punts of 103, 35, 70 and 70 yards for four scores and rushed for 85, 60, 60, and 55 yards for the other four touchdowns.

He was a star forward on the basketball court and in track, 100- and 200-meter dashes, long jump and high jump. As late as the 1970s, Skinny still held the school record for the 100-meter dash. More remarkable is that he tore a ligament near his right knee in a collision on the basketball court in late January and still was able to set the school dash record several months later”.

Besides the 1926 West De Pere-Kewaunee score of 126-0, the 1928 100-0 defeat of La Crosse Aquinas at the hands of La Forge are the two last games in which a team scored at least 100 points prior to 1919.  My record book includes listings for 30 such 100-point scoring games.  Interestingly enough the highest score by a Wisconsin 11-player football team occurred in 1902 when Stoughton smashed Kewaunee 145-0.  That Kewaunee was Kewaunee Illinois, not the one up along Lake Michigan, north of Manitowoc and Two Rivers previously mentioned. 

To say that the STORM lost heart early in the game and was just going through the motions would probably be correct.  The field was muddy and hard for many to maneuver, but West De Pere could somehow do so.  There were numerous turnovers and poor tackling that led to easy scores.  66 points, 18 extra-point kicks, four punt returns for touchdowns with one for 103-yards are all state records (And highlighted above in BOLD) held to this day by Gilford Skinandore. 

Remarkable.