“THE GIANTS AT MONROE” AND THE 1909 CHASES FOR THE STATE TITLE…PART 3

One of the side stories to the Monroe’s 1909 season is that both quarterback Roy Collentine and center Frank Herin went to school at Monroe from 1906 through the winter of 1909-10.  They then quit Monroe and moved to Rockford to play and start on Tommy Mills’ 1910 team.  The Rockford yearbook, entitled “The Annual” lists the two as being juniors on the team roster.  A check of the 1912 yearbook does not list them so they may have graduated following the fall, 1910 year.  According to the story in the 1973 Monroe paper, this was common for students to only go to school in the fall, dropping out and then returning the next fall.  This is sort of news to me.  However, the only other regular instances of students graduating in December that I found was when I researched the 1940’s Milwaukee Washington yearbooks and a few students from various schools who were of age, joining the military service during World War II.

The 1973 Monroe Evening Times newspaper story also makes mention of Roy Collentine throwing a pass to Frank Davis for the first completion in the school’s history.  That was when the two were sophomores in 1907.  It isn’t noted if Davis was playing tackle or end.  In this era the ball had to go 10-yards past thew line of scrimmage to be considered a legal pass completion.  In those days it was also somewhat common for a lineman to take a reverse pitch or handoff and run the ball.  Davis was one such a player who did this and did it well when called upon. 

In my book, “The Great Teams” I mentioned that one of the state’s early 1900’s great athletes, tackle Arle Mucks. A true giant, 6’4.5, 250 pounds, from Oshkosh (1908-12) often ran the ball and scored a few touchdowns in his career.  Mucks was a four-time All-State player in football, stared while playing basketball and baseball and set the state record for throwing the shot and the discus.  In the 1912 he became America’s high schooler to compete in the Olympics, finishing sixth in the discus.

I don’t have information on any of the players after 1909 other than the two who moved to Rockford except for a postscript, submitted by Bob Davis on his grandfather, Frank.  Bob’s great-grandfather father owned a 700-acre dairy farm south of Monroe.  It was a surprise to the family that Frank was allowed to play football, owing to his farm duties. Despite his one word of "Thanks" at the post season banquet Frank became a successful business owner selling appliances as well as farm equipment.  He developed the “gift of gab”.  He also served on the city council.  In 1939, as he was preparing to run for mayor he died from an infected appendix. 

Finally:

There are many people I want to thank for helping gather the information in these stories relating to Monroe.

First, Bob Davis of the Ladysmith HOF.  Without his alerting me to the story of 1909 it may have taken a long time for me to find out about the team.

I had great help from several librarians:

Susan Holland, Library Director of the Monroe Public Library.  Thanks for sending me the file of the 1973 newspaper with a clearer picture of the story on the 1909 team.  This made the series much more possible.

 Heather Johnson at Sterling (IL) High School library who helped me find a link to old yearbooks and newspapers for Sterling when the reference desk at the public library could not even though it is available on the local library web page.  I thanked Heather several times while she navigated me through the site and her reply was “Your welcome.  This is what librarians do.  Help”.

Jan Thompson of the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library in Eau Claire who helped verify the opponent of the one game that the 1909 Eau Claire football team lost.  It was a tough search since the online newspaper made it difficult to verify.  I thought that they had lost to Marinette, and they did, but I couldn’t find out for sure in all of my records.

Amber Kresol, Gardenia Pacheco and Lorene Kennard of the Rockford Public Library who all helped find yearbook information on the 1910 Rockford High School football team.

And to Eric Jubeck, Athletic Director at Monroe High School, who hooked me up with a link to older yearbooks starting with 1936 through 2024.  These appear to be the oldest available yearbooks.  He noted that when they move to the new high school next year that the Cheesemakers will also be starting an Athletic Hall of Fame.

As I said at the beginning of these stories, I’m sorry it took so long to get here but I hope it was worth it to you, the reader.  And yes, I could go on, but it would be more of a national, rather than Wisconsin, football history of the era.