Iowa Heritage Digital Collections
State Library of Iowa

1917 Yearbook

1917 Yearbook

Title

1917 Yearbook

Description

Football
HE JUNIORS opened their 1916 season with the Moline Athletics and defeated them so badly that the Moline High
School got cold feet and failed to appear the next week.
Finally the Moline Federals screwed up nerve enough to face
the Juniors. They must have expected to play the Varsity,
however, for they brought over a bunch of overgrown hippos
who would have been a credit to a university. The Ulinoisians scored in just
two minutes play, and it looked as if the Juniors were to be beaten. A Junior
fan said after the game that he knew the Juniors would win but didn't know
how they would do it. How they did it is still a mystery, but it is a fact
that they did. The old Junior fight was up and the unyielding Junior forward wall stood off men of almost triple their weight. Finally by a brilliant forward pass of 20 yards from McLain to Hand, the ball was touched
down behind the last chalk mark. Quinn kicked the goal and the Juniors
>von the game by a 7 to 6 score.
The next few Sundays were occupied with taming a few incorrigible
Davenport teams, and winning a 13 to 0 victory over the Clinton High
second eleven whose big brothers claimed the state championship. A week
later Delmar High came to Davenport and watched the Juniors run up 71
points against them. The score was estimated to a large extent, but tradition says it is approximately correct.
The Moline Athletics were beaten before five minutes play, but they
staged a remarkable comeback and held the collegians to a 21 to 6 score. As
to the big high school teams in and around Davenport, the Juniors seemed
to have them so intimidated that some of them had a man delegated to stall
off games.
The Turkey-day game was played at DeWitt with the fast high school
team of that burg. The whole city of DeWitt and the entire population of
several near-by towns came out to see the heavy DeWitt steam-roller crush
the poor little Ambrosians. The game was indeed historic, but in the end
Father Adrian's flying squadron out-steam-rollered the crushing DeWitt
steam-roller, winning 21 to 0. The DeWitt rooters thoroughly aroused at
the apparent defeat of the home team, time and again surged out on the
field to intimidate the doughty Juniors, but that was not to be. They came
away unhurt, highly jubilant and with colors flying. And well might they
be jubilant,—8 games and no defeat.—249 points scored to 12 of their
opponents and all this by a team averaging only 127 pounds and almost
every one of these players was only 16 years old and playing his first year
of football. The stars? There were none. The team was one long streak
of lightning. The features? Possibly the whole team making end runs,
the aggressive fighting forward wall, the long passes of McLain to Hand,
the smashing of McCarville, and the generalship of Quinn.

Date

1917

Identifier

http://cdm16810.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16810coll2/id/2125