Illinois H.S.toric

Intersectional football contests arose out of the prior tradition of the Thanksgiving Day game that originated during the 1890s. The concept of Thanksgiving Day game was that it would be the highlight game of the season. To give the game its prominence a team would try to line up a contest with its arch rival or with the team in the next county to try to win bragging rights to its section of the state. Eventually this led to teams looking farther afield for worthy opponents that would produce victories that would garner greater luster and prestige for their schools, or merely to provide a holiday trip for players, students, and parents.

At an early point in the history of high school intersectional football the concept of the "mythical" championship game came into being. The participating teams never engaged in any sort of playoffs nor were they chosen from an independently produced regional or sectional ranking. Usually these games were arranged by the participating schools within a couple of weeks of the game date. The only criteria for these so-called intersectional title games were that both schools were impressively unbeaten in their local area (although there were exceptions to this), and that there were promoters at two such schools who were quickly willing to make the necessary arrangements for travel and financial considerations. And if a high school was particularly good, rather than win the championship of northern Illinois, why not try to win the championship of the whole state, or even the entire Midwest, or as some games were billed, the championship of the nation?

For purposes of this essay, games with schools in the neighboring and nearby states of Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Indiana, Minnesota, and Missouri are not considered intersectional.  Although Kentucky is a neighboring state the contests with its schools are considered intersectional because sports writers usually presented the Kentucky schools as representatives of another section of the country, the South. The match-ups between the southern Illinois schools and those of Kentucky will not be deemed in this study to be intersectional. Contests against Kentucky schools are judged to be intersectional when the opponent comes from Chicago or its suburbs (because from there the South would be considered another section of the country).  This essay also discusses games played against such Midwest states as Ohio and Nebraska, which are not truly intersectional games, but at the time they were of sufficient distance to take on somewhat the character of  “intersectional.” These games will be called interstate contests, however.

East vs. West in the Colleges

The genesis for intersectional competition in the secondary schools came from the colleges, where intersectional competition the source of debate and discussion, but far too infrequently on the field. Football arose in the Eastern colleges, and for the first several decades the game was dominated by the big three—Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. The Midwest schools, or Western Schools as they were then called, were considered backwaters by the Poobahs of the Eastern football establishment, way behind the East in football ability. This attitude rankled the Midwest coaches and followers of the game.  By the turn of the century the feeling had grown among champions of Western football that their brand of football was equal to that of the East, and perhaps even superior. They felt that if a game could be arranged between championship-caliber representatives from the respective regions the West would prevail.

The West’s desire to assert its equality dates back to 1898, when Stagg arranged an annual series with the University of Pennsylvania, which was coming off several spectacular years of success. Stagg felt the series was the start of something big, contending that, “in time if both of us keep to near the top, a game between us will come to be regarded in the light of a national championship.

That was not to be. After the 1899 season, where Chicago’s 12-0-1 team tied Pennsylvania, both programs regressed during 1900 and 1901. Chicago also lost three out of the four meetings. However, when Stagg’s program came back to prominence with his 1902 team—with an 11-1 overall record--there was no Eastern opponent on the schedule. He surely saw that the 1902 season was a lost opportunity for revenge against the East.
         
In 1901, the University of Michigan hired a new coach for its football team, Fielding Yost. He was a West Virginia native who had just come off three years of extraordinary success coaching a variety of high school and college teams in the Midwest and Far West. Yost introduced a new speedy game to the institution spearheaded by his captain and quarterback, Harrison “Boss” Weeks and an extremely fast halfback, Willie Heston. Using rapid play and speedy fast running, Michigan so overwhelmed its opposition that in its eleven games it outscored the other teams 550 to 0. The season was capped by a win over Stanford in the first Rose Bowl game in history. Yost’s drilling his team to move into formation quickly after each play with shouts of “hurry up” earned him his sobriquet of  “Hurry Up,” and the spectacular production of points earned by his teams earned them the legendary “Point-a-Minute” designation.
         
By the end of the 1902 season, Yost had yet to have an opportunity to show what his Michigan team could do against the Eastern powers. In 1901 he had a contest with one Eastern team, Buffalo, but the opponent was so unskilled and so unrepresentative that Michigan walloped them 128 to 0.  During the 1902 season, Michigan had outscored its opponents 644 to 12 in garnering 11 wins with 0 losses. Aside from games with Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Chicago, the remaining opponents were cupcakes. Not one Eastern team was on his schedule. Fielding was itching to show the superiority of his style of football to that of the East, which he considered slow and cumbersome.

Under the influence of Yost’s incredible success in the 1901 season, “speed” thus became the byword in the Western conference during the 1902 season. The Chicago Daily News remarked, “Speed is what the western college teams are after. Chicago is bustling for it and the fans following other teams are demanding a pace at least equal to Michigan’s of last year.” Stagg understood the necessity of this new approach and began drilling his team to develop speedy play. In a practice preparing for the Michigan game Stagg complimented his players for their “snap and speed.” Other coaches in the Western conference were also emphasizing fast play.
   
The 1902 and 1903 Chicago High School Triumphs

On the high school level in Chicago a parallel development was occurring. Historically, in the Cook County League, Hyde Park was one of the dominant powers since the league began annual competition in the fall of 1889. Hyde Park teams were traditionally noted for their speed, and used it for advantage against heavier teams. In 1901, the school had won the Cook County league with a light and speedy team. In the fall of 1902 team that featured quarterback Walter Eckersall (Hall of Famer who starred at Chicago), halfback Sam Ransom (famed black all-around athlete who starred at Beloit), and the brothers Harry and Tom Hammond (end and halfback mainstays on Michigan's point-a-minute juggernaut of 1904). The Chicago Daily News noted that the 1902 team resembled “Michigan in the quick work more than they do Chicago.” The paper cited the team’s quickness in lining up when they had the ball and in their fast charging when the other team had the ball. The paper also described the team’s approach as “a little straight football, plenty of trick plays, and long end runs on plays directed just off tackle.” The team’s captain and quarterback, Walter Eckersall, was primarily responsible for the coaching, and the papers reported that it was Eckersall who was drilling his team to achieve even more speed than the previous year’s team, with “vicious snaps” by him to the ball carriers.

Chicago high schools also were learning Western-style college football by playing practice games with the university teams. Hyde Park, for example, in late September played two close games with the University of Chicago, a team of candidates and a second team. Also during September, North Division played a Chicago team of member try-outs, the West Division high school team played the Northwestern scrubs, and Englewood played the University of Illinois first team. In October, Hyde Park met the regular Wisconsin team and got beat 24 to 5. The sportswriters considered these practice games as excellent preparation for the high schools prior to the regular season. Regarding the Wisconsin game, the Inter Ocean sportswriter noted that Hyde Park “put up a fast, snappy game, while the Badgers’ playing was slow and ragged.”
         
Early in the 1902 season, a debate on the respective merits of Eastern and Western football appeared in the Chicago American. It was initiated by George Foster Sanford, the superb former coach at Columbia, who in an article derided the West for using “antique” methods on defense and offense. This brought a flurry of responses from the sportswriters, one in a non-bylined article in the rival Inter Ocean, which contended that the West was where the football innovators were located and where the best coaches were located. The writer conceded that the West gets fewer boys well grounded in the fundamentals. He then cited the Hyde Park-Wisconsin game as an example of the “limitations” of Western football. The Wisconsin team in the game showed “surprising weaknesses,” and this was because the Wisconsin coach was forced to bring his boys along slowly to learn fundamentals first. By the end of the season, however, the writer assured the reader that Wisconsin would be “fully up to speed.”
         
Hyde Park ran through the Cook County schedule with lopsided scores. However, Hyde Park played only four regular season opponents, outscoring them 231 to 0, and averaging 56 points to 0. Such lopsided scoring was exceedingly willful, as current standards of sportsmanship did not prevail then. At the beginning of the season the Hyde Park team announced that it would show “no mercy on any weak team,” and it would attempt to surpass Michigan’s total of 550 points from the previous season. This would not happen because the league was in such sad shape. Three schools in the division disbanded during the season, and Hyde Park had no success in finding teams to be willing victims in replacement games. With such one-sided contests and so few games, it is a wonder that the Hyde Park could be sufficiently honed and toughened for an intersectional match. Nonetheless, Hyde Park wanted an intersectional game to prove its worth, and put out feelers to various high schools in the New York area.
         
On November 30, the Chicago Tribune listed its Cook County all-star selections, in which 10 of the 11 first-team players were Hyde Park men. Elsewhere in the paper there was a small announcement that the Polytechnic Preparatory school of Brooklyn (Poly Prep) was considering coming to Chicago to meet Hyde Park for the first high school intersectional match in history. Hyde Park guaranteed Poly Prep $750 for the game. Once the game was firmed up for the following week on December 6, Hyde Park began a week of heavy practice. 
         
The football coaches of the Western conference also took notice. Here was an opportunity to demonstrate to the East the quality of football in the West and that the faster more open style of play was superior to the slow line-bucking play of the East. After the season was over, following the Thanksgiving Day games of November 27 Michigan was accredited by sportswriters to be the champion of the West and Yale was considered the champion of the East. There was a huge desire by followers of football to see the two teams meet, and much lamenting of the fact that there would be no way to prove which section was the best. The Chicago American reflected this view when it wrote, “There will always be an argument as to which is the best team in the country, but there is no prospect of settling that dispute.”
         
The preparation of the team for the big game became a collective effort of the best minds in the West. Tom Hammond went to Stagg and asked for assistance in coaching the team, and the coach readily assented. He also gave them Marshall Field to practice on, but according to one report Hyde Park had been conducting “secret practice[s]” for several weeks on the field, and now the practices would be open. This would be the same field on which Hyde Park would meet Poly Prep. The ostensible coach of the team, Lee Grennan, spent much of the week in Nashville, and when he came back prepared the team on physical conditioning.
         
Stagg gave the Hyde Park team hard two-hour workouts each day during the week. He focused his work with Hyde Park on defense and the prevention of fumbles. On defense, Stagg taught the team a shifting defense that was used by the University of Chicago.  Because he had a concern that the speed of Hyde Park would lead to many fumbles, he also taught the team how to execute their “lightninglike” plays to minimize fumbling. Stagg downplayed his contribution, “I have not done much in the way of coaching except to prepare new defenses and to perfect offensive play, and especially the interference. The team was pretty well coached before I took charge, and needed but little work.”
         
The Friday prior to game day, Fielding Yost came in from Michigan to work with Stagg and the Hyde Park team. Yost’s contribution was mainly strategy talk, but he did give a few pointers to Tom Hammond on placekicking. Yost expressed appreciation for Hyde Park’s fast style, noting that it resembled Michigan’s. The coaches stressed to the Hyde Park team the necessity of “getting the jump” on Brooklyn offensively and defensively. Eckersall would be used for “fast-round-the-end” plays and double passes (so-called trick plays), while Ransom was slated for straight line plunging. These college coaches were out there to prove a point.

Hyde Park and Polytechnic were viewed as proxies for the major football powers by observers in both the East and the West. The way the game was promoted reflected this. Several days before the big game, the South Side of Chicago was placarded with big posters with the heading, “The East vs. The West at Marshall Field Saturday.” Reported the Chicago Tribune: “The game is expected to bring out the comparative quality of play of representative scholastic teams of the east and west, and indirectly to determine which [section of the country] has the stronger teams.”  Regarding the task of Poly Prep, the Tribune scribe said, “The boys realize thoroughly that the game is not so much Poly against Hyde Park as it is east against the west. The question of which section of the country played the better game was a problem that offered no solution, except an actual contest between representative teams, and now the opportunity to decide the matter is afforded…”

The paper further noted that the Polytechnic’s style of play was identical to that of Yale, and that the school’s coach used defensive formations and trick plays used by Yale in 1902. Poly Prep’s coach, Oscar Aubut, commented, “Eastern men say football originated in the east and think the best methods are still used there. Our team uses the styles of the eastern colleges and will do its best to uphold the standard.” To show how little Aubut knew about the Hyde Park team, he thought that his team would have an advantage over Hyde Park in quickness.

While Hyde Park was recognized undeservingly as the best in the West, the Brooklyn team had suffered two early season losses, to St. Paul and Erasmus Hall respectively, in its eight-game regular season. There was no team in the New York Metropolitan area that was unambiguously the best. The Poly Prep’s faculty president, John D. Lane, recognized this, when he said, “This team is simply going as a representative Eastern eleven and not as a champion eleven. We wish that understood distinctly, and the Western people understand it in that light.” Sounds as thought Mr. Lane really suspected the worst.
         
There was considerable concern by the parents of the Poly Prep players over Chicago water. The city throughout much of the nineteenth century had a reputation for having unsanitary water. Despite correcting its water ills a decade earlier, the parents prevailed on Poly Prep to bring two large casks of Brooklyn water.  They not only drank it but rubbed themselves down with it.

Game day proved to be a disaster for the Brooklyn team and for the East. On December 6, at University of Chicago's Marshall Field, Hyde Park slaughtered the Brooklyn boys 105 to 0. There were eighteen touchdowns, which at that time were worth five points apiece. On a snow-covered and slippery field Hyde Park backs made dramatic gains on each down and scored a good percentage of its touchdowns on long running plays. Defense was so formidable that Brooklyn managed only one first down in the entire game. The Polytechnic boys were utterly bewildered by what hit them.  Said the Brooklyn Eagle, “The variety of plays at the finger tips of the winners baffled the Brooklyn boys, and the latter were stage struck from the very start of the game.” At the half, the score stood at 40-0, but Coach Stagg apparently did not think that was enough, as he went into the locker room and urged Hyde Park to step up the slaughter and break 100 points.

Hyde Park defeats Polytechnic Prep at Marshall Field, 105 to 0, on an icy field

The consensus of the reporters had it not been for the slippery field and the falling snow, the score would have been even more lopsided. Chicago newspapers more than New York papers recognized the outcome as a triumph of the West over the East. The Inter Ocean headlined the story, “West Defeats the East by 105 to 0,” and the Tribune said, ‘The east against the west,’ was the general characterization of the contest before the game commenced.”  The Brooklyn Daily Eagle noted that calling the game a “United States championship” was a local Chicago rendering, but conceded that “it was safe to say that the winners outclass any scholastic eleven in New York State and probably anything in New England.”
         
Post game commentary was along those lines. The Chicago Daily News reporter asserted, “Eastern methods of playing the gridiron game received a severe shock as the result of the battle, for eastern critics feel confident that the west does not know as much football as the east.” The writer gleefully noted, that “this pet theory received a shock that it will take some time to overcome.” Yost was quoted as saying, “The game makes the Eastern methods look bad.”  The Chicago American had Yost write a commentary on the game for the next day’s edition. Said Yost awkwardly (he was probably being quoted by a reporter who did the actual piece), “If as a scholastic team they reflected the collegiate football of that section as high school teams usually reflect the college football about them, that Eastern football didn’t seem to be in it with the West.” He also said that, “Brooklyn was most frightfully slow.”
         
The dazed Brooklyn coach, Oscar Aubut, said to the Chicago Tribune, "I never saw such fast playing in all my life, and our team was not prepared to meet the open game used by Hyde Park. We have always played a plunging game, and it is much slower." To the Chicago Daily News, he noted a particular difference on kick-offs, “[The Hyde Park players] don’t wait for their opponents to charge when the ball is kicked off, but wade right into them. In our game, they more than met us half-way and by the time the Brooklyn player caught the ball he was tackled in his tracks…they don’t play that way in the East…the team kicking off is suppose to meet its opponents half-way and not charge right through to the man catching the ball.”  The New York World reported him saying, “The Western style of game is a revelation. Nothing down our way can touch it. I have learned more football today than I ever have in any one year of my life. I am certain that this open style of game introduced by a team would be a winner in the East.” Coach Grennan of Hyde Park was then hired by Brooklyn Polytechnic to coach their team for the following season.
         
Post game assessment in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle summed it all up: “The Western game of open plays with frequent passing of the pigskin triumphed over the close formation and line plunging game of the East.”  Coach Yost was naturally asked if Hyde Park reminded him of his Michigan game, and he enthusiastically agreed, automatically thinking “Michigan’s ball” whenever Hyde Park recovered a fumble. Coach Stagg made the point that in regard to the college game that since the last meeting of the East and West the Western game had “improved so much” that a “match with the Eastern champions versus the Western champions might open the eyes of the East.”  The Chicago Chronicle reporter during the massacre had looked up in the stands at Yost getting animated over the Hyde Park feats and mused, “He wondered no doubt just how a game between Yale and Michigan would have resulted.”
         
The high school football season in Chicago in 1903 was much like the previous year, dominated by a few good teams, while the rest of the teams were cream puffs. As usual, a few teams disbanded before the schedule was completed. In pre-season write-ups, the city’s sportswriters posited North Division and Englewood as the possible Cook County champs. Both North Division and Englewood were coached largely by their team captains, quarterback Walter Steffen (future Hall of Famer) and guard Arthur Badenach respectively. At intermittent times, North Division used as coaches first ex-Northwestern player Charlie Daly (who introduced some Northwestern plays that he learned from the new Northwestern coach, Wallie McCornack) and later ex-Northwestern player Al Johnson. Typically, North Division also had a variety of alumni come out to lend coaching assistance each week.

North Division team that in 1903 defeated Brooklyn Boys in New York, 75 to 0

Steffen was the team’s heart. He was assisted by such players as halfback Leo De Tray (future All Western at Chicago), end Leslie Pollard (older brother of Hall of Famer Fritz Pollard), Norbert Nelson (a future All American basketball standout), and center Joe Paupa (future coach for DePaul Academy). North Division also benefited from transfers from other schools, obtaining the 240-pound tackle Chubby Graham from English, halfback Roy Rennacker from Lake View, and fullback Ed Hill from Albion College. A protest was made regarding Hill, but the Board of Education said he could play as long as he was under 21. Hyde Park was given an outside chance, and its approach to coaching was to use alumni coaches chosen ad hoc from week to week. For example Walter Eckersall coached the Hyde Park team for a few weeks.

As with the previous season, the Cook County high schools began their season with practice games against the universities. North Division played two such games, losing against Northwestern and Chicago. Englewood boasted of and played four such games against Chicago, Illinois, Northwestern, and Purdue, losing all four by lopsided scores. At Hyde Park, the manager cancelled all its contests with universities because the team was not in shape.

Again as in the previous season, three weaker teams dropped out of the high school league, truncating the schedules of the stronger teams. Games were also eliminated from North Division’s schedule when Morgan Park Academy refused to play North Division with transfer Graham in the line-up, and Culver Military Academy refused to play as long as an African-American, Leslie Pollard, was in the line-up. Thus, after North Division beat East Aurora 26-0 on September 26 and West Division 56-0 on October 10, North Division had to quickly schedule some new opponents through early November—meeting Northwestern Military Academy, Central YMCA, and Chalmer Athletic Club, all which they beat handedly.

North Division kept sharp for its key match up against Englewood by holding nearly daily scrimmage practices with small north side private schools, Chicago Latin, Francis Parker, and University School. In late October, the North Division boys built and began using a charging machine (today we would say tackling sled), pioneering its use in Chicago high school football. McCornack of Northwestern had brought from the east, and this innovation apparently stemmed from the coaching assistance North Division was getting from ex-Northwestern players. Englewood responded to this new development by having its squad charge against a “railroad fence.”  In early November North Division implemented a training table, starting with a Sunday night dinner, and continuing nightly through the week. In mid-November North Division met its toughest rival for the title, Englewood, and only managed a 0-0 tie. Personnel-wise Englewood was outclassed but equalized the contest by a lot of slugging.
         
On November 18, the Cook County League received an invitation for one of its members to play Boys’ High of Brooklyn. After North Division prevailed over Hyde Park 17 to 6 in a hard-fought game on November 21, North Division was chosen to represent the West in the game against Boys’ High. The game was scheduled for Saturday, November 28. Englewood, which was also undefeated, was not chosen because it was scheduled to play Hyde Park on the same day.

Unlike the in the previous year, this Cook County representative did not attract Stagg or Yost in its preparation. Both Stagg and Yost were still in the midst of their season and were busy coaching their respective teams for their key match-up on Thanksgiving Day. Nonetheless, a Michigan alumnus, Bartelme, worked with North Division in the days leading up to the game. The newspapers treated the game as one of “scholastic supremacy” between the two cities rather than one of supremacy between East and West.
         
The East vs. West issue was surely not far from anybody’s minds, however. Chicago had played Army on November 14, and lost 10 to 6, a bitter defeat in which the Maroons won every statistic except that on the scoreboard. The loss was attributed to an unfair decision by an Eastern official. The Inter Ocean commented, “The defeat of Chicago does not bring discredit upon the teams of the West, in comparing them with Eastern College elevens.” After Michigan beat Chicago on Thanksgiving Day 28 to 0, capping an 11-0-1 season in which they outscored opponents 565 to 6, Yost was reported anxious to prove Michigan’s mettle against the East by announcing it plans to play an eastern opponent the following year.
         
As in 1902, the New York representative was not of champion caliber. Boys’ High had seven wins, one loss to Erasmus Hall, and one tie with DeWitt Clinton in mid-November. The loss to Erasmus Hall was considered an aberration, but the tie with DeWitt Clinton could not be dismissed. Only a coin toss between Boys’ High and Clinton determined that Boy’s would meet the Chicago representative.  After Brooklyn massacred Poly Prep 38-0 on Thanksgiving Day, the Poly Prep coach and former Hyde Park coach, Lee Grennan, predicted that Boys’ would give North Division a “hard game.”  He didn’t dare predict a win. The New York Herald noted that the school was “not too confident of victory,” but believed it would make a good showing.  When the North Division team arrived in New York, the local papers could not help but notice that the players are “extremely heavy for a school team,” and terms like “sturdy” and “husky” was used to describe them.  They were probably older—their average age 18½--and they outweighed the Boys’ High team by an average of three pounds per man.
         
But as in the previous year, Brooklyn’s less than stellar record was not important. Papers in both part of the country represented Boys’ High as representing the East, in a game that was considered the high school championship of the United States.  Only one paper, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, called attention to the obvious point—that Boston high schools were excluded in consideration for representation of the East.

The game at Washington Park in Brooklyn attracted 5,000 spectators eager to take a look at the fast, open style of play of a western schoolboy team. They were not disappointed. The Chicago Record-Herald commented, “The open-style, end-running game had never been seen in New York before, and the crowd went wild every time a long run was made.”  North Division completely dominated play, leading 60 to 0 at the half, which is considerably better than the 40-0 half time score Hyde Park had over Polytechnic the previous year. Most of the touchdowns were made in long runs of thirty to seventy-five yards, plus three long kick-off returns. Most all the gains were made runs around the ends rather than into the line.
         
New York sportswriters were effusive on North Division’s style of play. The New York Herald said, “Each [player] had been so well drilled as to instantly obey a command of Captain Steffen. There was a rhythm in their teamwork that was lacking in that of their opponents. They tackled better, they interfered better, and in fact they did almost everything better.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle commented on the rapid play, “The visitors knew just where the next play was to be sent and there was no delay in getting down to crouching positions. Half the time the boys would be off before the crowd in the stands realized a down had been made.” The first half lasted 35 minutes, but the second half was terminated at 21 minutes on account of darkness. The final score had North Division winning 75 to 0, for a total of 13 touchdowns and one dropkicked field goal.
         
Game assessments focused on the difference style of play between the East and West. In the East, the New York World captured it all when it said, “The style of game which the Westerners played was a revelation to those present, who had never seen anything but slow moving mass formations common on the ‘prep’ school gridirons of the East. Whirlwind football is what the Chicago boys played. A play was no sooner ended than the Westerners, with lightning quickness, were back in their places and going again. Their opponents were completely taken by surprise and were run off their feet. Line-bucking was seldom resorted to, but speedy dashes around end, and quarter-back runs, with good interference all the time, made possible the enormous score in the first half.  The Brooklyn coach, McLaughlin, who learned his football at Cornell, said, “That North Division team was the fastest school team I ever saw. We did not expect such a score, but it was simply a case of better style of play. The east will, in time, have to adopt that fast play. I believe North Division could beat all the small college elevens in the east, and could even beat this year’s Cornell team.”

In Chicago, the newspapers gave the same assessments. The Chicago Tribune commented that the North Division victory was “a great tribute to the skill of western high schools, and causes one to wonder how the east so long maintained its supremacy in football among the colleges.” The Chicago Record-Herald reported, “The game was a revelation to eastern football enthusiasts…Eastern critics at the game stated after seeing the contest that they wondered why the eastern teams did not copy the western style, and that the West was far ahead of the East in its methods. Others thought that the eastern teams would gradually adopt the more open style and the quick charging.”
         
After this second massacre in as many years New York lost its enthusiasm for intersectional contests against Chicago public high school teams and the series was terminated.
         
The disparity in the contests between the Brooklyn and Chicago schools was striking and a bit mystifying. The Brooklyn schools had a slightly longer tradition than Chicago schools in playing organized football. Polytechnic Prep had been competing since at least 1885, and Brooklyn Boys had been competing since 1888. Also, since 1892 Boys’ High and Polytechnic played each Thanksgiving Day for bragging rights to Brooklyn, and were in a well-organized conference, the Long Island League. Both schools were coached by adult faculty members with football knowledge and expertise, while the Chicago schools largely relied on the team captain and alumni volunteers week to week to develop their teams.

On the other hand, both North Division and Hyde Park were apparently loaded with extraordinary talent that included future Hall of Famers and All Americans. So there was probably a considerable talent disparity between the Chicago and New York teams.  But we must go back to what the newspapers of the day emphasized—that the superior speed and open style of play that had developed in the Chicago schools was the principal factor that allowed West triumph over East.

Meanwhile, in 1901, Morgan Park Academy actually inaugurated long-trip travel for Illinois schools, when it went to Cleveland to play the University School there for the private schools Midwestern championship. Neither team went home happy as the schools tied 0 to 0. Morgan Park Academy continued its interstate series with the University School of Cleveland. In 1903 University came to Chicago and edged the academy team 6 to 0. In 1905, Morgan Park Academy, which boasted the talents of halfback Frank Garrett and future Hall of Famer tackle Albert Benbrook, went to Cleveland and handily beat them 27 to O. Morgan Park Academy was given the titular title by the newspapers of "academic championship of the middle west."

In 1906 Cook County champ North Division introduced a new wrinkle to intersectional competition, scheduling a trip to the Pacific Coast over the Christmas holidays to play a game New Years Day in Seattle. Like many Chicago teams of the era, North Division was coached by an alumnus, Walter Steffen, but it was not the same caliber team that Steffen had been a part of several years earlier. North Division lost to Seattle HS in a sea of mud, 11 to 5, the Chicagoans blaming their defeat on the bad field, forgetting apparently that Seattle played on it as well.

After Englewood won the Cook County championship in 1908 the boys arranged a late December trip to the West that caused considerable controversy with the Board of Education because they left before classes had shut down for the Christmas break. The Board was outraged by the trip, and wanted to know who gave the team permission to make the trip. But institutional control over high school athletics had not yet been fully imposed in 1908 judged by the conflicting signals that the Englewood team got from different authorities. The Englewood principal, James E. Armstrong, felt the decision to make the trip did not rest with him, saying, "It made no difference whether I granted or refused to grant the boys permission to go west, so long as their parents favored their being taken out of school in order that they might go."4 Another faculty member, W. R. Bowlin, was made the claim that Superintendent Edwin Cooley had granted permission, but the Tribune reporter considered the claim dubious, heading his paragraph on the subject, "Cooley Gave His Consent?"

As far as the trip was concerned, Englewood won the first game, on December 19, against Butte, Montana, 11 to 4, but dropped the second contest, on Christmas Day, to Longmont, Colorado, 13 to 0. The following year Englewood—with future Hall of Famer in the lineup, Charles Bachman—repeated as champ and again arranged a western trip, and like the previous year holiday intersectional match-ups were opposed by the Board and by the new superintendent, Ellen Flagg Young. This time the authorities prevailed and the boys did not go.
         
The 1910 season saw Phillips High, led by future Hall of Famer Paul des Jardien, travel to Omaha, Nebraska, and get whipped by 24 to 11. The following season, without des Jardien, Phillips defeated Omaha 16 to 0. But Phillips was not the best representative from the Cook County league in those years. Oak Park was the best, and spectacularly so.

Oak Park Intersectional Victories, 1910-1912
         
The champions of Western football were onto something about what was going on in the Midwest, but unfortunately the East remained closed off to these developments as subsequent intersectional contests between Chicago area high schools and Eastern schools would demonstrate. Under the standard story of football, the forward pass era was ushered in when Notre Dame traveled East to play Army and crushed their opponents with forward passes from Gus Dorais to Knute Rockne. The famed Illinois coach Bob Zuppke, who began his career coaching high school football in Muskegon, Michigan, and Oak Park, Illinois, during 1906 to 1912, slyly remarked on this interpretation, “that is perfectly true—except that 70,000 forward passes had already been completed by that time.” Undoubtedly, a good percentage of them came from innovative coaching of Zuppke in those years. John Sayle Watterson gives a more nuance understanding of the impact of the game in College Football, where he explains that the Notre Dame was the first to show the East the virtues of the slimmer more elongated dimensions of the football that made possible longer and more accurate passes.
 
In two intersectional matchups whereby Oak Park High of Illinois easily defeated St. Johns and Everett highs of Massachusetts, in 1911 and 1912 respectively, and demonstrated to Eastern football mavens the advanced developments in the use of the forward pass and other open innovations representative of Midwest football. To understand why Oak Park prevailed, a step back to the 1906 season is necessary. That year saw the introduction of a new open game of football as a result of the national reform of the rules implemented by the colleges following the 1905 season that were designed to make the game less brutal.

In Chicago, the students and coaches were apparently attuned to the changes in the football rules and adapted with remarkable facility. The Chicago Tribune reported in early November on a University High 5 to 4 defeat of Hyde Park: “The new game was played brilliantly by both teams. Forward passes, onside kicks, long punts, and wide end runs made the contest spectacular in the extreme. There was little semblance to the old style game even among the high school boys.” In another match-up, Rockford with successful forward passes beat West Division, which threw unsuccessful forward passes. The Cook County championship game between North Division and Oak Park, in which the former prevailed 22 to 9, was described by the Inter Oceanas a “good demonstration of reformed football, and the play was fast, with no rough work and no man on either side compelled to retire from the field. The schoolboys demonstrated that they had applied themselves to a thorough study of the new rules. The forward pass, the onside kick, quarterback runs, and the end runs were tried and executed with remarkable ability.” In North Division’s drive for its first touchdown two forward passes netted 40 yards.

In contrast the descriptions of the games in the Boston area were not nearly so exuberant. The most positive comment was in an Everett-Cambridge Latin game, where the Boston Globe noted that the Everett quarterback, “worked the forward pass well and the team made considerable gain on it.” The Boston Globe would note a success but temper its comments with an equal failure, such as in the Roxbury-Dorchester game, said “In the second half the forward pass was tried twice and once it was successful. Hoernie succeeded in advancing the ball 20 yards before he was downed. Whit, who substituted for Leonard for Dorchester…dropped a beautiful pass from Capt. Riley and the ball went to Roxbury.”  Like In an Exeter-Haverhill game, the Globe related, “Exeter’s forward pass went to a Haverhill man, and this play was not again attempted.”  In a South Boston-Dorchester game, the paper said the “prettiest play” of the game was an interception of a Dorchester forward pass. The key match up of the season, between two of Boston’s strongest teams, Rindge Manual Training and Somerville, yielded this mixed result: “[Rindge] executed one forward pass with success, although gaining but eight yards on it. None of Somerville’s attempts with the forward pass was successful.” The year-end wrap up on the season made no mention of the forward pass, but tellingly did say that there were many more “no-score” games in 1906, and the paper said that the players attribute it to the new rules, particularly the 10-yard limit to make down.

Meanwhile, the Midwest universities, already playing a more open game than their Eastern brethren, likewise quickly adopted the forward pass—notably Chicago, Michigan, and St. Louis University. Only Michigan, however, was contesting the game with Eastern powers, however. Michigan beginning in 1906, with a contest against Pennsylvania, each year regularly competed against Eastern powers, adding Syracuse in 1908 and Cornell in 1911. From 1910 through 1914, Michigan’s record against these three eastern mid-level powers stood even, at nine wins, nine losses, and two ties, not a record that could compel the East to take notice.  Yet during this time Michigan was developing the forward pass. In a key match-up against powerful Minnesota in 1910, Michigan beat the Gophers with a drive down field using consecutive forward passes. Yost maintained that it was this game that established the forward pass, and not the Notre Dame-Army game three years later.

And 1910 would also be an important milestone in the Midwest prep ranks. The year Oak Park High hired Bob Zuppke to be its new football coach. Zuppke during 1906-1909 had developed a reputation at Muskegon High in Michigan for winning with a new open type of game. The open style of game differed from the prevailing mass movement style, in that it combined a mixed passing and running assault, making use of forward passes, laterals, reverses, and fake reverses. Red Grange in his book on Zuppke, said this, “With the advent of the forward pass, many coaches of the day used the aerial merely as a threat or a bluff, to set the stage for their running or plunging plays. Zup’s Muskegon and Oak Park teams used the pass for strictly business purposes, to gain ground.”

Bob Zuppke, Coach of the Oak Park intersectional champs of 1910, 1911, and 1912

Bringing his innovative techniques to Oak Park, Zuppke made the school the predominant football power in Illinois, and by a heavy schedule of intersectional games a nationally renowned football power. He won the Cook County championship his first year, 1910. Reported Kellogg M. Patterson in his year-end wrap-up for the Spalding Guide, that Zuppke “startled the entire league with his mode of play and in one year’s time took his place in league circles as one of the premier coaches.”

Oak Park's first season under Zuppke was capped with a Pacific Northwest trip over the Christmas/New Year holidays, where Oak Park played two games. The trip was arranged by league representative and trip manager Kellogg Patterson with the idea that Oak Park would avenge defeats that Chicago suffered to Pacific Northwest teams in a North Division trip in 1906 and an Englewood trip in 1908. Oak Park redeemed Chicago’s reputation when it defeated Seattle Wenatchee and Portland Washington. Reported Kellogg on the Wenatchee game, “Outweighed by almost nine pounds to the man, the Oak Park team fairly swept their opponents off the field with a constant bombardment of forward passes and trick plays.” On the team were future All-Americans quarterback Milton Ghee (who went to Dartmouth), halfback Paul "Pete" Russell (who went to Chicago), and guard Bart Macomber (who played at Illinois).

Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, the schools were adopting to the use of the forward pass. In the season-end report in the Spalding Guide, John J. Hallahan said, “Forward passes were also more prominent than before. Many teams showed more deception I their efforts to advance the ball by the toss. Very few times were the passes too long, and few penalties were meted out because of interference with the catcher of the pass.”  Patterson, who had arranged the Englewood and Oak Park trips to the Pacific Northwest, concluded his report to the Spalding Guide, saying, ”My plans for the coming season will be toward the East.”
         
The following year with Macomber ensconced in the quarterback position and brilliant runner Russell leading the team as captain, Oak Park went through the regular season undefeated. New player Johnny Barrett, who later starred at Washington & Jefferson, added zip at end position. At the end of the season, Patterson was able to persuade St John’s of Danvers, Massachusetts, to make the trip to Chicago to play Oak Park in a game billed as a “national interscholastic football title.” 

Even though St. John’s came out one of the state’s lesser conferences, and had one tie and one loss on its record, the Boston Globe reported that the St. John’s was the favorite. St. John’s, however, played a traditional Eastern style game, where attacking the line on the ground was the norm. Overall, Boston area schools that year had not been adapting well to the open game. Hallahan in his report on the Boston schools to Spalding Guide noted that, “Forward passing was also poor, very few teams having what might be called good formations for this method of attack. It was used many times, but failed 75 per cent of the times tried.” 

Oak Park, on the other hand, upped its open game to even a higher level in 1911, relying on frequent forward passes, usually set up with trick plays involving three to five flea-flicker passes. Game time at Marshall Field, the West being well-aware of the tradition it was trying to uphold used the same game whistle that was used in the Hyde Park-Poly Prep game of 1902, the North Division-Brooklyn Boys’ game of 1903, and all the Pacific Northwest games played 1906 to 1910. The game for Oak Park was a walkover, 17 to 0, the score not indicative of Oak Park’s complete dominance on the field, and of St. John’s utter bewilderment. The Chicago Daily News reported: “The winners outclassed the eastern men using open style of football. The visitors played the old style football, hammering Oak Park’s line on nearly every play…[while] Macomber used the forward pass combined with trick formations with great success.” 

Chicago correspondent Kellogg Patterson noted that the eastern sportswriters “were willing to admit that neither Harvard, Yale, Princeton, nor any of the Eastern teams were able to adapt themselves to the open game as readily and with such brilliancy as the Cook County League champions.” Tribune writer Walter Eckersall knew something about intersectional triumphs and placed the win in context with the college season. He said, “Western football scored another victory over the east yesterday on Marshall Field when the haughty Oak Park High School eleven repeated the performances of Chicago and Michigan, which defeated Cornell and Pennsylvania respectively, by decisively humbling St. John’s preparatory school of Danvers, Mass., 17 to 0, by open play in which the forward pass was the deciding factor.”
         
In the 1912 season the West would have the opportunity to exhibit their open game to their less enlightened brethren in the East on their home turf. Oak Park with Macomber and Russell both back, was destroying all opposition with the prominent use of the forward pass and other open plays. After winning the Cook County League again, Oak Park traveled to Massachusetts to play Everett High, which was a member of the powerful Suburban League and recognized as one the top teams in Massachusetts and the East. Everett had one blemish on its record, a come-from-behind loss to Suburban League rival Malden, which won the league title and the “Greater Boston” titular title.  Nonetheless, the Malden victory was considered a fluke upset, and the Oak Park-Everett match-up was deemed as the best match up between Eastern and Western teams.  Everett outscored its opponents in eleven games 437 to 21 (Malden being the only opponent to score against Everett).

Oak Park romped through its schedule of ten games outscoring opponents 517 to 3. After the school ended its league season, it took up a last-minute challenge of unbeaten Lake Forest Academy to play for the “state championship.” Oak Park demolished Lake Forest Academy 40 to 0. The Chicago Tribune scribe wrote that the school was “beaten and humiliated before the powerful onslaught of the Oak Park High School eleven, and bewildered and puzzled by some of the most complicated plays ever engineered by a local high school team.”  Little did Everett know what it would be facing on November 30 in Fenway Park.

The build up to the game by the newspapers in both cities was extraordinary. On the day before the game, the Boston Globe devoted almost an entire page of its broadsheet to various stories relating to the game. One of the stories on the page was by Chicago’s premier intersectional advocate, Kellogg M. Patterson. In it, he gave a history of Chicago’s intersectional competition since the Hyde Park-Poly Tech game in 1902, and a table of “Chicago Schools’ Coast-To-Coast Record for 10 Years.”  Patterson contended, and he was undoubtedly correct, that the 1912 Oak Park team was Chicago’s best since the 1902 Hyde Park team.

Oak Park 1912 intersectional victors over Everett, 32 to 10

The next day before a crowd of 10,000 football fans, and the entire suburb of Everett, Oak Park whipped Everett 32 to 14, and in the process gave the Easterners an education in Western-style open football.  The Boston Globe exclaimed:

The possibilities of new football against the old game were demonstrated at Fenway Park yesterday afternoon when Oak Park High School…defeated the Everett High eleven…Oak Park possessed the most versatile and varied attack ever shown by any school team in the East. Its passing game, which resembled basketball, consisted of forward, double, triple, and even quadruple passes, which not only baffled Everett’s ends, but also wore down the Home team’s defensive backs.

John J. Hallahan in the Spalding football guide retrospectively concluded that, "It was an exhibition of straight football against a bewildering open style of play, in which the forward pass, as displayed by Oak Park High, was a revelation to the followers of the game in this section." Zuppke was rewarded for his work by being named coach of the University of Illinois football team.

1912 Cartoon from the Boston Globe that dramatized Oak Park’s open play

Massachusetts was rewarded as well. During the 1913 season the lessons learned were being put into play all over the state. Said Hallahan, "the season was probably more interesting than any since the open style of play became prominent. There was more of an attempt to perfect the forward pass, the possibilities of which were well displayed the year before, when Oak Park of Chicago uncovered it to such wonderful proportions against Everett High.”
         
On the last weekend of November 1914, Oak Park would pay the penalty for educating the East. They again met Everett High, but this team under coach Cleo O'Donnell had become a powerhouse, winning all 13 of its games by a grand total of 600 points to 0, an average of 40 points a game. Said Hallahan, "Everett High's style of play comprised frequent use of the forward pass and a running attack that was propelled by a swift quartet of backs, reinforced by a line that was able to tear open holes through an opposing front that was more like a finished varsity eleven than that of a schoolboy team."  Oak Park on the other hand, which had only an average team under their new coach Glen Thistethwaite, sported only a 7-2 record. The school was smashed for the conference championship by University High, 31-7. Yet Chicago sportswriters—deluded by Oak Park’s spectacular legacy—considered Oak Park the favorite. Everett massacred Oak Park, 80 to 0. The Globe reporter said, “Oak Park’s line was poor offensively and defensively. Their tackling was high and uncertain, their interference ragged.”  Most tellingly for the future, the reporter noted that Everett was “so superior to the Westerners that open play was not necessary.” The story headlined in the Chicago Tribune called the game an "upset," a bit of delusion by the headline writer. O'Donnell was later rewarded by getting the Purdue coaching job.
         
A week later DePaul Academy became the first Roman Catholic school in Chicago to play an intersectional game, when St. John's Preparatory, of Danvers, Massachusetts, came to White Sox Park to play DePaul. The contest was billed as being for the “national Catholic prep title.” St. John's was champion of the Essex County League. DePaul under Coach Joe Paupau was the Catholic League champ for the second year in the row. Helping him prepare the team were a dozen alumni assistant coaches from DePaul and North Division, which included North Division stars Leo De Tray and Walter Steffen. The newspapers built up the contest with extensive daily reports on training and travel of the contestants, but the crowd was kept down to about 2,000 because of cold drizzling rain on game day. DePaul was nipped by their Bay State opponents, 8 to 6, and the Tribune noted "for hard, earnest, and diligent playing no prep game of the year excelled this one."
         
The two victories that Boston schools achieved over Chicago schools on successive weekends in 1914 probably did much to banish out of the minds of the champions of Eastern football the lessons of 1911 and 1912, where Oak Park triumphed with a spectacular open style of play.
         
Then there was the lesson of 1913, where Notre Dame triumphed over Army with a spectacular use of the forward pass. The East acted as though the Notre Game’s exploitation of the open game was a complete revelation. The New York Times headlined the game, “Notre Dame’s Open Play Amazes Army.”  Yet the East had been amazed by open play of the Western teams time and again in a series of so-called national interscholastic championship games between Chicago area high schools and Eastern high schools. They were amazed in 1902 when Hyde Park beat Poly Prep of Brooklyn 103 to 0, they were amazed in 1903 when North Division beat Boys’ High of Brooklyn 75 to 0, they were amazed in 1911 when Oak Park beat St Johns’ of Danvers Massachusetts 17 to 0, and they were amazed in 1912 when Oak Park beat Everett of Massachusetts 32 to 14. And after each game they did not appear to finally learn that the West had something to teach the East.
         
Chicago’s pride in its high school intersectional champions was manifested in 1914, when Chicago school sports administrator, Kellogg M. Patterson, took the lead in organizing a permanent group called the “National Interscholastic Foot Ball Champions of Chicago.” Members by Patterson included such high school football standouts as Walter Eckersall (who was now writing for the Chicago Tribune), Walter Steffen, and Tom Hammond. Patterson reported on this new organization in an article for the 1915 Spalding guide, where he gave a history of Chicago high school participation in intersectional contests. The purpose of the organization as described by Patterson was to protect, “Chicago’s record and also the cities of the country from being imposed upon by teams unworthy of representing this section.” The organizers apparently thought it would make the decision on which schools from Chicago could  engage in intersectional contests. Besides this vainglorious aim, the organization would also work to obtain better athletic directors for the Chicago schools and better football fields for their games. The group also began a fund for the purpose of holding an intersectional football game in Chicago each year. This attempt to institutionalize the intersectional games failed. The organization never got off the ground, and exigencies of World War I brought a halt to intersectional contests. When intersectional contests resumed after the war, a plethora of schools began competing with no organization to tell them they were unworthy.

In the 1915 season, the most significant intersectional contest featured East Aurora, claimant to the championship of Illinois, and Hamilton Institute, the private schools champ from Brooklyn. East Aurora was coming off a second consecutive undefeated season and was led by a superb athlete, Captain Albert Pike, and felt they were representing the reputation of the Midwest. Said the school's athletic director, "We realize we have the standard of western preparatory school football to uphold and we are going into the game with this end in view." Accompanying the players were sixteen prominent businessmen of the city, as well as parents and other fans. Unfortunately, for all their supporters, the team lost a close game, 13 to 12.
         
The reputation of Midwest high school football was partially redeemed the same day, when DePaul Academy also redeemed themselves from the previous year's defeat by easily defeated Beverly High, champs of the Essex County League in Massachusetts, 30 to 7. DePaul represented itself as the three-time champion of the Catholic League, and the school would extend the title streak two more years and become a five-time champion.
         
The nation's newspapers considered neither the East Aurora game nor the DePaul game to be the most important intersectional that weekend, however. The key intersectional matchup was that between Everett of Massachusetts and Detroit Central played in Detroit the same day. Walter Eckersall writing for the Tribune called it the "battle for national intersectional honors." But the battle was inconclusive, ending in a 0-0 tie.

In 1916, DePaul played host in a return match with St. John's of Danvers, Massachusetts. The eastern power came in with an undefeated record, and a weight advantage of 15 pounds per man, and a formidable reputation. The game played in Weeghman Park upset all the expert calculations when DePaul easily beat St. John's 21 to 0, making 21 first downs to the visitors' seven. The same year Oak Park feasted on a new Ohio power, Toledo Waite, beating them on their home grounds 35 to 19. Freeport made its debut in such contests when it battled perennial powerhouse Toledo Scott, but went home chastened after a 54 to 6 drubbing.
         
Intersectional contests continued until the United States entrance into World War I in 1917 and an influenza epidemic in 1918 put a damper on the whole enterprise. Beside the many intersectional contests there were a great number of season ending contests with schools in neighboring states, principally Iowa. Rather than make lengthy trips to the East or West, the schools tried to achieve the same object, to play a game at the end of the season, usually on Thanksgiving Day, to bring some import to the last game of the year. Curiously, in the vast majority of these contests Cook County schools traveled away rather than arrange for an Iowa, Nebraska, New York, or Massachusetts school to come to Illinois.
         
Thanksgiving Day, 1917, saw Chicago Public League champ Hyde Park defeat Louisville Boys' 25 to 0. It was basically the school's last hurrah as a national football power. The same day saw an up-and-coming football power, Proviso of Maywood, play its first long-distance out-of-state game when it beat Clinton, Iowa, 57 to 0 (in 1914 Proviso played a Wisconsin school). Proviso in the decades following World War I would become one of the most active schools in intersectional and interstate wars.

1920s Explosion in Intersectional Games

The 1920s has often been considered the golden age of sport. It was an era that gave us an unprecedented number of sports titans—Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in baseball, Red Grange in football, Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney in boxing, Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen in golf, and Paavo Nurmi in track and field. It was a time when college football reached the height of popularity and across the country 80,000-100,000 seat stadiums were being built for college extravaganzas. And in the high schools, the intersectional wars of that decade reached a fever pitch. The nation's newspapers would herald certain intersectional match-ups as national championship games.

Ohio emerged as a preeminent football center, and schools from Dayton and Toledo would travel all through the northeast quadrant of the country contending for national recognition. Many of their interstate opponents were from Illinois and the Ohio schools regularly notched up victories to put in their win column against Land of Lincoln schools, and Chicago schools in particular. In most of the cases the Illinois schools traveled to Ohio to compete. The South began to emerge as a football center and increasingly as the decade wore on Illinois schools traveled south of the Ohio River to meet opponents.

Following the war, Illinois schools jumped into the intersectional football arena with enthusiasm, at first against schools in New England and the Middle Atlantic. The three contests of 1919 proved to be an unpropitious beginning, however, and gave a bit of evidence that Illinois football had fallen a notch and was less competitive against schools in other states. West Aurora fell to a New York City school, Flushing, 27 to 0; Englewood fell to Haverhill, Massachusetts, 27 to 14; and Proviso fell to Marblehead, Massachusetts, 6 to 3.

The West Aurora defeat was particularly disheartening. The team had tied East Aurora for the championship of the Big Seven and was considered one of the state's strongest representatives. Against Flushing, the team's many turnovers from fumbles and interceptions repeatedly nullified big gains on the ground by its fullback, Andy Gustafson, a future Hall of Fame coach. The New York Times remarked that it was "the most important football game between schoolboy teams conducted here in four years," and that "the visiting schoolboys, coming here in the wake of a reputation which declared them the best collection of the scholastic players in the West, were expected to give stiff battle." Instead, the Flushing team "in every essential of football ability clearly and pointedly outclassed their Western rivals."

Proviso, under a succession of administrations and coaches, was dedicated at running a top-notch football program and as part of that program its intersectional schedule for the next two decades was the most ambitious in the state of any public school. Proviso returned to Marblehead in 1920 and got its revenge by beating the school 14 to 7. Proviso under Coach K. G. Coutchie continued its annual trips to Massachusetts from 1921 to 1924, when they met Fitchburg four times, alternating home and away.

Proviso was victories in 1921 and 1922 and the wins were particularly due to the skills of right end Chuck Kassel, who later was a three-time All American while at Illinois. In the 1922 game, which was viewed by some 7,500 fans in Maywood, the Tribune reported, "Kassel led the Maywood lads to victory. Though Fitchburg was watching him and made special efforts to stop him, he could not be halted." No longer having the services of Kassel in 1923, Proviso tied Fitchburg, 7 to 7. The last game of the series was played in Maywood before 6,500 fans; Proviso lost 20 to 6.

Englewood continued as a Chicago league power through the mid-1920s, and throughout the decade, the school surpassed all the city schools in the length and number of its intersectional trips. In 1921, it suffered a lost to an Ohio power, Dayton Steele, which made it a habit to fatten up it win column against Chicago public schools. In 1923 Englewood made a lengthy trip to Lockhaven, Pennsylvania, and got beaten, yet more evidence that the proud football tradition at the school was in decline.  

Meanwhile in one of three intersectional bouts of 1920, DePaul reentered the arena, traveling to St. James, in Haverhill, Massachusetts, and losing to them 21 to 10. DePaul having been the preeminent Catholic League power in the previous decade tried to establish its name as a power with many intersectional contests even though during the 1920s it won only two league titles. Perhaps DePaul should have refrained from such competition, because it lost all five of the contests it fought, four to St. James from 1920 to 1924.

Elgin fought its first postwar intersectional opponent in 1920, losing to Stamford, Connecticut, 7 to 0. Connecticut was apparently the state of choice for Elgin, because in 1921 under the leadership of future All American from University of Illinois, Captain Earl Britton, they fought another Nutmeg State power, Ansonia. Elgin lost the contest 13 to 0 before 8,000 fans in Connecticut, but made it an educational field trip. The team made a tour of the Yale campus, and before its return it made an excursion of Washington D.C. In 1922, Elgin no longer having the services of Britton but having the advantage of home field came out on top, beating Ansonia, 10 to 6. With the conclusion of that game Elgin retired from intersectional competition.

Suburban League champion Oak Park in 1920 improved on its already superb interstate record, when it traveled in early December to Dayton, Ohio, and defeated perennial power, Steele High, 19 to 6. Typically for the time of the season the game was played in inclement weather, with heavy rain forcing the players to perform in ankle-deep mud. The New York Times billed the contest as being for the "Mid-Western interscholastic championship."

By 1921 intersectional and interstate contests had become a rage and at least nine match-ups were played, most scheduled during the four-day Thanksgiving break. Lane Tech played two of them that year, losing to one Ohio school, Fostoria, and tying another, Toledo Scott. The following year Public League champ Lane Tech got thrashed by perennial intersectional power and another Toledo school, Waite, 66 to 0. After Lane won the city championship in 1923 it beat an all-star team from Cleveland.

In one of 1921’s nine matchups, future football superstar, Red Grange, participated in the only high school one such game of his career, when Wheaton journeyed to Toledo to play Scott High. Scott pummeled Wheaton 39 to 0 on a game filled with controversy over the Ohio school using "alleged" over-aged players and also deliberately injuring Grange to knock him out of the game.

A 1921 intersectional matchup pitted Suburban League champ, Deerfield-Shields, against Brockton, Massachusetts, in a Thanksgiving Day game. In a steady downpour of rain and snow, Brockton edged Deerfield 19 to 14. The nature of intersectional games in the 1920s was as much educational as it was for proving athletic supremacy. The Deerfield-Shield yearbook in its four-page report on the trip devoted only one brief paragraph on the game, leaving the rest to describe sightseeing, travels, and festivities. Besides seeing all the sights in Boston and surroundings, the team on the way home went to New York and Washington D.C., and visited all the requisite tourist spots.

Deerfield-Shields travels East to lose to Brockton, Massachusetts, 19 to 14

Seven intersectional and interstate contests were conducted by Illinois schools in the 1922 season, which saw a new city power, Lindblom, enter the fray. One of the few Public League schools with a winning record in intersectional contests, Lindblom made its debut with a win, beating Stamford, Connecticut, 10 to 7. The school's most impressive win of the decade was against City College HS of Baltimore in 1925. Lindblom had swept through the city schedule without defeat and met the Baltimore champs on November 28. They romped over their hapless opponent 96 to 0, scoring 14 touchdowns. After the starters scored 35 points in the first quarter, Coach E. Lansford Moore sent in his second team, but Lindblom continued to score at will. The team was led by right end Russell Crane, who became an All American while playing for the University of Illinois. Said the Tribune, "Never before has this city seen such a clever scholastic football team in action. And never before has a City College football team been forced to suffer such an ignominious defeat. City was not disgraced; it met a superscholastic team which ranks with the best." A return engagement between the two schools in 1926 at the White City Stadium in Chicago saw Lindblom prevail more modestly, 18 to 6.

There were at least nine intersectional and interstate games played by Chicago schools 1923, many for the first time being scheduled in October as practice games. The concept of intersectional contests was evolving from something that capped the season for champions to something that added a little flavor to the season for champions and also-rans alike. Intersectional contests had become so common that they were not played just by the top teams anymore. Still, papers across the country in 1923 were still anointing "national champions" after key intersectional contests. That year the consensus of the sports writers was that Toledo Scott's victory over Cedar Rapids Washington on December 8 determined the "national high school football championship."

One-time national power Oak Park in 1923 also participated in an interstate game against previously unheralded Glenville, Ohio, team. The game was played in October, in Oak Park, and the home team lost 13 to 7. When Oak Park won the Suburban League title at the end of the season it garnered no national recognition.

The 1923 season saw another new city power, Austin, begin to play intersectional contests. The school had a rough initiation, losing to perennial Kentucky power, Male High of Louisville, by an embarrassing score of 74 to 0. Austin went back for more punishment the following year, and lost 26 to 0.

The Illinois School for the Deaf (ISD) in Jacksonville had one of the oldest football in programs in the state, having begun playing in 1885, after Phillip Hasenstab brought the game from Gallaudet College in Washington, D. C. In 1921 the school started ranging out of state in search for other state schools for the deaf to play against. In 1921 under coach Roby Burns, ISD defeated Missouri School for the Deaf by a score of 7 to 6 in Missouri.  In 1923 Kansas SD defeated Burns’s ISD team 6 to 0. The school during the decade and afterwards also played against schools for the deaf in Arkansas, Texas, Ohio, and Oklahoma.

In 1924, Freeport, the champs of the Big Seven Conference, had aspirations of a national championship title, and tried to back it up by journeying to Ansonia, Connecticut, and beat the school 33 to 0. No national scribe noticed, but Freeport fans were ecstatic. They had a “national championship” team. The papers that year instead anointed another Toledo school, Waite, as national champions, after it defeated Everett High of Massachusetts (called “champions of the East” by the Chicago Tribune) on December 6, 46 to 0. Waite that year epitomized how Ohio schools searched the country for intersectional opponents to burnish their national standings, playing not only Everett, but also Lake Charles, Louisiana; Memphis Central, Tennessee;  and Bloomington, Illinois. Bloomington, surprisingly, gave Waite its toughest game, losing only by three points, 35 to 38. The following year Freeport journeyed to Ellwood City High, in Pennsylvania, and beat them 13 to 7.

Phillips by the early 1920s was a predominantly a black school. As an essentially a black school in a white world, during the regular season it could participate in the white world, but in post-season play it had to enter the segregated black world. The 1920s was an era when it was customary for schools at the end of the regular football season to engage an opponent in another state or another section of the country. Phillips was forced to find all of its post-season opponents among the segregated schools in the border or Southern states. In 1924, Phillips initiated such competition when it met Sumner of St. Louis. In 1925 the school began an annual Thanksgiving Game contest against Louisville Central (a black school), losing to them by a close margin of 7 to 0. The game fought in the rain and mud was a defensive struggle, and Phillips hobbled by injuries was lucky to lose by only a close score.

The following year, Phillips played two Kentucky opponents, Louisville Central again, on Thanksgiving Day, and Owensboro Western Colored two days later, and beat them both. The Chicago Tribune and Chicago Herald & Examiner tended to ignore or only minimally cover the intersectional contests of Phillips, but the Chicago Defender generally gave extensive coverage to the games.

In 1927, Phillips was reminded why it sought out opponents among its fellow black schools in the South. During a scrimmage practice against the Hyde Park team, a fight broke out between members of the two squads and then became more general among the spectators. The fight, which was broken up with police fire hose, made it over the AP wires, in which the scribe reported that he Phillips team was a “school for negroes,” and that six persons were injured, and noted that “even knives were used.”  That year, Phillips met Sumner of St. Louis, with whom they deadlocked 0 to 0, and Owensboro Western Colored, whom they beat 12 to 0. Phillips chose not to play Louisville Central in 1927, because they felt the officiating was biased in its game against Central the previous year.

In 1928 Phillips again met Louisville Central and Owensboro Western Colored, and lost to them both. The school redeemed itself for 1928, when it closed out the decade the next year meeting one of the top southern schools, Booker T. Washington high of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and beating them 6 to 0. The previous year, Washington had claimed the national championship among black schools after experiencing an undefeated season that included a shellacking of Sumner of St. Louis, 31 to 0.

Meanwhile, 1926 saw at least eight interstate and intersectional contests, half of which involved schools from the South, A notable contest involved a massacre by Tuscaloosa, Alabama, against Senn of Chicago, 41 to 0. Senn obviously discouraged by the experience never again scheduled another intersectional game. By 1926, Tilden Tech had emerged as a new Chicago school football power. It tested itself that year by playing an Ohio school, but lost to Toledo Scott, 21 to 0.
 
Only two distant interstate contests were uncovered in 1927, neither of which was reported by the newspapers. This surprisingly low figure may be due to a combination of a lapse in reporting and an aberrant dip in the number of intersectional and interstate contests. The year, however, saw the emergence of the fantastic program at Mooseheart High. That year, the school traveled to the far eastern edge of Michigan, to beat Marquette, 71 to 0. Mooseheart, a high school that was part of the orphanage run by the Mooseheart fraternal organization, had begun playing football back in 1914. Their program, which involved training boys at a very early age in the orphanage, soon emerged as one of the top ones in the state. The two Aurora schools, West and East, soon stopped scheduling games against Mooseheart, and the school started searching out of state for opponents. In subsequent years no other school in the state would travel as far afield to play opponents as Mooseheart. In many of its seasons the vast majority of its games would be against out-of-state opponents, usually in Wisconsin and Indiana, but as often as not in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

In 1928 the local papers reported on at least ten intersectional and interstate matchups, and the following year on at least eight such matchups, and of these 18 contests, all were either with Ohio schools (eight) or with southern schools (ten). Intersectional contests with Eastern schools appeared to be in decline. DePaul Academy played one of the more notable intersectional contests in 1928. The school took the Catholic League title, but it was hardly a strong representative for the city championship or for intersectional competition. It played Tilden Tech in the Prep Bowl on December 8, and lost 12 to 0, and then on December 21 made a trip to Brownsville, Texas, and suffered a humiliating defeat, 36 to 0. The school’s yearbook attributed the lost to “hot weather, train riding, and a phantom player everyone talked about, called Tequila.”

DePaul Academy team that traveled to Brownsville, Texas, in 1928 to get beat 36 to 0

Lindblom was one of several Chicago schools that looked to the South in the latter part of the 1920 for intersectional competition, and met mixed results.  Lindblom moved to the South in the late 1920s, splitting a pair of games with Little Rock, Arkansas, losing in 1928 and winning in 1929. Englewood improved its intersectional fortunes the late 1920s, beginning an annual contest against Pine Bluff High in Arkansas, in 1926, losing that one, but winning in both 1928 and 1929.

Ohio continued to provide rigorous competition in the late 1920s for Illinois schools, and had a bit more success than earlier trips in the decade. Proviso under Coach R. J. Thiebert made two trips to Lima, Ohio, in 1928 and 1929, beating the school both times. In 1929, Englewood played a second intersectional contest, against Toledo Waite, and came out on top, beating one of Ohio's most ambitious intersectional teams, 14 to 0.  On the other hand, in 1928, Mt. Carmel was shellacked by Toledo Central, 30 to 0, and Waller was destroyed by Waite, 46 to 0.  The following year, Bowen lost to Toledo Scott, 67 to 0.

The intersectional and interstate games involving Illinois schools were at first instrumental in spreading the superior Midwest game to the East. But by the 1920s it became clear that Illinois was no longer a preeminent football state and that certain states, notably Ohio and Pennsylvania, played a better brand of football. The statistical record, for example, shows that in the 29 games played between Illinois and Ohio schools during the 1920s only eight were won by Illinois schools. Most intersectional games were played by schools that had rich and winning football traditions, but there were many football powers that rarely if ever played an intersectional contest. The number of out of state games that a school played was often due to the football culture of the individual school rather than its winning record. Proviso, for example, was usually an also ran in the Suburban League race, yet it had one of the most ambitious intersectional schedules in the state.

Intersectional and Interstate Games Decline During the Depression

The 1930s schedule of intersectional and interstate contests began vigorously with eight such games in 1930, but then began to tail off rapidly. There were two reasons for this decline. The country was heading deeper into the Depression, which made the costs of travel prohibitive for many schools' football programs. Also, educators were looking with greater disapproval against schoolboys making long trips to participate in athletic contests. A few Illinois schools continued to participate as though nothing had changed, particularly Mooseheart and Proviso.

The number of intersectional and interstate contests dropped from 73 in the 1920s to 58 in the 1930s. But remove Mooseheart from the equation, and the result is a more substantial drop, from 71 in the 1920s to 38 in the 1930s. Of the 58 intersectional or interstate games played in the Depression decade, 20 involved Mooseheart, and of those 20 games 17 of them involved Ohio schools. The remaining games were with schools in Nebraska, Massachusetts, and West Virginia. Mooseheart's interstate and intersectional record in the 1930s was commendable, with nine wins, nine losses, and two ties. It lost one more game than it won against Ohio schools.

Proviso throughout the 1930s had the most extensive intersectional schedule next to Mooseheart, with four intersectional opponents. In 1930, the school, which ended up with a mediocre 4-3-1 record in its last season under Coach Thiebert, made its last trip to Massachusetts, where it edged the traditional power, Everett, 7 to 6. On their return the team first stopped in Washington, D.C., where they were presented to President Hoover, undoubtedly mystified why meeting with a high school football team was a part of his job. During 1932 and 1933, Proviso under Coach Lou Slimmer played a home and away series with Atlanta Technical, losing both at home in 1932 and away in 1933. The game in Georgia attracted 9,000 fans, including 200 who made the trip from Maywood. In 1936 Proviso again played against the Deep South, bringing College Park Military Academy of Georgia to Maywood in October and defeating the school 32 to 0. It was the last intersectional game ever played by the school.

Proviso 1936 team that beat College Park Military Academy of Georgia in Maywood

The schools of the Catholic League played only one intersectional contest in the 1930s. In 1939, Mt. Carmel, which had tied Fenger in the Prep Bowl, in late December went down to Florida and played an all-star team from Palm Beach, beating them 33-0 behind the heroics of halfback John Andretich (who scored three touchdowns).

The Public League schools began the 1930s decade with an ambitious schedule of intersectional and interstate games, but as the Depression made itself felt the number of games quickly decreased. In 1930, Englewood played its last distant interstate game, with a victory, over Toledo Waite. In 1931, Crane High, under Coach Bill Heiland, took their average record with them in a trip to Pennsylvania, where they lost twice, to Allentown High and to J. W. Cooper in Shenandoah.

Heiland transferred to Austin in 1936, and there presided over a far more successful program. With the great Bill DeCorrevont as running back Austin won the league championship and tied Fenwick in the Prep Bowl in Heiland's very first season. The year, however, ended on a downer as Austin lost to Lee High School of Columbus, Mississippi, in the first Dixie Interscholastic played at Crump Stadium in Memphis before 40,000 fans. It was a defensive struggle on a soggy field in freezing weather, and Austin was barely edged 7 to 6. In 1937, with DeCorrevont again in the backfield, Austin spectacularly swept through the season beating Leo in the Prep Bowl 26 to 0 before some 110,000 fans. They capped their season by defeating Jackson High 13 to 0 in the second Dixie Interscholastic. The weather was a lot milder than the previous year but only 6,000 spectators attended the game. In 1938 Austin, no longer city champs, traveled to the South again for an intersectional matchup, to Columbus, Mississippi, and succumbed to the local high school 14 to 13.

The city champs of 1938, Fenger, coached by Charles Palmer, had a remarkable season in which they went undefeated and their 16-year old star quarterback, Don Griffin, scored 28 touchdowns. The school beat Mt. Carmel in the Prep Bowl, 13 to 0, in a game in which Mt. Carmel thought they won a moral victory by keeping Griffin scoreless. Fenger searched for more conquests and found it in perennial Texas powerhouse, Waco High. On the day after Christmas before 10,000 fans. Griffin carried the ball across the line for two touchdowns as Fenger beat Waco 14 to 0.
         
Phillips during the 1930s, under Coach Ben Mosley, continued its tradition of capping the season at least three times with an intersectional trip to play black schools in the South. In 1932 it traveled to Memphis, only to lose to Booker T. Washington, 19 to 7. The school in 1933 returned to Tulsa, where they met another Booker T. Washington High, a school they had beaten in 1929. The results of the meeting were not to Phillips’ liking, losing 20 to 0. The city of Tulsa viewed the game as something of a huge community event, with the Tulsa World pointedly noting that the game drew a crowd that consisted of  “3,000 white customers and the well-filled colored section out to witness the last game of the football season in Tulsa.” The last interstate game played by Phillips during the 1930s was against Sumner of Kansas City, Kansas, on Thanksgiving Day in 1934, when they played to a 14-14 tie.
         
In 1935 a new black high school opened on Chicago's South Side, New Phillips, which soon changed its name to DuSable. It continued the intersectional tradition of Phillips and played Louisville Central on three Thanksgiving Day games, 1936 to 1938, tying the first one and losing the last two.

The most prestigious intersectional contest of the 1930s was the Miami Bowl game held Christmas day. Each year Miami High would arrange an intersectional contest with the most select school they could find, usually in the Midwest and the Northeast. Proceeds of the game went to a Christmas charity fund. The first bowl, in 1929, pitted perennial national power, Dayton Stivers, against Miami. By the time of the 1931 bowl Miami had been undefeated in three years. Its search of the Midwest produced more than a suitable opponent in Harrison of Chicago. The school, with two future Notre Dame All-Americans—Andy Pilney as captain and left wing and Andy Puplis as right wing—was one of the most formidable teams that the city of Chicago ever produced. Coach Bob Dougherty's team had easily whipped Mt. Carmel 44 to 6 in the Prep Bowl, and the Tribune reported that Harrison was being "hailed as the greatest team in Chicago Public High school league history." In the same story, however, it noted that Miami was "the top heavy favorite."  Game time, however, it was a different story as Harrison prevailed over Miami 18 to 7 before 6,000 fans.
 
The next time an Illinois school was chosen to play in the Miami Bowl was in 1937, when Suburban champ Oak Park was selected. Austin had committed itself to play in the Dixie Interscholastic in Memphis, and Oak Park was actually the second choice of Miami High (now called Central). The Miami event was marred by Central's segregationist policy. It demanded that Oak Park coach Glenn Holmes not bring its one black player and star half back, Lew Pope. Holmes acceded to the demand and Oak Park ended up tying Miami in the bowl game, 6 to 6.

In the last three years of the decade saw Chicago all-star teams of combined Public and Catholic players competing in intersectional games against other all-star teams, in Phoenix in 1937 and in Los Angeles in 1938 and 1939. The all-star teams were selected in a poll by the readers of the Chicago Herald-American, the Hearst afternoon daily that sponsored the intersectional match-ups. In 1939 the paper registered almost 6,000,000 votes in its all-star polling among its readers, powerful evidence of the popularity of high school football in the 1930s.

The 1937 all-star team was jointly piloted by Bill Heiland of Austin and Tony Lawless of Fenwick and played the Arizona all-stars. The game was played New Years Day before what was considered a poor crowd of 7,000 fans. Chicago won 9 to 6. The 1938 all-star team was coached by Charles Palmer of Prep Bowl-winner Fenger. The Chicago team built around quarterback Don Griffin of Fenger and fullback Johnny Barrett of Fenwick, lost a close one, 7 to 0. The following year, with Palmer of Fenger and Ralph Malliard of St. Ignatius at the helm, the all-star aggregation again had Griffin, and top backs in Loyola's Tommy Douglas and Mt. Carmel's Frank Meakim and John Andretich. The Chicago boys were shocked when the Los Angeles team pummeled them 33 to 12 on Christmas Day. Five days later Andretich and Meakim had crossed the continent, rejoined their Mt. Carmel teammates, and were playing a Florida all-star team. Mt. Carmel's actions must have raised more than a few eyebrows among educators.

1940-1950s Intersectionals Sustained by Private Schools

In November of 1940 the Illinois High School Association (IHSA) passed a rule against the playing of any games after the first Saturday in December. The new rule did much to severely cut down on the intersectional tradition, which was gradually dying anyway. Only 22 intersectional games were played in that decade, plus seven other games against Ohio schools. Of these 29 games, 18 of them were played by private schools that were not members of the IHSA. Half of those private school games were played by Mooseheart, which competed far and wide traveling to both coasts. The Public League played its last intersectional and interstate games in 1940 and 1941, until the revival of such games in the 1990s.

Early in the 1940 season Lindblom in a matchup against Toledo Waite lost 31 to 7. At the end of the season, the league champ Fenger, which boasted one the best programs in the state, accepted a challenge from Miami Central to play in the Miami Bowl. The Prep Bowl winners made the trip in defiance of the IHSA, but should have saved themselves the effort. They got beat 19 to 0 by a much smaller but apparently much quicker team. The subsequent suspension of Fenger by the IHSA precipitated a crisis between the association and the Public League, which was not fully resolved until the following football season.

Two of the best known predominantly black schools in the Chicago Public League, Phillips and DuSable, continued into the 1940s their tradition of going down South to compete against a segregated black school at the end of the season. But the schools did not have much success. They met Louisville Central five times during the decade. Phillips lost to Central in 1940 and 1947, but beat them 15 to 0 on Thanksgiving Day 1946. DuSable was swept by Central in 1944, 26 to 6. but gave them a tight game in a painful one-point loss, 20 to 19, in 1948. The Chicago Defender reporter evoked the Civil War in writing about the game: “DuSable High invaded the South, Thanksgiving Day, but had less success than General U.S. Grant.”

DuSable 1948 team that was narrowly beaten by the Louisville Central team, 20 to 19

In the suburbs, in the Suburban League, Proviso continued to schedule each year out-of-state opponents, but none in the 1940s could be classified as being intersectional. Oak Park played three intersectional and interstate opponents in the decade. In 1941, with future All American Paul Walker on the squad, it beat perennial power McKinley of Canton 28 to 13 in Ohio before 9,000 spectators. Oak Park finished the season with a perfect record of nine wins. In 1946 and 1947 Oak Park split a pair of home and away games against a new Kentucky power, DuPont Manual. Farther west, East Aurora beat Libbey of Toledo 13 to 12 in a mid-September opener.

The schools of the Catholic League, not being IHSA members at the time, were free to roam, and they roamed six times in the decade. In 1943, the St. George Dragons, which upset the Buddy Young-led Phillips in the Prep Bowl, traveled to New York to meet a team from the Bronx, Mount St. Michael. St. George coached by Max Burnell sported a 9-1-1 record and St. Michael was undefeated and untied in a spectacular season that allowed only two touchdowns in their schedule. St. Michael was heavily favored. The game was not set up as a charity event—it came about as the intersectional matches earlier in the century had come about. The two schools both found themselves king of the hill in their bailiwicks and their respective athletic departments arranged the contest, which was played on December 12.

The Chicago Tribune the day before the game evoked the legendary past, "the old Chicago-New York rivalry will flare up again tomorrow," and then discussed the 1902 game between Hyde Park and Brooklyn Polytechnic, but getting the year wrong and the name of Hyde Park's opponent wrong: "If St. George wants to continue the precedent set by Hyde Park High back in 1900, when the Chicago team, led by Walter Eckersall, buried Brooklyn Boys High, it will have a tough nut to crack in Coach Howie Smith's forward wall."  Game day the 10,000 fans that flocked to Polo Grounds got quite a show. Led by quarterback Marty Wendell, the Dragons overcame a 14 point deficit established by St. Michael in the first four minutes of the game and defeated the school 25 to 20. It was a frustrating day for the Bronx team, which during the game twice had scoring threats snuffed out when passes were intercepted on St. George's two-yard line and six-yard line. And when the final gun sounded Mount St. Michael was again on St. George's two-yard line.

The same year, Mt. Carmel, which had shared the league title with St. George, traveled to New Orleans, to play Jesuit, the state champs of Louisiana. The game was a charity event called the CYO Intercity Classic and was designed to parallel the Sugar Bowl as a holiday extravaganza. Proceeds of the game were to be used for a new U.S.O. center and to fund CYO activities. The Caravan was the biggest and strongest team Jesuit had faced all year, but speed and execution prevailed and Jesuit won 12 to 0.

In 1948 St. George went down to Louisville in September to play St. Xavier, and got beat 26 to 7. Later in the season first Weber and then Mt. Carmel met Aquinas of Rochester, New York, and both suffered crushing defeats. The following a year Aquinas feasting again on the Catholic League thrashed Mt. Carmel 40 to 0.

The Catholic League had one predominantly African-American school during the 1940s, and that was St. Elizabeth on the South Side. The school began a football program in the mid-1940s, but the school was primarily a basketball power and was never competitive against the storied programs of Mt. Carmel, Leo, Fenwick, and other league powers.  On Thanksgiving Day in 1948, St. Elizabeth played its only intersectional football contest in its history, when it traveled to Washington, D.C. to defeat Dunbar High, 6 to 0.

Mooseheart, under Coach Johnny Williams, continued its winning ways during the 1940s, and its custom of roaming far afield for opponents. Williams was a product of the Mooseheart system, playing as a halfback on the very first team in 1914, In 1923 he joined the Mooseheart coaching staff and in 1935 became its head coach. Although the orphanage had a small enrollment and over the years its athletes tended to be on the smallish size, Williams devised a system that was second to none for winning ball games. He used nine different standard football systems in his coaching the team, employing three variations of the "T"--the split "T," and the single and double wingback formations. His Red Raiders teams learned this incredibly varied offense backwards and forwards and caused havoc on opposing teams defenses, made even more deadly by not using the huddle and allowing the quarterback to call the plays from scrimmage.

Related Bill Sargent, quarterback for the 1945 and 1946 teams, "The quarterbacks were pretty much in charge of running the team once the game began. Johnny very seldom sent a play in from the sidelines once the game was in progress. He almost never questioned your call while the game was going on. We were primarily a running offense during my two years as quarterback. Don Thompson was probably one of the best all round fullbacks who ever played for Mooseheart. Most of our backfield was small and elusive. Johnny often referred to our runners as being 'nifty and shifty.'"

Reported the Sun-Times in 1950, "Williams has one advantage. He supervises the boys' football from the time they enter the orphanage until they graduate. That explains how immature boys can master nine different gridiron systems. They play as units from grade school through high school. Thus, the Mooseheart formations are executed with uncanny timing, speed, and precision."  Sargent explained the system more: "Johnny used to hold quarterbacks meetings during the summer months and drill us on his Quarterback's Manual. He had the football field divided into five zones, and we were expected to run certain plays in these zones. Our practice schedule each evening included thirty minutes of signal practice. You followed the ball carrier, and wherever he stopped you called another play. The theory behind this procedure was to keep us in excellent shape so we could wear our opponents down physically."
         
Mooseheart during the 1940s played eight intersectional and interstate opponents in Ohio, Washington, Maryland, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. and won five, lost four, and tied one. The school's four losses all occurred early in the decade and all were at the hands of Ohio schools. Mooseheart in 1946 stopped the Ohio trips and began improving on its intersectional record. Related Williams to the Sun-Times scribe, "Ohio's prep team have been the toughest for us. I'd say Ohio produced the top prep squads, with Pennsylvania and the Chicago area close. We lost three out of four to Waite of Toledo." Win or lose, the trips were worthwhile for the teams. Sargent fondly recalled, "As players we took pride in our accomplishments on the field, and also we felt like goodwill ambassadors for promoting Mooseheart and the Loyal Order of Moose. On these trips around the country, wearing our Mooseheart letter sweaters, we were treated with respect by the townspeople and the high school students where we played."

Intersectional football by public schools essentially died by the beginning of the 1950s, with two interstate games against Ohio schools, and eleven against intersectional opponents. Oak Park played a home and away series with DuPont Manual of Louisville in 1950 and 1951, tying the Southern representatives in the first meeting at home, 20 to 20, and losing to them, 20 to 12, in the second meeting away. Proviso in the 1950s was not playing any intersectional games, but kept the tradition somewhat alive by annually lining up a nearby out-of-state opponent.

Mooseheart, as usual was the most active, playing eight intersectional games, in Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Tennessee, and New Jersey, of which three were victories. The program, however, was going drastically downhill in the late 1950s. In 1959 after suffering the worst defeat in its gloried history by Rome Free Academy (Rochester, New York), losing 62-0, Mooseheart in subsequent years dropped intersectional contests. As evidence of the decline of the program, in 1958 the school lost three of their six games and in 1959 lost all eight of their games against mediocre competition.

Notwithstanding Mooseheart’s poor record, such is the mythical power of the intersectional contest in the minds of followers that decades later old-timer football fans of the Rome program recalled hearing in 1958 that Mooseheart was the number one ranked team in the country and had five returning All-Americans for the 1959 season. The beating Rome had given Mooseheart, so the story went, so destroyed the team physically that Red Raiders went winless in 1959. Decades later it was reported in the local papers that Rome Free Academy once beat the number one ranked team in the country, namely Mooseheart.

Intersectional and Interstate Games in the 1960s

The 1960s saw only two intersectional contests, and two other contests against an Ohio school and a Nebraska school.  In 1961 the four Christian Brothers schools—St.  George, St. Patrick, St. Mel, and DelaSalle—withdrew from the venerable Catholic League to form a new league, the Chicagoland Prep. In its first season, the league comprised only the four Christian Brothers schools, and the members had to fill their schedule with many non-league dates, many from out of state, usually with Milwaukee schools. One of the out-of-state matchups featured St. George in an away game against a Toledo school, Central Catholic. St. George, which won the league that year and ended up the season ranked fifth in the state, barely prevailed, 8 to 7. St. Patrick played the one other intersectional matchup that season, against the famed Boys Town of Nebraska. The school came to Chicago and played at Soldier Field before 12,500 fans. St. Patrick held Boys Town to a scoreless tie, which the Tribune considered a moral victory. The paper said, "St, Patrick's Shamrocks did a highly commendable job of upholding Chicago's high school football prestige last night when they fought the famous Boys Town, Neb., team to a scoreless tie in Soldier Field."  Boys Town had racked up more than 60 points in its first three victories so the tie was considered an upset. Later in the season St. Patrick lost to St. George in the league's key matchup 24 to 3. The following year the league still consisted of four teams, but the papers only reported out-of-state games with Milwaukee schools.

Mt. Carmel opened its 1965 and 1966 seasons playing a home and away series with Louisville Trinity, winning both contests. The first year was played in Louisville, which was drenched from the tip of Hurricane Betsy. The first 30 yards of one end of the field was flooded by two to three feet of water, but since Mt. Carmel made the trip the game went on and was played on the remaining 70 yards of the field. Whenever Mt. Carmel or Trinity would reach the near the flooded area, the refs would transfer the ball to the other end.

The Revival of Intersectional Contests, 1990s

In the 1990s there was a revival of intersectional contests, a decade that saw 16 intersectional contests and five out-of-state contests against Ohio schools. There had been none in the 1970s and only one in the 1980s. The revival was led by Illinois School for the Death, in Jacksonville, schools in the Catholic League, and schools with predominantly African American student bodies.   

Illinois School for the Deaf (ISD) in Jacksonville had a history of playing other state schools for the deaf throughout the Midwest and South when the school became active again in the late 1980s playing intersectional games. In 1988 ISD traveled to Kansas, where the team smashed Kansas School for the Deaf  43 to 6, as well as made trips to Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Iowa. In 1990 two of ISD’s dates in October constituted intersectional contests when the Jacksonville school bested Tennessee and Mississippi SD schools on October 13 and 20 successively.

Mt. Carmel during the late 1980s and much of the 1990s enjoyed unprecedented success under Coach Frank Lenti, winning four straight state titles from 1988 to 1991. But it regularly opened its season against a Public League doormat and decided in 1990 to confront the criticism of its soft non-conference schedule by traveling to Cincinnati, Ohio, and playing a game against perennial Catholic power, Moeller. Lenti's troops beat Moeller handily, 20 to 6, but thereafter abandoned such matches to open the season against another Catholic powerhouse in Illinois, Joliet Catholic.

The only Catholic League school to play an intersectional contest in the 1990s was DelaSalle, when in 1995 it played at home against Servite High, of Anaheim, California. Servite wanted to play a more formidable opponent, such as Mt. Carmel, but DelaSalle persuaded the school that its program was progressing to a stronger level. Servite should have gone with another choice, because the school easily smashed DelaSalle 51 to 6.

The best football program among predominantly African American schools in the state, and for a while perhaps the best program overall statewide, was that of six-time state champion East St. Louis under Bob Shannon. The East St. Louis Flyers squad was regularly being rated among the top teams in the nation, and in the 1990s began to assert its national status by scheduling some intersectional contests. In 1990 it made a 500-mile trip to Muskogee High in Oklahoma for a contest. As reported by journalist Kevin Horrigan, "the Flyers find themselves minor celebrities in Muskogee, a football-crazy town in the Oklahoma oil patch. The local paper has ballyhooed their visit, and reporters from Tulsa and Oklahoma City are on hand for the game." Some 6,000 fans had flocked to the game in the "Indian Bowl" stadium in the city's downtown. Shannon's team were a bit overwhelmed by it all and played flat and trailed at halftime 28 to 20. The coach fired them up and Flyers were fortunate to win 36 to 28.

The following year Muskogee made the trip to East St. Louis to inaugurate the school's new stadium. Because the new stadium was fitted with lights, the school was able to play it first night game. The completely new environs nullified the home field advantage, however, and the Flyers, which were ranked number one in the country by USA Today, played "like zombies" according to the assistant coach.  East St. Louis lost 20 to 8. East St. Louis continued to range far a field for games. A 1992 game against Parker HS of Birmingham, Alabama, had to be canceled as a result of an East St. Louis teachers strike. The following year, however, it finally met Parker and easily bested them 32 to 0.

Dunbar, a predominantly black vocational school in the Chicago Public League, under coach Glenn Johnson, during the 1990s played the most ambitious intersectional schedule of all Illinois schools. Most of the contests were arranged by Principal Floyd M. Banks, who believed in the educational value of travel to far-off schools. He told the Chicago Tribune reporter, "we always try to include a tour of the city [we travel to] to get some historical perspective as part of a broader educational experience." Banks had played football under the principal of Melrose High in Memphis, Tennessee, and beginning in 1991 the two principals arranged for Dunbar to play an annual game between each other's schools. In the eight meetings between the schools Dunbar has lost all of the games, usually by lopsided scores. In 1994, Dunbar, an also ran in the state playoffs, won the Public League championship, but against Melrose it lost 28 to 20, the closest match in the series.

Dunbar in 1995 began home-and-away series seasons against a black school in Dayton, Ohio, Dunbar. The first year, at home, they lost 35 to 2. The next year Dunbar registered their first win in intersectional competition when it trounced their Ohio namesake 42 to 20. In 1997, Dunbar, again serving as hosts, were edged by the Ohio school 18 to 14.  Dunbar added an intersectional opponent for the 1997 season, Washington High of Memphis, and thoroughly thrashed them 38 to 0 at Gately Stadium in Chicago. Dunbar went on to win the City championship and the Prep Bowl. With the 2000 season, Dunbar ended its practice of scheduling intersectional and Ohio opponents.

The preeminent football conference in the 1990s was the DuPage Valley League, which boasted such powers as Naperville Central, Naperville North, Wheaton North, and Wheaton-Warrenville South. The league's success was not equally shared by all the member schools, notably Glenbard South, which with its relatively small enrollment found it being increasing outclassed. At the end of the 1996 school year the school abruptly pulled out of the league, which left a hole in each of the schedules of all the league's schools. DuPage Valley schools worked feverishly to fill the empty weekend date in their schedules by searching far and wide for schools, and during the fall of 1996 league members were competing against a variety of out-of-state schools, mostly in Indiana and Michigan.

Naperville Central failed to find opponents in nearby states and finally found one among one of the most legendary schools in the history of high school football, Washington High of Massillon, Ohio. In the 1990s the longtime Ohio powerhouse boasted one of the largest high school football stadiums in the country and was drawing more than 30,000 fans to some of its games. The Tigers of Massillon traditionally imported class football opponents from far and wide—from Ontario, Canada, to Miami, Florida—and what better opponent than a school from the DuPage Valley League? The Redhawks of Naperville Central made the trip on October 12 for the Tigers' homecoming game before 12,000 fans and gave the legendary team a tough fight, leading at halftime 13-0. The second half proved to be a letdown and Naperville succumbed by a final score of 21-13. Going into the game Naperville Central was rated only 14 in the Chicago area, and Massillon was rated sixth in the nation, so the Redhawks in a way upheld the reputation of the DuPage Valley League.

In 1998, Naperville Central again met a challenge from a top intersectional opponent, Bishop Amat of La Puente, California, outside of Los Angeles. Naperville Central was not the top DuPage Valley opponent for the visiting five-time California champion, as Wheaton-Warrenville South, the eventual 6A champion had one of the greatest teams in the history of the league. The host Redhawks were still a fairly formidable team, as its final season record of 8-4 testifies, but was no match for Bishop Amat, which suited up more than 80 players and flew in a 14-member coaching staff. Before a packed house at Memorial Stadium the visiting Lancers “with too much size, speed, talent, and depth for the Redhawks,” said reporter Ray Schmidt, easily defeated Naperville Central 28 to 7.

                                                Afterword

In a century of intersectional contests between Chicago schools and the rest of the nation, there were probably more than 160 such games, and more than 80 games with Ohio schools. The intersectional and interstate games were initiated by the secondary schools to bring themselves glory at a time when there were fewer national powers on the high school level and a contest between schools from different sections had some significance. As the number of schools multiplied and as other sections, notably the South and the West Coast, became more competitive with the Midwest and East, the matchups of two schools in different sections proved to have lesser and lesser impact in terms of football glory.

Instead of glory, many of the intersectional contests in the later decades held at the end of the season emphasized the charity work of such games. The Miami Bowl, the Dixie Bowl, and the CYO InterCity Classic all were designed also to further charitable work during the holiday season. Also, there was a trend towards shifting intersectional games to early in the season, as warm-up games for the regular league contests. In such cases the educational aspects of intersectional contests was increasingly emphasized.
  
The intersectional games involving Illinois schools were at first instrumental in spreading the superior Midwest game to the East. But by the 1920s it became clear that Illinois was no longer a preeminent football state and that certain states, notably Ohio and Pennsylvania, played a better brand of football. The statistical record, for example, shows that in the 82 games played between Illinois and Ohio schools only 27 were won by Illinois schools. Generally Illinois school lost two out of every three games against intersectional opponents. Some schools were exceptions to this generally poor performance and ended up with winning records against intersectional opponents, notably Oak Park, Proviso, Lindblom, and Tilden Tech.

Most intersectional games were played by schools that had rich and winning football traditions, but there were many football powers that rarely if ever played an intersectional contest. Such historical football powers as Evanston, Thornton, and Fenwick never played even one intersectional opponent, and Schurz, and Leo only played an intersectional opponent once. The number of intersectional games that a school played was often due to the football culture of the individual school rather than its winning record. Proviso, for example, was usually an also-ran in the Suburban League race, yet it had one of the most ambitious intersectional schedules in the state. Dunbar during much of the 1990s was not in the first-rank of football powers in the Public League, but no other school in the league during that decade could match its travel schedule.

Intersectional Football contests