During war years of history past, it was common to suspend major athletic events for multiple years while nations focused their attention on the war effort.
At the local level, though, it’s usually a natural calamity that wreaks the most havoc on sports. Friday night football is so ingrained in the psyche that anything that detracts from a typical 10-game regular season must be serious. Hurricane Ike scrambled schedules and caused the cancellation of dozens of games earlier this season.
Imagine, then, having virtually an entire football season wiped out by weather and illness. It’s almost unthinkable to a 21st century mind long steeped in the week-to-week drama under the vapor lights of our cities and towns.
To be an aspiring football player who has longed to don the varsity colors of his school only to see it washed away by an unrelenting rain and the strain of a potentially deadly virus would be devastating.
We often talk in vague generalities about keeping sports in their “proper perspective.” Once in a while, that perspective is thrust upon us.
Such was the case in the fall of 1918 in Temple and the rest of Central Texas.
Football became quite insignificant that year as World War I marched to its climax; public gathering places were quarantined because of one of human history’s most horrific flu strains was engulfing many locals; and flooding rains swamped the region probably not unlike what was experienced here in the summer of 2007.
In the era prior to the 1920 formation of what is now known as the University Interscholastic League to govern the extracurricular activities of public schools in Texas, schools that fielded football teams generally played a handful of games against nearby teams. The number of games varied from season to season - maybe seven or eight. And the season didn’t start until late September or early October. It would be today’s equivalent of a club sport.
The 1918 Temple Wildcats managed to get in one game. On Oct. 4, they took on a squad from Eddy on a field located approximately where Baker Field is now in eastern Temple just off Adams Avenue.
Temple had fielded football teams for a decade by that time. J.L. Head was credited as the head coach throughout this period of very good success. Baseball and maybe track were probably still considered the sports of choice, but football was gaining in popularity.
The Wildcats had a relatively easy time of it that Friday afternoon against Eddy, cruising to a 32-0 victory. Marvin Shoemake led the way for an offense quarterbacked by Roy Hewett. R.V. Nichols picked up a fumble and ran it in for a touchdown and Wildcat defenders intercepted three passes.
That would be the beginning and the end of the football season in Temple. Less than a week later the county was placed under quarantine that shut down schools, churches and theatres, halting much of the typical social activities and a good bit of the day-to-day trading. What was commonly called Spanish Influenza was spreading throughout the United States and abroad. An estimated 25 million people worldwide and 195,000 Americans died from this flu and the subsequent pneumonia.
The Telegram reported on Oct. 24 of that year that 18 locals had died and 1,000 cases had been reported.
One of those who died during this viral onslaught was a young man named Jamie Woodson, for whom Woodson Field is dedicated. His family donated the land to accommodate sporting events. It was used for football and baseball for many years and still is home to Temple’s soccer teams.
After 17 days, the county health director lifted the quarantine. Schools and other typical business gradually resumed. Making the transition back to normalcy even more difficult was the ongoing heavy rains that drenched the area. Traversing from one place to another was difficult enough, much less trying to play football.
Having a grass football field wasn’t a given at this time, so rains of this enormity would make any serious attempt to play a farce. Therefore, the 1918 season was shelved with only one game in the books.
As it turned out, the illness and the inclement weather that wiped out the season also put a definitive punctuation mark on the first era of Wildcat football. That otherwise innocuous victory over Eddy was the last game Jim Head would coach before he spent many more years in Temple’s school administration.
Head had been the caretaker of the football program from its infancy. Only Bob McQueen has had a longer tenure than Head as the Wildcats’ leader. Only four others have presided over and won more games than he did, lo these 90 years since.
Thankfully, there hasn’t been another football season like the one in 1918.
twaits@temple-telegram.com
