Washington College Magazine
The Washington College football team beat the University of Maryland and archrival St. John's College on its way to winning the 1911 state championship.
Photos from the 1935 yearbook immortalize Washington College's only undefeated football team.
The Spectacular Demise Of Football
By Justine Hendricks '07
Undefeated Since 1950." The motto of the Washington College football program would be extraordinary if it didn't represent the 57 years the College has been without a team. Instead, it's a reminder that the sport that was once an important part of student life faded from campus more than half a century ago. Though its teams often struggled, WC has a rich football history that includes both a state title and an undefeated season.
Football got its start at Washington College in 1888. The first and only game that season became the team's first loss—to St. John's College of Annapolis, by the embarrassing score of 116-0. Remarkably, the program did not fold after such a humiliating defeat and, just as incredibly, the game launched a spirited rivalry between the two schools.
The earliest teams were ragtag groups of students, professors and even townspeople but, by the early 20th century, Washington College began to take football more seriously. In 1903, Dr. James W. Cain, a former Yale football player and a coach for St. John's, became President of the College. His interest in the program helped the team become a state title contender by 1910.
That was the year the "Maroon and Black" burst onto the scene of Maryland football. After finishing with a respectable 3-3 record the previous season, the team beat Rutgers University, 6-5. A piece in The Baltimore Sun called the win "probably the greatest achievement accorded the local college," a win that marked "the beginning of a new era in the athletic history of this institution." The game was even immortalized in a poem, "They Came, They Saw, But Conquered Not," by G.E. Meekins.
The win over Rutgers helped propel the future Shoremen to a berth in the state championship game. Playing against Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, though, Washington College was the team that "conquered not." In front of a crowd that included Maryland Governor (and Eastern Shore native) Austin Crothers and Baltimore's Mayor John Mahool, the "Black and Blue" soundly beat the "Maroon and Black," 9-0. Newspaper accounts gave the officials' "apparent unfairness"—rather than Hopkins' play—credit for the final score. Washington won a small victory, however, when two players, including Captain Stanley Porter '12, were named to The Baltimore Sun's 1910 All-Maryland team.
With all the players from the 1910 team returning for another year, the Maroon and Black should've been stronger than ever the next season; instead, it opened with a 0-0 tie followed by three losses in a row. Midway through the schedule, it seemed as if the previous year's success had been a fluke.
Facing some of the state's toughest teams in the second half of the season, WC dug in its heels and didn't record another loss. The turning point came when the team defeated or, as the papers wrote, "simply outclassed" the University of Maryland, 15-0. The University team was "run off its feet" by the Eastern Shore upstarts in the unexpected but resounding win. The victory provided the spark the Washington College team needed. It recorded its next win over Maryland Agricultural College and tied with DC's Gallaudet University, taking a 2-3-2 record into the season's final game, against archrival St. John's.
The season-ender in Baltimore had the elements of a classic: a longstanding rivalry, a neutral field and a season hanging in the balance between great and unfulfilled. A win would make Washington state champions; a loss would give the title to Western Maryland College, which had defeated St. John's but refused to play Washington. It was a "make or break" game, and Washington made it.
And the 1911 team became "the undisputed intercollegiate football champion of Maryland."
In a game called "a beautiful exhibition of modern football," Washington College shut down St. John's offense immediately, en route to an 11-0 win. "The Washington College line...was far superior [and] is largely responsible for the victory," a newspaper reported. Porter, the captain and quarterback, was hailed as "a tower of strength" who was "the brilliant star of the game." And the 1911 team, with a 3-3-2 record, became "the undisputed intercollegiate football champion of Maryland."
The state title did not, however, generate any momentum for a team that lost many key players after the win. The school was unable to sustain a strong football program and never solidified its fleeting significance as a state football powerhouse.
It had to wait 23 years, until the depths of the Great Depression in 1934, for another spectacular season. In the spirit of the time, the surprisingly successful team played "New Deal football," leading it to its first and only undefeated season.
Washington College set the tone for the 1934 season by pounding Gallaudet University with a 52-0 loss. Phil Skipp '37, in his column in the student newspaper, lauded the team for its "good coaching, weight, power in the field and plenty of spirit" leading to its first season-opening win in several years.
Under Coach George Ekaitis, who encouraged his players to believe "that a team that won't be beat, can't be beat," the team shut out Johns Hopkins University, 13-0. It continued its dominance on the field with wins over Mount St. Mary's and Haverford College, as well as a victory, 29-7, over the University of Delaware to win the Senator Hastings Cup. The season's only hiccup came during the final game of the season, when the Shoremen tied with Susquehanna University, 6-6.
Bill Nicholson '36, who went on to a career in Major League Baseball, played on the legendary team, scoring 50 points to be named the All-Maryland fullback. The entire offensive line earned All-State honors; Ellery Ward '36 made the All-State team, while linemen Al Bilancioni '36, Ellis Dwyer '35, John Lord '35 and Hobart Tignor '36 received honorable mention. Backs Wilbert Huffman '38 and Charlie Berry '36 also earned honorable mention in the state. In 1984, on the 50th anniversary of its undefeated season, the entire team was inducted into the Washington College Hall of Fame.
1934 was the last great season in the College's football history. The undefeated season carried through the first half of 1935 before the team slid back into its characteristic mediocrity. The team struggled from the late 1930s until the United States' entry into World War II, when the program was suspended for the duration of the war as the majority of college men left campus to join the military. The football program was forced to completely rebuild after the war and had just begun to show a glimmer of its former glory under Coach Dim Montero when it was cancelled "indefinitely," because of financial hardships and the beginning of the Korean War, in the spring of 1950.
Throughout the history of football at Washington College, there were far more failures than successes, but the triumphs were significant achievements around which other teams have built perennially competitive athletic programs. Washington College's teams were not always great but in the program's 62 short years, the "Boys in Maroon and Black" did what great teams do—they inspired and unified the college community with their spirit and perseverance. And they even went undefeated.
Justine Hendricks '07 is the web content provider for Washington College. She writes a blog about college football, her favorite sport, and has done extensive research on the history of Washington College.
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