“City” Stadium, a horseshoe-shaped edifice with a declared 23,312 concrete seats, opened the previous spring in the back yard of San Diego High.
Coincidentally, football fortunes improved on the Hilltop.
Coach Clarence (Nibs) Price, 2-3-1 in his inaugural 1914 season, guided the school to its best record in the 23 years since the game was introduced here.
Price, from Iowa and the University of California, was more familiar with rugby when he was appointed coach but was learning fast.
The Hilltoppers finished with a 6-1-1 record, the best since 1891, and boasted a roster of underclassmen who would make 1916 one of the greatest in school history.
The stadium, built at the same time as many of the historic buildings in Balboa Park, was part of the Panama-Pacific Exposition in 1914, and gave San Diego High the advantage of playing at home.
Just not for the first game.
MONEY FORCES VENUE CHANGE
A San Diego-Coronado contest was scheduled, but the teams were forced to play on the island community’s polo grounds, later to become Coronado Country Club.
A dispute had arisen between the high school and the Park board, which demanded a $25 deposit and one-third of the gate receipts.
Meetings between the park entity and the school board resulted in compromise.
An agreement was made before the Hilltoppers’ next game against a Park Exposition Marine Corps team.
As reported in The San Diego Union:
“In the future the high school students will have the use of the grounds for their games by giving the park board due notice of their schedule of games. They will not be charged for use of the stadium, as (an agreement of) $60 per month will cover rental for contests where an admission fee would be charged.”
The $60 would be paid to a grounds-supervising “caretaker”, or stadium manager.
KARL’S DEED(S)
Karl Deeds, who went on to an outstanding career for the high school and played with several of his 1916 teammates at the University of California, scored the Hilltoppers’ first stadium touchdown.
The Park Exposition Marines led, 10-0, at halftime on a touchdown by an unidentified ball carrier and on a drop-kicked field goal from the 33-yard line by (no first name) Herman.
Trailing, 10-7, after Deeds’ short run for a score, San Diego pulled out the victory when George Howard policed a Marines fumble and raced 50 yards for a touchdown in the final three minutes.
BOWL GAME ATMOSPHERE
Student manager Renwick Thompson arranged for a large platform to be built in the stadium on Thanksgiving Day morning, before the game with Santa Ana.
The platform was decorated in the Hillers’ blue and white. A program followed featuring Hawaiian music, Ragtime, syncopation, yells, cheers, and speakers that included principal Arthur Gould, coach Price, student body prez Ralph Noisat, and Thompson.
The morning festivities were only part of the Thanksgiving celebration. As historian Don King wrote in Caver Conquest, an “ear-splitting serpentine was formed at Sixth and B, wound its way through the downtown area, and finished up at the high school for a huge bonfire.”
More than 100 automobiles, or “machines,” as they also were called, were part of the serpentine walk by students.
Oh, yes, the game.
“Togo” Shaw’s 35-yard field goal with about three minutes remaining gave the Hillers a 3-0 victory.
EARLY IMPRESSION NOT IMPRESSIVE
San Diego was 4-0 as it began preparation for Long Beach Poly, which had won 5 of the first 6 meetings since 1910 and had become the Hilltoppers’ main rival, along with Santa Ana.
An unnamed newspaper observer compared Price’s unbeaten squad to the group he saw before they played a game:
“Those who came out to see the first week of practice smothered an impulse to laugh and turned away with a sad shake of the head. No chance, they said, the high school is out of the running with that bunch of hicks to defend their honor.”
Many players never had played the game before lining up for first time on a hot August afternoon.
JUPITER PLUVIUS*
*God of rain…and “rain-giver”.
The mythical figure ordered precipitation, lots of it, for two other, important games.
The Hillers boarded a 12:45 train north on Friday afternoon and received a wet and soggy greeting when they arrived in Long Beach. The field at Long Beach Poly the next day was laden with “four inches of mud,” according to one newspaper report.
Poly and San Diego fought to a 0-0 standoff.
San Diego had a choice for its first-round playoff versus Whittier: Play the game at distant L.A. High or at closer Santa Ana.
The Orange County venue was selected and the Hilltoppers and Cardinals went at it ankle deep in mud. San Diego slipped and slid the most. Whittier won, 7-0.
(The Cardinals reward was a championship game against Pasadena, which prevailed, 50-0).
RULES AND REGULATIONS
The CIF Southern Section was created on March 29, 1913.
San Diego was a member but, outside of local county entries Coronado, National City, Escondido, and Army-Navy, the Hilltoppers were about 90 miles from the closest possible opponent, in Orange or Riverside County.
“Machine” and train travel to Los Angeles was at least 4 hours.
Principal Gould and football manger Thompson attended a late afternoon meeting at Los Angeles High, at which officials for interscholastic games were selected and to settle dates and sites for proposed, upcoming games.
Gould and Thompson returned after learning that San Diego would not be invited to join the Southern California Football Conference.
Travel, as always, was an issue.
L.A. High had played the Hilltoppers at Bay View Park in South San Diego on Christmas Day in each of the 1898 and 1899 seasons, but pulled out of a contest this season.
Romans officials stated that a game with the Hilltoppers was unattractive since it would not be a league encounter and that the gate wouldn’t cover expenses for an overnight trip from the Northern city.
SLOW START
The Southern Section struggled to gain traction.
Seth Van Patten, a former Escondido football and baseball coach, was the unofficial commissioner. Van Patten worked with a budget of exactly $212.38 in the school year that ended in June.
Gaining the support of principals in the membership of 30-plus schools in five leagues was a challenge.
Van Patten and Los Angeles High principal E.W. Oliver spent much of their time trying to convince schools of the educational value of athletics and the CIF Southern Section.
Eligibility rules seemed simple, but….
In order to compete an athlete had to be 21 years or younger and passing in nine units of class work. Post-graduates could not play and athletes had to have been at their school at least one semester.
A school caught using an ineligible player forfeited a game.
Age and transfer disputes were common…and still are, more than 100 years later.
SMACK TALK
Dean Mitchell of Coronado and George Blount of National City engaged in some unusual pregame coaching banter.
“They will be easy,” Mitchell said of the Red Devils.
“I’ll make the boys keep the score down to fifty,” said Blount.
Coronado won, 30-0.
SIGNS OF THE TIME
Holloween tomfoolery had local constables busy, according to The San Diego Union.
–An 8-year-old lad escaped after throwing a lemon through a plate-glass window of a residence at 27th and A streets.
–Vandals leveled a row of fence posts at 16th and M streets.
–Teenagers commandeered a large wagon and let the vehicle loose at 16th and C. It drifted downhill for two blocks before the wagon tongue crashed into a house.
–A group of “colored girls” were arrested and then released after dressing up as men.
GROWING
San Diego High enrollment was almost 2,000 students in four grades. Population within the city limits had grown from 18,000 at the turn of the century to approximately 50,000 in a decade in which there would be an 88 per cent increase.
HONORS
San Diego end Bryan (Pesky) Sprott made the all-Southern first team. Guard Lawrence Hall and back Karl Deeds made the second team. Future major league baseball manager Fred Haney of Los Angeles Poly also was on the first squad.
TRUE GRID
Probably seeking a warm-weather trip, bosses at Butte High in Montana suggested a postseason game…the Bulldogs wanted expenses and a percentage of the gate, but the Hilltoppers declined…Pasadena was the power school…the Bullpups’ 50-0 win over Whittier in the first Southern Section championship resulted in their being named the state’s No. 1 squad…Pasadena also won the state swimming title….
