Help with the removal of "old decorations" Clean-Up day at Oak Shade Cemetery is this Saturday, Oct. 20. Come out at 9 A.M. and have a lot of fun with Friends of Oak Shade Cemetery. We hope to see you there! ... See MoreSee Less

5 days ago  ·  

Organized football came to Marion for the first time October 10, 1896 when the Marion YMCA football team played the Cedar Rapids Y here. The team would soon become the famed "Carl N. Owen's" or "CNO's," after their sponsor, the C. N. Owen drugstore, but it was commonly known as the Marion High School team--famous for their play, its players and a tragedy that all but ended football in Marion for a generation.

CR triumphed 6-zip in the first game, though the results are disputed--we called it a 6-4 squeaker. The reporting discrepancy isn't explained. The CR reporter praised his hometown boys for their good conduct and "manliness." (Cedar Rapids Gazette October 12, 1896) The game was played on the John Oxley property on north Eleventh St., the old baseball field. Admission was ten cents. The traditional return game on October 23 in CR, played on the Coe campus, exposed our weak kicking game and we lost that one too 16-8.

Good conduct not withstanding, many Marion YMCA members were very unhappy seeing the Y promoting football. For the same reason they objected to boxing, they condemned the sport's brutality, its unsportsmanlike play, and the heavy gambling that often accompanied the contests. Defenders claimed football was a gentlemen's game when played by Christian gentlemen, and "honor and square dealing" could redeem the game and lift it from the "mire" of violence that threatened to engulf it. (Marion Register; October 7, 1896)

When the team played its next game on Nov. 14 it had a new sponsor. Historian Marvin Oxley records the boys had approached Marion School Superintendent J. J. Dofflemyer for support and been firmly rebuffed. The "Super" had attended a game between Cornell College and the State University of Iowa in Oct. 1894. . . players had to be carried off the field after nearly every whistle. Play wasn't as tightly regulated by conferences then as now. Teams played whoever they could line up and it wasn't unusual for a high school to compete against an older, heavier and more experienced college club. H.S. eligibility rules were lax too and it wasn't unusual to find a few 20-somethings on a team. Given the absence of helmets, pads and other safety equipment, and none of the rules that would come later guarding against unsafe actions, serious injuries and even deaths were common among early football players.

Where Dofflemyer saw unspeakable brutality in the S.U. I.-Cornell contest, a CR Gazette reporter saw only normal manly sport, albeit more one-sided than even the 60-0 final-score indicated. No one was injured badly enough to have to leave the game, and timeout only had to be called 2-3X to give players a chance to recover from "hard jolts." (Iowa City Herald; October 20, 1894). A Cornell College reporter, however, noted two weeks later one player still sported his class colors (purple and black) around his left eye, and another would need to wear a plaster bandage on his face for a while, "to keep his nose in place." (Cornellian, October 27, 1894) As President of the reorganized Marion YMCA, Dofflemyer was as concerned about the liability and risk to the image of the Y as he was the high school's. The footballers had to find another sponsor and found it in Carl N. Owen.

The boys didn't have to look far. Fully 1/3 of the team were members of the Mentzer Hose Company, Marion's leading volunteer fire company, including Don Rathbun, the team manager, William Smyth (left end), Nate Starbuck (running back), Lowell Daniels (right end), Preston Daniels (quarterback), George Busby (running back) and Ed Leahy. Owen was the hose company's business manager. He bought his new team the best safety equipment available, counting on increased patronage of the store and a cut of the gate receipts. 300 enthusiastic fans watched his champions beat Mt. Vernon H.S. 10-0 in their first game Nov. 14. Five days later they played a return game in Mt. Vernon and beat a mixed squad of college and town boys 10-0. So the winning tradition was started, and so too a legend.

The roster of the 1897 team (pictured here) lists the names of Marion's leading families, sons of prominent businessmen and pioneers. Many went on to have successful careers themselves in business, public service and the military; a few went on in sports--first among them, quarterback Preston H. Daniels who graduated from the high school in 1899. Daniels went on to quarterback and captain the Coe College team in 1900. He transferred to ISU in Ames in 1901 to study engineering. He played football there too, quarterback, of course, and was elected Captain in 1903. Experts credit him with leading the 1903 Cyclones to one of their best seasons ever. Under Coach A. W. (Shady) Ristine they finished with an 8-1 record. (Ames Daily Tribune; October 15, 1953) Grid-historians credit Daniels with making the first-ever field goal in ISU history. (ibid.) Daniels moved to Chicago after graduation and later Des Moines to work in the heating and ventilating industry.

The Carl N. Owen/"Marion High School" football team disbanded in 1904 after the death of a player the previous season. The Marion School Board voted to ban the sport. They couldn't stop students from playing on their own, but they could bar them from representing that their games were associated with the school in any way. Carl Owen ended his sponsorship. . . scandals were bad for business. The boys organized some limited play and for a while, despite warnings, even under the high school's banner, until the school expelled the team captain. He sued but the school's disciplinary rights were upheld by the Iowa Supreme Court in 1906. Eventually the newspapers learned to call the team the "Independents" and ceased linking them to the high school. Intermittent play continued for several years, sometimes just on Thanksgiving . . . that's a hard tradition to break. Marion High School didn't resume playing football officially until 1922.

More about our early football team and its tragedies in the future. Catch a "sneak" preview in the current Heritage Center exhibit: 150 Years of Marion Sports. Free admission and tours always available thanks to a grant from the McIntyre Foundation again this year. ... See MoreSee Less

7 days ago  ·  

The horseshoe pit in Marion's Thomas Park is quiet these days, but in October 1924 the city was the scene of one of the greatest demonstrations of the sport ever witnessed. Coggon dentist and former Marionite Dr. Charles E. Haines, Linn County horseshoe champion, took on 18-year-old World Champion, Orren ("Putt") Mossman from Eldora, IA and pushed him to the limit, besting him in two of their eight games before falling 384 to 307 points. Mossman (1906-1994) went on to a celebrated career in boxing, baseball and daredevil motorcycle riding, while the game of horseshoes died in Marion. But sports crazes come and go though like Halley's Comet, and perhaps we are due a comeback of the game some called "barnyard golf."

Horseshoes is based on the ancient Greek game of quoits. It started among the poor in Athens who couldn't afford an Olympic-style discus, so they made their own by shaping a horseshoe into a ring or "quoit." Over time it evolved from a contest of distance to one of accuracy and tossing the ring over a pin in the ground. Horseshoes first struck Marion in 1858 and crowds of up to 50 men, including several of our honored county officers, practiced in the streets uptown, reportedly with pints of beer wagered.(Linn County Register; June 25, 1858)

Stephan A. Douglas listed horseshoes (quoits) among Abraham Lincoln's many disreputable habits in one of their famous debates in 1858: "He could beat any of the boys at wrestling--could outrun them in a foot race--beat them at pitching quoits and tossing a copper, and could win more liquor than all the boys put together." (Ottawa, IL August 21, 1858) "Tossing a copper" refers to Lincoln's gambling habit, i.e. pitching pennies--its a wonder he had time to win the Civil War.

Horseshoes could hit a town like smallpox, and once it started all business ceased. . . even the ever-present confidence men moved elsewhere; it was is a pretty good sign a town was too dead to skin when its citizens began pitching horseshoes.

The game has always been popular among our troops and more than one military commander has been forced to ban it to keep men's minds on their drills. It become so popular among American soldiers in France in WWI that sergeants had post extra guards in the stables to prevent the horses from being "undressed" to get the needed equipment. Not for the first time in sports, the YMCA came to the rescue and started a campaign to supply sets of real quoits to our boys (Cedar Rapids Gazette; August 9, 1918) And so wars are won.

In 1920 State Fair organizers in Des Moines announced they would sponsor a horseshoe pitching-contest. Horseshoe clubs sprang up all over the state. Linn County YMCA Secretary, W. H. Wing, headquartered in Marion, coordinated the formation of teams, vowing "clean sport (and) clean speech." Betting was banned. A vacant lot north of Wal Burns's blacksmith shop at the corner of 11th St. and 9th Ave. was fitted for practice. Our team, consisting of Dr. A. E. Crew, George Reichard, Roy Kellams, and Norm and Les Burgess, finished 3rd at the first Linn County Horseshoe Pitchers Tournament in July 1921. Kellams served as Secretary of the Linn County Horseshoe League, coordinating competition across eastern Iowa. The league stayed active for several years, but horseshoe passion dimmed with the Great Depression.

Ellis Park in Cedar Rapids is the center of the Linn County horseshoe universe today, and the Iowa Hawkeye Horseshoe Pitching Association sponsors the Annual Cedar Rapids Open there every summer. In 2010 they hosted the National Horseshoe Pitchers Association World Tournament, which brought more than 1,200 competitors in from all over the world. Membership has declined significantly in recent years as the elders of the sport have dropped out without replacement. Youngsters have other interests. More about horseshoes and our other ephemeral sports in the current exhibit: 150 Years of Marion Sports. At the Heritage Center until April 29. Free admission again this year thanks to a grant from the McIntyre Foundation. Don't miss Sunday's program about Les Hipple presented by Dan Kellams, it promises to be a good one. ... See MoreSee Less

2 weeks ago  ·