By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Librarian
In 2020, the National Football League of America celebrated its 100th anniversary, but football as a sport has been around in the states, particularly Ohio, much longer. Tiffin has its very own rich history in the sport, and residents have seen it evolve from its very beginnings to what it is now.
The very first “official” football game held by Tiffin High School was in 1901, five years after Fostoria High School began its football program. Plus, both Calvert High School’s and the Junior Home’s football teams were well-established by the time the professional league out of Canton was formed. In fact, the first high school football game in the state of Ohio (and the Midwest) was played 11 years before the sport reached Tiffin -- October 25, 1890 in Cleveland. However, the game of “American Football” looked much different back then.
American football developed and eventually diverged from its “ancestors” soccer and rugby. Different rules existed, albeit dozens, if not hundreds less than today. If one could travel back in time to an early football game, he or she would see a smaller number of players on the field wearing rudimentary protective gear and running a lot more as opposed to throwing and catching the football (one would also not hear a whistle blown or see a flash of yellow fabric tossed in the air every two seconds). Even the lines on the field would look foreign. Basically, it would have resembled more of what we call a scrimmage today. “If you wanted to watch the game you just stood along the sidelines, or pulled your horse-drawn carriage up to the edge of the field,” states Eric Lambright in an article on Dailyhistory.org.
The development (or should I say improvement) of football stadiums for its fans has been evident as the interest in the sport grew. In the late 1800s, Heidelberg University’s first football field was on a field at the “old fairgrounds” by Heilman Street. Then with donated funds Armstrong Athletic Field was built in 1904, a precursor to the current Hoernemann Stadium on Greenfield Street. Columbian played here until the school bought what is now Applejack Park. The Junior Home also had its own stadium, Redwood Stadium, on the site of Kernan Park. Memorial Stadium, home of the Fostoria Redmen, was named in honor Fostoria men who died in World War II.
Frost-Kalnow Stadium was finished in September 1940 at a cost of $167,000, a project of the Works Progress Administration. Land on First Street was donated by John H. Wiliman, Minnie B. Cunningham and Anna Flender. Ken Egbert Jr. wrote an extensive compilation of Tiffin Columbian football stats in 1988 and includes in it that the first game played at the stadium was attended by 3,000 as Columbian beat Bellevue 41-0. The additions of the locker rooms, track, scoreboard, lights, tennis courts and metal bleachers have all been added in the several decades following its initial completion.
In high school, the number of players on a team often dictates to which league the team belongs, which in most cases is based on the size of the school. Other factors can be considered and local schools have seen their fair shares of league changes over the decades. The Junior Home “Maroon and White” team was technically in the Ohio Athletic Association’s “Class B” by the size of the school, but it encountered a challenge. “Most of the other Class B schools have refused to compete with us and we have been forced to compete with Class A schools,” it’s stated in their 1930 yearbook. These schools included Fremont, Upper Sandusky, Fostoria, Findlay, Oberlin, Woodward Technical School in Toledo, the State Deaf School and Wilkinsburg (in Pennsylvania).
Between running as an independent team for some years, Calvert Catholic Schools has been a member of the Northern Parochial Conference, League of Six Nations, Midland Athletic League, and now the “River Division” of the Sandusky Bay Conference, which includes Danbury, Gibsonburg, Hopewell-Loudon, Lakota, Fremont Central Catholic, Sandusky St. Mary’s, New Riegel and Old Fort (the last 2 do not have football teams).
Columbian also has a handful of leagues in its repertoire playing teams as far as Oberlin to Marion Harding. It first joined the Trolley League in 1911 (the oldest in the state), along with Elyria, Lorain, Norwalk, and Sandusky. It then joined the Little Big Seven in 1927 followed by the Buckeye League (which included the Junior Home at one time) and then finally the Northern Ohio League.
At the college level, Heidelberg, a member of the Ohio Athletic Conference, won the very last Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl’s west league division beating Fort Valley State 28-16 in 1972 before the competition was reformatted into the National Division Championships in 1973 (a title Mount Union College has claimed 8 times in the last 20 years).
Scoring has also seen its own evolution. Teams used to only play a handful of games per season, not the full spread our boys see today, where winning records help a team reach the playoffs. Public opinion usually dictated who was the winner and for a long time Fostoria was the favorite. Both the Associated Press and United Press International Polls emerged in the late 1940s, not long after Frost-Kalnow Stadium was built, and the process of ranking teams in their leagues became a little more organized.
Despite what popular opinion is or what the polls say, most Ohioans, those in Seneca County included, have their own favorite football teams, and it has definitely become a fixture in American culture for many years to come.
Works cited:
Barnes, Myron. “JOSIAH HEDGES AND HIS DESCENDENTS”. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/22645/rec/4
Egbert, Ken Jr. “87 Years Tiffin Columbian Football by Ken H. Egbert Jr.” https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/51431/rec/1
Fostoria Centennial Souvenir Program and History, 1954. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/31551/rec/1
Hartzell, Stephen. “Tiffin Calvert Football History.” Compiled by Calvert High School. Last updated 2010. http://www.historynotebook.com/Records2.html
Lambrecht, Eric. “How Did American Football Develop?” Dec. 30, 2020. https://dailyhistory.org/How_did_American_football_develop%3F
Radio Program Script for On the Job with WPA. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/33978/rec/1
Seneca County Digital Library. Tiffin-Seneca Public Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/search
Tiffin Ohio - Chamber of Commerce 1979 Publication. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/51553/rec/1
“Who invented football?” Aug. 22, 2018 https://www.history.com/news/who-invented-football
Yearbook Jr. O.U.A.M.Maroon and White 1930. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/27420/rec/1