By Fred Steiner
www.BlufftonForever.com
This Bluffton High School team wasn’t even called the “Pirates,” yet 100 seasons ago, it set the standard for a winning football tradition in our community.
The 1923 red and white Bluffton team, playing before most school athletic leagues were formed, won eight games and lost only one. Even its loss, by a close 3 to 9 score, was impressive.
Here’s the story of this Bluffton team:
According to an account in an early Bluffton High School yearbook – not yet called the Buccaneer–the 1923 team was the first Bluffton team to gain statewide attention.
The team lost only one game – to Dayton Stivers. That Dayton team just happened to be the undefeated Ohio high school mythical state champions. It had earned a winning football tradition in the 1920s and was the Lakewood St. Edward, Massillon and Canton McKinley of that decade.
Bluffton is reported to be the only team to score on Stivers that season.
An interview in the 1970s with Howard Hahn, a member of the 1923 Bluffton team, recalls the Bluffton-Stivers game, played at Schmidt’s field, today the location of Community Market on Vance Street.
He said that the Stivers team came out on the field with 44 players wearing new uniforms. Those 44 players represented an 11-member first team offense and a completely different 11-member first team defense, plus a completely different second team 11-member offense and 11-member defense.
Bluffton’s 23-member team entered the field wearing uniforms with several years of rough and tumble use. And its 23 players included 11 members who played most of the game both ways – offense and defense – thus, seldom leaving the field.
Yet, Bluffton held Stivers to one touchdown and one field goal. Bluffton managed one field goal, playing in Schmidt’s field, also used as a cow pasture during the other six days of the week.
Hahn said that the Stivers team treated that game as a personal defeat and the next year took revenge defeating Bluffton in a game played in Dayton.
The oral history account of that game played the next season was proven factual in the Bluffton News game report, when Stivers broke the leg of Bluffton’s star player Dallas “Jack” Berry in the first quarter.
Bluffton never played Stivers in football after that season. One of the interesting unanswered questions is how did Bluffton manage to get on the Stivers schedule.
Despite the loss to the Dayton team, Bluffton went on to win eight straight football games. It should be noted that all games were played in the afternoon and the 1923 team was the final Bluffton team to play games at Schmidt’s field, as Harmon Field opened in 1924.
Click HERE for team and individual photos and more information about the team.
