Ilion High School - Class of 1908

The Evening Telegram - August 6, 1953

1908 Ilion High School Football Team

Article 5

Photo Caption - This is one of Ilion's older athletic teams. They carried the pig skin for Ilion back in 1908 when football in high school was going through the throes of birth. They played about six games in that season and their big tilt was with Little Falls although they played an annual Thanksgiving game with an informal Herkimer group. They were coached by Jack Harrison.
The front row, left to right: Wesley Ingersoll deceased, Frank Marville, Harold Jarvis, deceased; and Ray Shaul, deceased.
The middle row, left to right: Ward Gordon, a dentist in Detroit; Walter Hunter, A.K. McGowan, captain and new owner of an insurance and realty business in Ilion; Harrison Brand, Washington; and Alfred Young, a druggist in Saratoga.
The top row, left to right: Lee McCorn, now with Remington Rand in Ilion; Clyde Knandle, deceased; Harold Russell, New York City, Ben Wheelock, Ray Luley, deceased and Ray Bastow.

Old Grads Return for 76th Reunion - Ilion Alumni to Honor Class of 1908

We part the curtains of the past again today for a brief look into the pages from the past in Valley Sports history.

This peek into days gone by will take us back to 1908 and the days when the football teams used to travel back and forth among the Valley towns by trolley, hiring a team and carryall to go to towns off the Valley line such as Dolgeville, a 1908 opponent.

The home games of this 1908 ILion High School football team were played on the old State League Ball Park field which stood where Remington Rand's Tabulating Machines Division Plant is today.

While we weren't able to gather any official record books for the 1908 gridders, we were escorted to the past by Kent McGowan, captain of that early team.

The home games of the 1908 Ilion McGowan went on to point out that most of the games in those days were informal so far as scheduling was concerned and that none of them were real high school teams. Herkimer was met on Thanksgiving morning in Mohawk on a field just past the Columbia street Cemetery in the area now covered by new homes. Other games were played in the flats north of Mohawk and Little Falls was played on the river flats just about opposite where the Mohawk Country Club stands today.

The Herkimer team that Ilion in those days was strictly an informal one, picked up a few days before Thanksgiving.

Little Falls was big opponent for Ilion at that time, and we believe that the record will show that Ilion has faced Little Falls in more official consecutive games than Herkimer. The big play in the Ilion team's repertoire was what they called a 'criss-cross' with variations It, of course, was what later became known as the reverse. The forward pass was still in the future at that time and those early ball clubs ground cut their yardage the hard way, through the middle and around the flanks.

We'd be glad to hear from anyone who'd like to volunteer more information on the early gridiron team, either with regards to present whereabouts of the players or to their record as a team in 1908.