Page 71 - some-stuff-i-wrote-and-some-stuff-i-didn't-(2011)-h-morris-williams

Some Stuff I Wrote (2001) H. Morris Williams

Summer, 1911: This date seems to be the starting point for high school football in Lake City.

The CHS principal, a Professor Fulks, joined with local volunteer coach, Buck Harris, to solicit
community donations to equip that first team. Worth noting: The players had to buy their own shoes,
then took them to the town cobbler, a Mr. Criswell, to add cleats. One player, place-kicker Bill

Canova, had a custom-made, square-toed right shoe, made of hardened leather designed to help the
ball travel in a straight line. Reports were that Canova could drop-kick a field goal from mid-field.

The football of that era was more oval, with rounded ends, than today’s sharper pointed football.
About 1912-1920: Student body and community enthusiasm for football increased. Win

or lose, attendance was good at all the games-even though there was no place to sit. Crowds just
stood around the edge of the field. Fist-fights were not rare, especially during games with

Gainesville High School because many local people still felt Gainesville had “stolen’ the University
of Florida from us in 1905.

January, 1921: The CHS team went to Cuba to play the Cuban Athletic Club in Havana,
losing 27-0, to a bigger and older Cuban team. Some reports indicate the Cubans were expecting

to play Columbia College but Columbia High School got the invitation by mistake. In fact, the
Havana newspapers and the game program listed the Lake City team as “Columbia College.”

Although nobody made much of it at the time, this was almost certainly the first American high
school football team to travel to a foreign country to play a game.

1924: CHS got its first “nick-name,” the “Terrors,” probably from its new volunteer coach,
Mr. Blakely. Before that, the team was called simply CHS or Columbia.

1925: Throughout these early years, won-loss records and game accounts are almost non­
existent. For example, the then-weekly “Reporter” for 1925 never mentioned football even one time

during all of its fifty-two editions.
1927: Joe Gray became the first CHS football coach employed by the school system. All

previous coaches had been unpaid volunteers. Also, this was the first year the CHS team was called
“Tigers.” In 1928, under another new coach, J. D. Jones, the name went back to “Terrors” but in

1929, the name was back to “Tigers” and had stayed Tigers ever since.
1931-41: “The Hooser Era.” Coach Hobart Hooser, a no-nonsense, super-strict disciplinarian
and dynamic football coach (“lightning in a bottle”) turned CHS into a state-wide football power.

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