- Sports - Janesville Sesquicentennial
-
- [Photograph; caption reads: The Janesville High School football
team of 1902 hardly looked ready for action in this picture.]
-
- Winning nothing new for local teams
- More than a century of commitment - now that's Janesville
sports.
- And the more one listens to the history of its rich tradition,
the better it sounds.
- It's a success story which stretches back to the 1890s, and
even before, and proceeds right to the
- present.
- Even before the turn of the century, Janesville was well
on its way to developing one of the state's
- finest interscholastic athletic programs. Baseball also was
established as a prominent sport in those 19th century days,
at which time local folks already were playing golf and tennis.
- The record shows:
- Janesville's first organized baseball game was played more
than a century ago.
- One of professional baseball's first minor leagues, organized
in 1877, included a team called the Janesville Mutuals.
- Janesville interscholastic sports came into existence in
1895, with a program that soon was to include football, basketball,
baseball and tennis.
- The first game of golf in Rock County was played at the farm
of Alexander GALBRAITH on Oct. 18, 1895.
- The immortalized Janesville-Beloit high school football rivalry
began in 1895, with Beloit winning, 38-0.
- Janesville's Hugh HEMENWAY was the first state high
school high jump champion, reaching a height of 5 feet, 7 inches
in 1896.
- D. D. MAINE, Janesville's superintendent of schools
and high school principal, was elected to the WIAA's first Board
of Control in 1897.
- Janesville High had an undefeated football season in 1899
- winning all five of its games by 6-0 scores, when touchdowns
counted four points and extra points always came two at a time.
- Janesville High played a two-game basketball schedule during
the 1899-1900 school year, splitting a pair of games with Waukesha.
|
- 1913 team undefeated
- This city reached the height of state high school basketball
supremacy in 1913, when John "Ray" FALTER captained
an unbeaten Janesville team (16-0) to the Lawrence Invitational
championship.
- The American League Medal, an honor reserved for the schools'
top senior athletes, was first presented here in 1922 to Alvis
CRASPER and has been an annual tradition ever since.
- And, as a start to another long-lasting tradition, Janesville
became a charter member of the Big Eight Conference in 1925.
|
- So, as can be seen clearly, Janesville has been part of the
longtime trend of bringing sports to the
- forefront on the school scene. And it has done so with considerable
success, both in the early years and after the split into Craig
and Parker high schools in 1967.
- History, of course, relates how Janesville has had its share
of tough times in school sports. But it
- also tells how this city has built an interscholastic athletic
program that has withstood the test of time - making it through
two world wars, a staggering Depression and 25 consecutive years
of losing football against arch-rival Beloit.
- Through it all has come an interscholastic program which
has provided boys' and girls' competition
- for almost two decades and now extends to 14 sports, offering
opportunities for more than 6,000 students in five secondary
schools each year. Along with it has come a winning tradition,
making Janesville a "City of Champions" in the Big
Eight and beyond.
- As such, the modern record shows:
- Janesville broke out of its quarter-century football drought
against Beloit with a 14-0 victory in 1937, then beat Beloit
four straight times in the 1940s and has played the Purple Knights
on at least even terms ever since.
- Craig High gave Janesville its finest football record in
history by going 9-0 in 1974.
|
- SUTER winningest coach
- Bob SUTER, the winningest coach in Janesville football
history with 82 victories in 17 years, has led Craig to four
Big Eight championships since 1980.
- Janesville High won WIAA state championships in cross country
in 1950, 1961 and 1962, swimming in 1955, and golf in 1950 and
1963.
- Janesville established itself as a Big Eight basketball power
by winning five conference championships in [the] 1950s.
- Parker High, under Coach Bob MORGAN, won the boys'
state basketball championship in 1971, the last year of open-class
competition for WIAA schools in that sport.
- Parker has been Big Eight wrestling champion 10 times in
the last 13 years, while Craig has taken Big Eight boys' track
titles the last eight years.
- Craig has won five Big Eight boys' basketball championships
in the last eight years, compiled the conference's top winning
percentage of the last 13 years, been to the WIAA state tournament
five times since 1974 and twice been the Class A state runnerup
during that span.
- Janesville schools have 10 of the last championships in Big
Eight baseball and also been represented in the WIAA state tournament
10 times during that stretch.
- Parker gave Janesville its first WIAA state baseball championship
in 1977, an accomplishment which since has been duplicated by
Craig in 1983 and 1984.
|
- So, in short, the record virtually speaks for itself. At
the same time, it shows the success Janesville
- has had in diversifying its sports interests - something
which has been stressed here since the very early days.
- Janesville hasn't been one, either, to restrict its sports
interest to the schools. Its widespread
- success in such sports as baseball, softball, bowling and
golf has provided ample proof of that.
-
- Bowling big
- Bowling has been particularly big among residents of Janesville
and surrounding communities. The
- first local league was sanctioned by the American Bowling
Congress in 1916 at MILLER's Lanes, the city's first bowling
establishment, which opened in 1915.
- Helping to make bowling the popular sport it is today was
the late Dr. Emil SCHWEGLER, an
- immigrant from Switzerland. An Olympic bronze medalist in
gymnastics for the United States in 1904, he settled in Janesville
in 1915 and became president of the Wisconsin Bowling Association
in 1940.
- The only other city resident who has served as WSBA president
is Frank ZARDA, who held the
- office 10 years ago. ZARDA also served 25 years as
secretary-treasurer of the Janesville Bowling Association. He
gave up that position in 1975, but not before helping the JBA
grow to a membership of more than 3,000.
- The Janesville Women's Bowling Association also experienced
similar growth. One of its past
- presidents, Evelyn KETTLE, was a two-term president
of the Wisconsin Women's Bowling Association, [an] organization
which saw its state tournament grow from 35 teams in 1920 to
a present total of more than 4,000.
- But as far as local bowlers are concerned, possibly the greatest
milestone came in the last 10 years
- with the establishment of a Hall of Fame - honoring both
men and women for nearly a century of commitment to another of
Janesville's long-lasting sports.
|
