Flying wedge1/4/2024 On December 16, 1905, just a few days after Homer Gibson returned from Nebraska, the principals of the Kansas City School District voted on a measure to ban the sport introduced by Dr. Greenwood, the longtime superintendent of the Kansas City School District who introduced the resolution to ban football from the city's schools in 1905. James Greenwood spoke out against the game stating his belief that the sport had become more violent since he played it as a young man and expressing his support for President Theodore Roosevelt's calls to eliminate unnecessary violence from the game. Parents across the city also began pulling their sons off of football teams. All remaining Manual football games for the 1905 season were immediately canceled, an action initiated by members of the football team and not by school authorities. The reaction to Gibson's injury was swift and severe back home. In fact, Gibson not only survived the surgery, but appears in the following year's edition of the Manual yearbook, having hung up his cleats to join the debate club. Ultimately, he would spend nearly a month in a Nebraska hospital before it was deemed safe for him to travel back to Kansas City. The surgery was a success and Gibson's condition began to improve. Homer Gibson is shown as one of the halfbacks flanking the quarterback in the second row. Manual High School Football Team of 1905. Doctors determined that a concussion had caused a blood clot to develop in his brain and decided that surgical removal was the best course of action. Gibson was unable to recover from the injury on the field and was rushed to a hospital where his condition deteriorated, first losing the ability to speak before paralysis began to take hold of the young player. Of course, these were the days before even simple leatherhelmets afforded players a modest level of cranial protection. At some point in the game, Homer Gibson, the Manual's star halfback was kicked in the head. Rather, the Manual team had traveled to Lincoln, Nebraska, to play their game against that city's high school squad. While their account certainly contains a dramatic flair, the truth of the matter is no less interesting, albeit far less grim.įirst, the game that led to the ban was not played against Central. Reporters at the time noted that football had been banned in the city's schools when a player for Manual suffered a fatal injury on a Thanksgiving Day game with Central back in 1905. The games played that day would have differed from those played prior to the 1905 ban, the most noticeable change being that players could now pass the ball through the air rather than simply running the ball into opposing defenses play after play after play. The setup of the field's intersecting line pattern shows the origin of the term gridiron. Nevertheless, on Saturday, November 16th, a crowd estimated at over 2,000 turned out at Association Park, now called Blues Park, at 20th Street and Prospect Avenue, to cheer on the teams.ĭiagram of Association Park set up for a football game in 1909. Sadly, the season was cut short when the health department canceled four weeks of games due to the terrible Spanish flu outbreak of that year. Coaches and students rushed to prepare, each organizing spring practices to prepare to hit the gridiron that fall. They agreed that each team would play six games, the season culminating with a city championship game. The principals and coaches of the city's four high schools: Central, Manual, Westport, and Northeast, met earlier that year and voted to permit their students to play the game. A practice game played between two school teams on a fall afternoon might not seem like much of a big deal, but a Kansas City Star reporter took notice of what happened to be the first officially sanctioned football game played between two Kansas City schools since students were banned from playing the sport in 1905, a lapse of thirteen years. The Westport squad won the match handedly with a score of 19 to 0. On a cloudy and cool October in 1918, a football scrimmage was played between the Northeast and Westport high school teams on the grounds of The Parade at 15th Street and The Paseo.
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