Traveling Through Time With the Shelby County Historical Society
Feature Article on SHS Football. Topic: SPORTS
Written by  Rich Wallace in September, 1995

SHS FOOTBALL:  THINGS A BIT DIFFERENT IN THE BEGINNING

The 1899 Sidney High football team is shown below in a relaxed pose. The team played six games that year and won them all, including two over Piqua and Bellefontaine. The coach was T.R. Hazzard. This photo appeared in the 1903 issue of The Reflector, a Sidney High School annual.

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As Sidney high school enters its 100th football season, hundreds of people are involved in the preparations both in official and volunteer capacities. Things were a little different in the beginning...

Trego and Binkley, proprietors of the Sidney Journal, often pontificated about the morals of Sidney residents, including its youth. It therefore did not come as a surprise when they opined in the December 4th, 1896 edition that for some time Sidney boys had not engaged in the "rough and tumble" of sports, but in fact "...seemed to have developed a fondness of cigarettes and other things even more harmful than 'coffin nails'." Solemnly, they continued by asserting that "...only that nation which cultivates robustness of body and educates its children to a hardy endurance is any real force in the world."

In light of those concerns, the Journal found it "particularly gratifying" that Sidney High School would soon field a team to play the game of football. The Journal sought to reassure the parents: "The bumps and bruises incident to the warfare of the gridiron are not very pleasant. Boys have not the weight and strength to hurt each other as have men weighing 180 pounds... and their bones are not so apt to break, so that there is little danger of any serious accidents."

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