Part I: In The Beginning…
From the very beginning, there was awareness at Saint Michael’s College of the important role athletics plays in a quality education. There was one major obstacle however, in the path of achieving this goal. The founding fathers of the college were all from France, and therefore were unaccustomed to American athletics and this country’s consuming emphasis on sports. They were not qualified to organize the popular American games of the day.
This dilemma did create incredible opportunities for the student managers of the early Purple Knight teams. They became “general managers” in a very real sense – making all of the team’s arrangements, drawing up schedules, hiring coaches, ordering equipment, building and maintaining game fields, raising funds, taking care of advertising and publicity, arranging for transportation to and from contests, and many other details. The college’s earliest students did not waste any time in establishing the foundation for the excellent athletic programming we now know. In the fall of 1904, the college’s very first year of existence, the first Athletic Association was formed, presided over by Thaddeus Barttro, ’08, and moderated by Fr. Eugene Labory. Serving with Barttro (who also served as Manager of Baseball) on the first Association board were William Gelineau, ‘08 (Treasurer), Lawrence Pine, ’08 (Secretary) and Bernard McMahon, ‘08 (Manager of Football). The elections for team managers were of great importance to the students of the college – turnout for voting was very high.
Fr. Labory is an interesting and somewhat forgotten figure in the college’s history. Born in Paris in 1880, he came to the United States as a seminarian at the age of 18 and was ordained as a member of the Society of Saint Edmund on March 25, 1903. He was a key member of the group of Edmundite fathers, invited by the Bishop of Burlington to found Saint Michael’s. He taught classes, was heavily involved in residence life, directed the college’s orchestra and St. Cecilia’s Band, and was the college’s first Moderator of Athletics. A look at many of the early team pictures reveals that Fr. Labory often times suited up in uniform to help fill out the first team rosters!
The College’s Silver Jubilee describes Labory’s contributions to athletics at Saint Michael’s thusly –
No more capable director to launch St. Michael’s into athletics in a manner consistent with the aims of educators could have been found than Fr. Labory. A keen lover of sports himself, he made himself all to all. If a man were needed for a football scrimmage or a scrub game of baseball he was there. The examples of his enthusiasm, skill and sportsmanship are still mentioned by the old-timers. His devotedness, it is said, was occasionally rewarded with a black eye or a loosened tooth; but all the same results were obtained - results that have continued with the march of years.
Fr. Labory left the College in 1915, going to the Diocese of Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he served as a pastor for 44 years. He died at the age of 95.
Through the diligence and hard work of the Athletic Association and Labory’s guiding hand, the individual varsity programs were born. Baseball began in the spring of 1905, followed by football in 1907. The college enjoyed its first taste of victory in a varsity intercollegiate contest when it defeated Norwich 4-2 in a baseball game in the spring of 1911! Ice hockey and basketball began in the 1912-13 academic year, the same year the college added the following disclaimer to its course catalog: “The Faculty has not overlooked the importance of athletics, being aware that it plays a considerable part in the physical and moral training of students.
However, as excess in such matters is detrimental to studies, the Athletic Association is now under the supervision of a member of the Faculty.”
The spirit of athletics was, indeed, infecting the Winooski Park campus, and it was not limited to the students. The priests were enjoying all of these new-found activities, too. Fr. Alliot became an avid baseball fan and was particularly drawn to the intricate statistics kept in the sport. He became very knowledgeable, an excellent “scorer” or statistician of the game, and would often use baseball analogies to effectively relate mathematical theory in his classroom! Fr. Cheray grew to love basketball and was invited to sit on the team’s bench during games. One night, while seated on the bench, he clapped for a Norwich basket in a very close game. The coach turned to him and said, “Don’t cheer for that basket, Father, it was for the opposition!” – to which Cheray replied, “Yes, but it was a beautiful basket!”
Athletic facilities in those days were centrally located and very limited. Saint Michael’s first gymnasium, called the “Recreation Room” in the College’s publications of the day, was located in the north end of Founders Hall. It was affectionately known as “The Shed” by the students, in reference to its size and appearance. The room was the approximate size of a large classroom, with low ceiling, bare walls, and a dirt floor. Outside, the football field, baseball field, and ice-hockey rink were all located in the same place – the site now holding the Chapel of Saint Michael the Archangel and adjacent parking lot between Founders and the chapel. When tennis courts were built a few years after the college opened, they were located on the present site of Cheray Science Center.
In 1915 Saint Michael’s claimed the State Championship in basketball, marking the first title in any sport in the college’s history. State Championships were crowned by the media in the very early days of the college. A 1917 graduate who was a member of the 1914-15 Purple 4
Knight “basketeers” said, “Our basketball team was state champion in 1914 and 1915, and that meant conquering every ‘hardboiled’ team within a radius of 150 miles.” The early schedules were comprised of opponents from colleges, prep schools, high schools, company teams, club teams, military teams, and touring exhibition teams. Members of opposing teams were sometimes as young as 13 and as old as 40! The Saint Michael’s squads were also sometimes a little lean in numbers, especially during the years of World War I. In 1916-17, Saint Michael’s won state titles in basketball, ice hockey, and baseball, yet with the outbreak of the first World War, not a single member of the championship teams was enrolled the following September! To supplement the thin rosters in those early years, the student managers would add students from the High School, members of the Society of Saint Edmund, and those who Fr. John Stankiewicz, ’37, referred to as “able-bodied souls we met along the way.”
One of the truly legendary “able bodied souls” who was added to some of the rosters of those early teams was Jean Joseph Octave Dubuc, a member of the high school’s Class of 1906, who once threw a no-hitter against the University of Vermont varsity baseball team in an exhibition in the spring of 1906. Dubuc was born in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, in 1888, and while at Saint Michael’s was a standout in academics as well as in both baseball and ice hockey. Following his graduation, he was offered an athletic scholarship at Notre Dame. After two star-studded years with the Fightin’ Irish baseball and basketball teams, he signed with the Cincinnati Reds and went right to the Major Leagues at the tender age of 19. He would enjoy a ten-year career, interrupted by two years of service during World War I, highlighted by being a member of the World Champion Boston Red Sox of 1918.
In 1924 the college’s ice hockey team was crowned State Champions, the same year that “New” Hall (now Jeanmarie Hall) opened, and with it came the college’s first official gymnasium. It was located in the lower level of the west wing of the building, with an overall floor measurement of 80’ by 62’ (14 feet shorter than the standard basketball court of today) and an elevated balcony on all four sides. With seating capacity of 700 for games and unobstructed by columns, it was hailed as “one of the best basketball courts in New England.” For the first time in history, the basketball team could play home games on campus, as they had called the gym at Cathedral High School in Burlington their home court for the first 13 years of their existence. Saint Michael’s would play all of its home basketball games on this court for the next 23 years.
Two years later, the college hired its first lay Athletic Director when Robert Carr joined the staff in 1926. Prior to Carr’s hiring, a member of the Society of Saint Edmund served as either Moderator of Athletics or Athletic Director (depending on the priest’s level of expertise in this area and the strength of the Athletic Association in the earlier years). He relieved Fr. Linnehan of day-to-day athletic administrative duties, and eventually would take over as head coach of the college’s football, basketball, and baseball programs. He achieved a winning career record in baseball, but losing records in football and basketball. He earned a place in Purple Knight lore on February 7, 1929, however, when he led the Knights to a 36-33 overtime victory over the University of Vermont – marking the first time in history that Saint Michael’s defeated the Catamounts in basketball.
The 1933-34 academic year was one of extremes for the sport of football at the college. The team had a great season and captured Saint Michael’s first state championship in the sport on the final day of the season. On November 11, 1933, the Knights defeated the University of Vermont, 13-0, in front of 5,000 fans at Centennial Field. But in the spring of 1934, citing student transfer problems and budget constraints, the college president, Fr. Eugene Alliot announced that football would be dropped at Saint Michael’s, effective immediately. Subsequently, Athletic Director and head football coach, Robert Carr, resigned his position at the College.
Earlier that year, Saint Michael’s hosted its first intercollegiate ski meet, on the hill across Route 15 from the current chapel. A group of students, led by Fr. Donald Sullivan and student-coach Carleton Goslin, created race courses and constructed a rickety wooden ski jump at the crest of the hill. That year the College invited Dartmouth, Middlebury, Norwich, and UVM to compete in the first Saint Michael’s Winter Carnival. The colleges competed in a two-mile snowshoe race, slalom race, downhill ski race, two-mile cross-country ski race, and ski jumping. Dartmouth captured the team title for the event, but Goslin won the ski jump event with a 94-foot leap. Over 600 spectators attended the carnival. The students involved with the program kept increasing the height of the homemade ski jump as the season went on; so much so that the college had to build a longer landing area and clear parking areas at the bottom of the hill by the railroad tracks to accommodate the growing crowds. While the jump appeared scary enough, it was said that the bottom of the end run came so fast “only the most skillful jumper could stop before breaking his neck at the bottom.”
Archie Petras, who graduated from the high school at Saint Michael’s in 1927, was hired as Carr’s replacement in 1934. He would serve as Director of Athletics and coach of basketball and baseball until 1938, when he left to accept the athletic director’s post at Dannemora (NY) High School. His replacement was Philip “Pinky” Ryan, who faced a challenging assignment when he arrived in 1938. He was hired to fill the roles of Director of Athletics, coach of basketball and baseball, and instructor of Business Administration.
Ryan’s life became even more complicated when World War II began. In 1942 he was activated by the U.S. military to serve as physical fitness director for UVM’s Air Corps Cadets and for the legions of Fort Ethan Allen’s soldiers preparing for overseas deployment. Fr. Stankiewicz stepped in to assist in covering Ryan’s daily administrative duties and was assisted by Fr. Sullivan. One more time, the Edmundites were called on to play a critical role for the college’s student-athletes. It is impossible to overstate the huge contribution the priests made in every aspect of the athletic department over the college’s first 40 years – from facilities maintenance, to coaching, to spiritual and academic guidance, to administration. Fathers Hamel, Labory, Linnehan, Lyons, Moriarty, Stankiewicz and Sullivan, in particular, are owed a huge debt of gratitude.
The dramatic impact of the Second World War on American life was certainly felt at Saint Michael’s. Students were placed on accelerated academic programs, graduating in three years so that they could join the war effort. The shift in the nation’s priorities created havoc in college athletics. Like many colleges and universities, Saint Michael’s discontinued some sports (baseball and tennis in 1942), and played abbreviated or informal schedules in others during the years of the war. During that time, however, the college made its first statement in athletics that was felt outside the borders of the Green Mountain State. In 1945 the Purple Knights basketball team faced mighty Providence College at Boston Garden and defeated the Friars in a 64-61 double-overtime thriller. Ron Russell, ’49, a key player in that memorable win, remembered seeing Fr. Stankiewicz run onto the floor after the win. “He picked me up and hugged me so tight I thought I broke a few ribs!” Fueled by that victory and a strong win-loss record against traditional opponents, the Knights would remain ranked #1 in New England for most of the 1945-46 season, tied with Harvard and Yale.
NOTES:
Pinky Ryan note - He would serve the Golden Knights until his death on October 14, 1972. Ryan was beloved at Clarkson, where he served as Associate Athletic Director, coach of baseball and basketball, athletic trainer, and professor of physical education. He was a charter member of Clarkson’s Hall of Fame in 1992, and the training room at the Division I ice hockey team’s Cheel Arena is named for him.
Jean Dubuc note - At that time Notre Dame’s baseball team was one of the top programs in the nation, winning 40 of a possible 44 games in 1907 and 1908. In those days of workhorse pitchers, Dubuc was exceptional for the Fighting Irish - going 23-1 over that span, while hitting well over .300 – and was heralded as possibly the best college pitcher in the nation. Interestingly, he also lettered in basketball at Notre Dame and was the team’s leading scorer in 1907-08! He signed a professional baseball contract with the Cincinnati Reds right after his sophomore year at Notre Dame and went right to the Major Leagues at the tender age of 19. He would enjoy a ten-year career (with the Reds, Detroit Tigers, Boston Red Sox and New York Giants), interrupted by two years of service during World War I, and recorded 85 wins (12 by 40 shutout) and a 3.04 career earned-run average. He was also a member of the World Champion Boston Red Sox of 1918 and had the distinction of playing alongside two of the greatest players in baseball history, Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb!
