The origins of most sports forever are shrouded in mystery, but basketball, born only a hun-dred years ago, is a fortunate exception.
The invention of the game by James Naismith in 1891 has been recorded in pains-taking detail. Closer to home, thanks to the preservation of early school newspapers, the birth of Elgin High School's basketball tradition in 1899 and 1900 can be reported with equal clarity.
Naismith's new game was an immediate and unequivocal success. Enthusiasm for the new sport of "basket ball" spread out of Springfield, Mass., and across the nation like wildfire, first through the extensive network of YMCAs, then to private athletic clubs, and finally to high schools and colleges.
Basketball comes to Elgin
Only a couple of years after the game was invented, basketball was introduced in Elgin at a state YMCA convention, and for several years local interest in the game grew slowly but steadily.
In the fall of 1899, the basketball bug invaded the halls of Elgin High School, then still a small brick building with no gymnasium. Among the 400 stu-dents, two teams of boys called the Goliaths and the Midgets were organized. The first account of a basketball game involving students at Elgin High School appears in the October 1899 edition of the school paper, the Mirror, as the Goliaths defeated their Midget schoolmates.
Several more school teams were formed in the following weeks. The Elgin Daily News heralded the advent of the new sport with this headline: "BASKET BALL THE RAGE ‹ HIGH SCHOOL SETS THE PACE WITH THIS GAME."
During this same time, girls at the school also formed two teams named the Goliaths and the Midgets. The girls' game was supported strongly by the high school newspaper, for among other things "it is the only exercise that has thus far been found that most girls can indulge in."
A public contest was arranged, and on Dec. 12, 1899 at Columbia Hall, the Midgets, behind the play of Vir-ginia Hammond and Clara Kaufman, took a 10-2 decision.
The revelers who rang in the special new year of 1900 also her-alded the beginning of a new era in Elgin's history. Just hours after the celebration had subsided, a team of senior boys met a team of juniors at Columbia Hall. The Mirror did not risk understatement in setting the stage for the most im-portant game to date:
"On the afternoon of Jan. 1, 1900, seniors and juniors locked horns in the mightiest game of basketball ever played. The earth trembled with the shock of the conflict, and Columbia hall rocked to its very foundations by the excitement.
"The spectators were decked out with the colors of the warring classes, and most of them blew exhaustively on horns composed of tin. Among the most critical of the onlookers were members of the (girls') Goli-ath and Midget Basket Ball Clubs, and under such searching eyes every-one exerted himself to the utmost."
The seniors, led by Carleton Ruegnitz and Sidney Bolles, won the first interclass game by the score of 17-6, but in another contest less than two weeks later, the juniors turned the tables with a 19-5 decision.
In the weeks that followed, both teams also took on extramural opponents, playing, among others, the YMCA team, the Lincoln Club and a group called the B.U.'s.
Hitting the road
By Feb. 17, the juniors, who were on a winning streak, figured they had beaten the best that Elgin had to offer and traveled to Chicago to play a team from the Ravenswood YMCA. It was the first time an Elgin High School basketball team had journeyed out of town for a game. The Ravenswood team was one of the strongest and most experienced in the Midwest, being tied with the Na-tional Guard team of Fond du Lac, Wis., for the "Championship of the West" and every member of its starting lineup was over 6-feet tall.
Only a year later, Ravenswood won the national championship of the Amateur Athletic Union. History does not record which overconfident Elginite arranged the match, but the final score, 57-4, speaks for itself.
Elgin issues a challenge
Despite this setback, the players soon were looking forward to their next encounter. This time the seniors and juniors de-cided to join forces and challenge the team from Englewood High School of Chicago for the "high school championship of Illi-nois." Although there was no official sanction for that title, there was good reason to believe that Englewood was a championship-caliber opponent. Led by center Harry Webster, a 6-5 state record-holder in the shot put who was reputed to be "the tallest high school athlete in the world," Englewood had not lost a game all season.
Elgin's squad was made up of the best of Elgin's teams: Evald Lundgren, a junior forward and captain of the team; Charles O'Connell, a junior for-ward; Daniel Greene, a junior guard; Claude Seymour, a junior guard; William Gibson, a junior guard; Carleton Ruegnitz, a senior guard; and Sidney Bolles, a senior center.
The Englewood squad rolled into town on the train from Chicago at about 6:30 p.m. Friday, March 2, 1900. Elgin's contingent met the Chicago players at the station, and they slogged through the downtown streets, through 12 inches of new snow, to Sauer's Hall on Fountain Square.
Finding proper accommodations was a serious problem at the turn of the century. Early basketball courts were not very big, and pillars in the middle of the floor were a common problem for early teams. The goals usu-ally were attached directly to the walls at either end. Sauer's Hall was not a palace, but for such a new sport, the quarters would have to suffice.
The players donned their uni-forms, which bore a strong re-semblance to the football gear of the day. The knee-length pants, padded at the hips to protect against falls, were particularly cumbersome. As the teams went through their warm-ups, the players accustomed themselves to the leather ball, which was often slip-pery, and to the waxed floor, which was always slippery. Finally, at precisely 8 p.m., the crowd of 75 fans was called to order.
William Le-Baron, manager of the Elgin team (who would later find fame as a movie producer, win-ning an Oscar for "Cimarron"), tossed the ball between Bolles and Webster and the match was under way ‹ the first interscholastic basketball game in Elgin High School his-tory!
A new rage is born
Basketball was still in its infancy in 1900. There were no organized leagues, very few coaches and barely any strategy. The scores were quite low by to-day's standards, but the game was anything but dull. In fact, watching a basketball game provided the spectators with good practice in self-preservation as passes flew wildly about the tiny arena and bodies followed them in fast pursuit, often dislodging barbells and other equipment off the wall.
Conditioning was quite important because early rules did not encourage substitution. Just as in baseball, a player could not re-enter the game once he was re-moved; not until 1920 could a player re-enter even once. The emphasis was on a starting five players with a variety of skills and a couple of key substitutes with specialized de-fensive or offensive talents. Changes in the line-up usually were made at halftime.
Dribbling was still an arcane skill, partly because good balls were hard to come by. Even a decent regulation basketball tended to get out of round after a while, and with laces that protruded from one side, drib-bling was quite difficult. The blad-der inside the ball could be over inflated, and it was not un-heard-of for a bladder to burst in mid-bounce.
Passing was the main mode of attack, but there were few passes of the crisp, clean variety. The teams tried to advance the ball by lob-bing it closer to the basket, with the result that players from both teams usually ended up scrambling for it.
There were two kinds of shots a player could use: the set shot and the lay-in. If the ball traveled through the hoop by any other method, it was considered a "miracle shot." Any thought of copying these miracu-lous techniques and using them on a regular basis did not occur until about 1940.
Reflections of the first game
At Sauer's Hall, the battle between the "giant visitor" and the underdog Elgin ballclub had the crowd buzzing. The Mirror again provided some colorful, and historical, commentary:
"Those present at Sauer's hall on the evening of March 2, last, witnessed a superb exhibition of the great in-door game. The mettle of our boys in this game was a credit to themselves and to the school. They started in Śconspirito' and kept up their fast playing till the finish of the game. Bolles, Śour big man,' threw the first two bas-kets, giving Elgin a score of four (4) to the reciprocal of zero to decorate Englewood's portion of the score board.
"Then Webster ‹ you have all heard of Ślittle' Webster ‹ glided leisurely down the hall and struck an atti-tude, in the immediate vicinity of the basket, which the midgets, Seymour and Green, were donating all their re-serve energy to defend.
"Presently, one of the visitors, being moved by this significant pose of Webster's, was behooved to put aside all thought of personal achievements and to toss the well filled sphere to him, when with the bland smile of a practical joker he peacefully laid it in the basket, which was some ten feet from the floor, while Green and Seymour engaged in an animated Śshinning' race up the tall visitor's legs in vain efforts to keep Englewood from scoring.
"He continued executing this singular maneuver during the re-mainder of the game much to the disgust of our Śrooters,' and succeeded in Ślaying in' three-fourths of the visitor's score of 16. But our little guards soon became expert pole climbers and suc-ceeded in bothering him some to-ward the end of the game.
"What were our boys doing all this time? Well, they were playing championship ball, and playing it the best they knew how. O'Connell threw one goal, and Capt. Lundgren, just to keep to his reputation, threw a magnificent basket from the cen-ter of the floor. In the second half, Ruegnitz took Seymour's place at guard and Gibson went in as guard for ŚDanney' Green, and they pushed the visi-tors hard and held them down very steadily; but they had to leave for home on the 9:20 so that the last half was rather short in consequence.
"Otherwise they might not have been burdened with Webster's victory and the state championship.
"Our boys, without exception put up a magnificent game all through, and when our Śgrowing' prescription takes effect on Bolles we will chal-lenge any team without fear of defeat The spectators were in good humor and applauded generously.
"Score 16 to 12 in favor of Engle-wood. Time of halves, 20 and 15 minutes.
After Englewood
The two teams scheduled a return match in Chicago, but the game was apparently never played. Instead, Elgin traveled to the big city to play Armour Acad-emy March 21. The same seven players and their manager left school in the after-noon and were met at the Wells Street station by a delegation from the Academy. Unfortu-nately, the Elgin squad had no chance against the taller opponent and suffered a 40-9 drubbing.
The first season of organized basketball at Elgin High School, two interscholastic games and a handful of other games, was considered a success, but it took several years for the sport to gain equal footing with football. Hampered by the lack of a school gymnasium, the teams were generally not as ca-pable as their opponents and suf-fered some resounding defeats in the first 10 years of competition.
It was not until the Third Floor Gym was built in 1911 that Elgin High School teams began to win consistently, and soon basketball was assured its place in the school's history.
What about the girls?
The girls played their first inter-scholastic game Dec. 20, 1901, beating Aurora East at Armory Hall, 15-6.
Sadly, although the girls' game flourished on a nearly equal basis with the boys' game for a few years, it died out under the still widely held notion that exercise and hard play were not -feminine pursuits. In 1907, the Illinois High School Athletic Association banned interscho-lastic basketball contests between girls.
During the 1930s, while many other states spon-sored state girls' basketball tour-naments, Illinois girls of had to be satisfied with "telegraphic" basket-shooting con-tests in which two teams competed by telephone. The El-gin girls won a state championship in this event in 1931.
Interscholastic basketball, played by girls, did not return to the high school as an organized sport until 1973. In 1996, the El-gin High School girls completed their long comeback, taking second place in the state finals.
Elgin's role significant
In the end, the early battles are of more than just local historical significance. Only a few schools in Chicago and the near suburbs got the jump on basket-ball-minded Elgin. The match between Elgin and Englewood has withstood several years of research and is still the earliest known boys' game between two Illinois high schools. (Several earlier girls' games have been documented, however.)
But whether or not older games are discovered, the role that Elgin High School has played in the history of basketball in Illinois, from its beginnings straight through to the present day, never will be forgotten.
Scott Johnson is a 1974 graduate of Elgin High School.
