Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 273, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 November 1916 — Hammond Times Tells of Pine Village Team. [ARTICLE]

Hammond Times Tells of Pine Village Team.

The Hammond Times of Monday contains a long article, giving the history of the team from that small place for the past thirteen years and also of Claire Rhodes, tfye manager. Owing to lack of space only a small part of the article is copied. The Pine Villageers claim to have defeated Rensselaer in 1903, thereby winning the championship of this section. That is too far back for us but penhaps some of the followers of the local team at that time will remember whether this part o the article is true or not. It is the belief of most Rensselaer football followers that Rensselaer was never defeated in the 0 old days. “The beginning of Pine Village on the gridiron came with the formation of an eleven that bucked Morocco, a little to the north, annually, and was conceded a local championship by beating Rensselaer in 1903. It was never humbled until two weeks ago, when the Cincinnati Celts visited Pine Village and trimmed the home boys 9to 6. The alibi for the visitor’s touchdown was that an onside kick went over the line and that a Pine Villager was not alert enough to fall on it first. The following Sunday Pine Village played Fort Wayne and lost, 7 to 0, going up against a very strong aggregation of Notre Dame graduates. Its schedule for the season probably will send it against the North Ends of Chicago, either here or in Indianapolis. The Chicago visitor dropped off the train to view a community that has a bank, a grain elevator and a lumber yard, but a football team first, last and always. Numbers of the athletes strolled the streets wearing sweaters with W. J. C. on the right side of the breast and an elongated P on the other. The W. I. C. stands for western independent champions and the P. naturally for Pine Village. These coats are more a mark of distinction than the lettered sweaters passed out to graduating players in final university games. They are the garb of the elect in a town where a man with a ■beard like King Lear’s discusses end runs and the kid of 14 forecasts the plays in a game as they are run off.”