1904 Chicago North Division High's Stars
The 1904 Chicago North football team was a special bunch. Like several Chicago-area high schools, they played a good brand of football and regularly sent their alumni to prominent college programs. The 1903 squad traveled to Brooklyn to face Boys High in a postseason match of championship teams, making the Brooklynites feel dodgy by clobbering da' bums 75-0. That team sent Leo De Tray to Chicago and Walter Graham to Michigan, where both starred.
Back in 1904, high school teams still served as early-season fodder for college teams, and North Division took on 2 1/2 big boys. First, they visited Purdue at the end of September, losing 5-0 to a team that finished 9-3. A few weeks later, they also lost to a 10-1-1 Chicago team by an 18-0 score, without the services of their star quarterback, Walter Steffen. With Steffen back in the lineup, North Division beat the Chicago freshmen 6-0 when Steffen had a 60-yard punt return for a touchdown.
Steffen was later a first-team All-American at Chicago in 1908, though he originally planned to attend Wisconsin. He arrived in Madison for the Badgers' 1904 training camp, but having attended only three years of high school, the admission department rejected him, so he returned to Chicago North Division for his senior season, leading them to the Cook County championship.
After starring at Chicago, Steffen assisted Stagg while attending law school. He practiced law in Chicago for several decades before taking a judgeship, and coached Carnegie Tech for 19 years, some years commuting in for the games, and proudly defeated Knute Rockne and Notre Dame twice during that time.
The image below shows the 1904 North Division team's lineup.
Steffen is in the middle of the back row, but Joe Paupa, a guard, is missing from the picture. Paupa later coached North Division, as well as the De Paul Academy and University football teams. In 1918, Paupa coached the Chicago Navy Pier team that beat four Big Ten teams, three military teams, and argued that they should have received the 1919 Rose Bowl invitation rather than the Great Lakes Naval team. However, Paupa's longest-lasting contribution to football came in 1944 when he patented a rope system used for football agility drills. Paupa’s ropes have seen time on every practice field in America, or at least, they should have.
Also on the team was Paul Dornblaser, seated to the far right in the team picture. He attended the University of Montana, where he served as a two-time captain of Montana's football team and student body president. Dornblaser was killed in France in October 1918 while serving with the 6th Marines during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. Montana later named their football stadium after him. Dornblaser Field now serves as Montana's track and field facility.
There may have been other players on the team worth profiling, but the only other one I identified from the team picture was Leslie Pollard, best known today as the older brother of Fritz Pollard, who starred at Brown and was the NFL's first black head coach.
Leslie spent a few years in the family business - barbering - after high school before entering Dartmouth in 1908. Dartmouth already had a star running back in Jess Hawley, but Pollard was talented enough that he forced himself into the lineup, performing particularly well in their game at Harvard.
Pollard left school after his first year, shifting between Chicago and New York, where he worked for the Urban League. He played on periodic all-star teams and coached Lincoln University in 1913 and 1914, coaching them to their first win over Howard.
Unfortunately, Pollard, his wife, Eleanor, and a one-year-old boy whom Eleanor babysat died by asphyxiation in April 1915 as the result of a gas leak or carbon monoxide poisoning in the boy's home.
Although two of the four players' lives ended tragically, North Division High produced some outstanding athletes and teams during their era.
Let me know if other members of the 1904 North Division team played college football or have interesting stories.
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Do you know the record and coach of North Division High School in 1905? Did Steffens play vs. Notre Dame that year? I know Pollard did.
Athletic talent clearly ran in the Pollard family.