Winnfield Tiger Football

1909 to 1919
Home
A Comprehensive Narrative History of Tiger Football
2019 Schedule and Results
THE TEAMS
THE PLAYERS
THE COACHES
THE GAMES
SCHOOL RECORDS and Top Individual Rushing, Reception, Return and Kicking Performances
Team Top Ten Standards of Excellence (and not)
Program Milestones
TIGER OPPONENTS
First 100 Years Poll Results (1909 to 2008)
All Century Poll Results (1909 to 1999)
Stokes/Walker Stadium
Who's Who (Players and Coaches)
Track and Field
Photo Album
Links
Louisiana High School Football Championships
Personal Lists
Acknowledgements, Special Request and How to Contact Me
Articles
Top Performances, Track - Girls

Enter subhead content here

Winnfield High School Football 1909-1919 
The Formative Years 
Key Rule Changes During The Decade: 
1910 - Substitution rule liberalized to permit player who was removed to return in a subsequent quarter. Game divided into four 15-minute quarters. If a forward pass failed to touch a player on either side before touching the ground, the ball was turned over to the opponent. Pass interference does not apply 20 yards
beyond the line of scrimmage. Passer must be 5 yards behind the line of scrimmage before throwing a pass.
1912 - Team given 4 downs to gain 10 yards. Field set at 100 yards, including two 10-yard end zones behind each
goal as the area in which the offense could legally catch a forward pass.1913 -  First numbering of players.                                                                             
1917 - Substitutes could not talk to players on the field until after one play. 

Key Players/Coaches of the 1909-1919 Era

 

Skipwith Adams (1909, Coach)     The program’s first head football coach. Coached only the inaugural     1909 season, but he posted the program’s first winning record with a 6-3-1 record that season.  

Alwin Stokes (1917-1923, 1933-1934, Coach)     Head Coach from 1917 to 1923. His 1919 squad went  undefeated (8-0-0) and was unscored on (220-0). The squad was declared State Champions by the New Orleans Times Picayune. Stokes was minister at the First Presbyterian Church, thus his name Brother Stokes.  Returned for a second head coaching stint in 1933 and 1934 where he posted a 10-8-2 record.  

Otho Long (1918-1919, QB)     Quarterback for the undefeated 1919 squad. Was named first team all     State quarterback that year.  He is the only Tiger quarterback ever selected to an All State team. Top     vote-getter at the quarterback position by the Expert Panel and the second-ranked quarterback by the     fans voting in the 2000 All Century Poll for the Old-Timers team.  

Red Dickerson (1918-1919, T)     Starting tackle on the state champion 1919 squad. Ranked seventh at    the tackle spot by the Expert Panel of the All-Century voting on the Old Timers team. Earned second team All State honors in 1919. 

A. P. Smith (1918-1919, E)     First team All State end on the 1919 state champion squad. Second     leading vote getter at the end position by the fans voting in the 2000 All-Century Poll for the Old    Timers team.  

Kenneth Watts (1918-1919, B)     Second team All State back on the 1919 state champion squad.     Ranked in the top fifteen at back by the fans and Expert Panel voting in the All-Century Poll for the Old-Timers team.  

Truett Durham (1919-1920, T)     First team All State tackle in 1919 and 1920. First repeat All State     player in the history of the program.

Key Season, 1909 (6-3-0)  
Opponent                Results
Bolton                     W, 5- 0
Normal                    W, 5- 0
Louisiana College    W, ukn
Dodson                   W, 6- 0
Bolton                     W, 12- 5
Louisiana College    L,  ukn
Normal                    L,  0- 5
Dodson                   W, ukn
Ruston                     L,  23- 39                                     
     High school football has been played in Winnfield for about as long as the game has been played at any public high school in Louisiana. Mickey O’Quinn is credited with bringing the first high school football team to Winnfield High School during the 1909-1910 school year.  That first year, Winnfield joined the North Louisiana High School Association in order to affiliate with other high schools competing in football.  Skipwith "Skip” Adams, a teacher at the high school at the time, volunteered to be the first coach.  He assembled a group of 19 boys who were willing to play the rough game.  At the time, football was just being introduced into the high schools of Louisiana and was still an unknown entity. A number of the players on that first team were in their 20's, a fact common for those early days, since high school education was obtained by many young men after they had stayed out and worked, plus the fact that there was no age limit. The school selected red and white as the school colors and Tigers as the school mascot. The original Winnfield High School teams would be known as the "Crimson Tigers.” The first football field was located just north of the 400 block of West Main Street. With no lighting, games were usually held on Friday afternoon, with all games being played during the day.  The roster for the inaugural Winnfield High School football team included the following players: Clem Durham, Keith Jones, Morel Milburn, Shady Colvin, Manley Culpepper, Miley "Ram” Durham, Tom Huffman, Charley Kelly, Tom McKinney, Ben McKinney, Skinney Moreland, Sam Nettles, Aubrey Or, Bruce Smith,  Charley Smith, Clayton Wasson, Ted Watts, Roy Wright and ? May.     
     At the time that high school football was being organized at Winnfield High School, it was also being organized at a few other schools around Louisiana.  During those formative years, schools were not assigned to organized districts or class levels. As a result, a school had somewhat of a struggle to find competition.  At times, this wasn’t easy to accomplish. With travel being much more difficult than it is today, a school had to play teams who were as far as 100 miles away, which, in those days seemed a lot longer than 100 miles does today. Nevertheless, if a school were going to play the sport, they would have to make the monetary and physical sacrifices necessary to play the few teams that were around. It wasn’t until 1920 that the Louisiana High School Athletic Association (LHSAA) was established.  The LHSAA was formed to be the governing body of high school athletics in Louisiana and would later classify high school football teams by size (number of students), but not at first.  In the LHSAA’s initial organization, all high schools competed against each other.  As a result, when the LHSAA awarded its first football title 1921, that school could claim to be the best in all of Louisiana.  In that inaugural game, Warren Easton of New Orleans defeated Minden 7-0.  Once it became apparent that larger schools had an advantage over smaller schools, the LHSAA devised a classification system. The multiple classification system began in 1926 and has progressed from a dual system to a three-class system in 1937, a four-class system in 1954, and a five-class system in 1991.     
     Over fifty years before Winnfield High School football came into being, and even before the game of football had even been heard of my most people, Benjamin Stovall homesteaded much of the land in the northern Winn and southern Jackson parishes.  As such, his was one of the pioneer families of Winn parish. Little did he know that one of his descendants would also play a role in the development of what would become a way of life in the heart of the pine forest of central Louisiana - high school football.      
     In the early 1900s, two brothers, Luther and Rawson Stovall, who were grandsons of Benjamin Stovall, graduated from Dodson High School and continued their education at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. While at LSU, the Stovall brothers learned the game of football and became members of LSU’s 1908, undefeated national championship team. The experience gained by Rawson Stovall paid dividends for the new Winnfield High School football program when he was hired to take over the football program during its second year of its existence, the 1910 season.     
     Very little is known about the games, players, and coaches during the earliest years of football at Winnfield High School. It is known that Winnfield played games against virtually every available team in the surrounding area, but that only included those teams fielded by the high schools in Dodson, Alexandria (Bolton) and Ruston, as well as the junior varsity teams fielded at Louisiana College and Normal College. There weren’t many high schools that fielded a high school football team in the early 1900s; so, Winnfield usually played each team twice in the same season in the beginning years.     
     Any coach or school administrator will tell you that it is a difficult task to build and maintain a winning high school football program. That part is just as true today as it was in the beginning years of high school football. At other schools around Louisiana, football teams were organized one year, disbanded another and then reorganized years later.  That wasn’t the case in Winnfield.  A football team has represented the school every year since the first football team was organized.  So, while little is known about the earliest years of Winnfield football, one thing can be said about the players and coaches who established the game of football at Winnfield High School - they kept the program going and continued to build interest in the game of football in Winnfield.
     About the only thing known about the teams that played in the 1910s is the roster of the 1913 team.  That roster included the following players: Prentice Watts, Roy Wright, John "Jack" Fowler, Hunter Moreland, Dewitt Milam, Claude Horn, Lonnie James, Cuba Thomas, Sam Collins, Arthur Mathis, John T. DeLoach, Clarence "Dash" Curry, Marshall Heflin and Charlie Kelly.  The coach of the 1913 team was W. H. Ricks.
     From 1910 to 1916 the Tigers played Bolton High School seven times in football, which included single games in 1910, 1911 and 1915 and a pair of games in 1912 and 1913.  Scores from those games are as follows:                                             
Year        Score                               Result                                   
1910    Winnfield  6    Bolton 6         Tie                                               
1911     Winnfield  0    Bolton  6          Loss                                               
1912     Winnfield  46  Bolton  6          Win
            Winnfield  0    Bolton  12        Loss                                   
1913     Winnfield  0    Bolton  12        Loss
            Winnfield  42  Bolton  6         Win
1915    Winnfield   0   Bolton  20       Loss
     One of the benchmark years in the evolution of Winnfield came in 1917. That was the year that a 33-year old Presbyterian minister by the name of Rev. Alwin Stokes volunteered to take over as coach of the high school program. To say Brother Stokes volunteered is not to imply that he "decided” or "agreed” to take the job. The term "volunteer” is used in the strictest sense of the word because he coached the Winnfield program for no pay.     
     Alwin Stokes was born in 1884 in Liberty, Mississippi.  He attended Southwest Presbyterian University from 1906 to 1913, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Philosophy degree and a Bachelor of Divinity degree.  While at Southwest he learned the game of football as a member of the football team. In fact, it was reported in the book Winn Parish History 1852-1985, that the first football game he ever saw, he played in and that he played in every football game that Southwest Presbyterian played during the six years he attended school there.  Most of Brother Stokes’ ministerial career was in Winnfield, where he served the First Presbyterian Church from 1915 to 1927.  He then left Winnfield and served a two-year stint in Ferriday, after which he returned to the First Presbyterian Church in Winnfield where he served from 1929 to 1955.  All total, he served the First Presbyterian church in Winnfield for 32 years.  He was a civic-minded man, in that he helped organize the first Boy Scout troop in Winnfield and taught many boys how to play the game of baseball.  But, it was on the gridiron where the name Alwin Stokes will forever be emblazoned on the history of Winnfield Tiger football.               
     Under Rev. Alwin Stokes’ leadership, the Winnfield High School football program rose to another level. It was under his guidance that the tradition of "winning football” began.  Some have called him, "just a country preacher”, and that he was.  But, he was more than that. Brother Stokes knew the game, but what is most important, he knew how to relate to people. Because of the latter, he was able to pull every bit of talent out of the boys who played for him. He is described by many of his former players as a "player’s coach.” He is characterized as being tolerant, yet demanding. The players always knew where they stood with Rev. Stokes because he told them what he expected. He was quick to praise his boys and had the kind of leadership qualities that inspired his players to "want” to play for him. When former players talk about Brother Stokes there is an obvious tone of respect for the man. One of Brother Stokes’ early players, R. D. "Quack” Beville, said in an interview for The Enterprise in the 1970's, "Brother Stokes taught the boys to play hard, and he had a good moral effect on the players. Brother Stokes was a hard worker and he instilled this in his players.” Aside from his personal characteristics, one of the major keys to Brother Stokes’ success was that he "preached” and taught the basic fundamentals of the game. All of this translated into winning football games.      
     During Rev. Stokes’ first three seasons (1917-1919) as the head coach, Winnfield lost only one game. That loss was to New Orleans in 1917 in a game billed as the state championship game. New Orleans defeated Winnfield 46-0 in that game. Those would be the only points Winnfield gave up in those three years. During the following year (1918), Winnfield issued a challenge across the state to play anyone, anywhere. They only had two takers. During that season, Winnfield played and defeated Shreveport High School 14-0 and Minden High School 43-0.  
Key Season, 1919 (7-0-0) 
Opponent                    Results           
Oakdale                       W,  31-0         
Weston                        W,  7-0           
Coushatta                     W,  94-0        
Shreveport                   W,  14-0         
Monroe (forfeit)           W,  2-0           
Alexandria                   W,  8-0           
Jonesboro                    W,  64-0     
     Brother Stokes’ 1919 team was his best team. That team was also one of the most successful teams in the history of the school and is always one of the teams mentioned when the perennial debate of "Which Winnfield team was the best?” surfaces. The school yearbook, "The Marbloid”, stated (in peculiar language), "The football season of 1919 was talked of fully three months before time. Old men and new men (talked) of the winning of the STATE CHAMPIONSHIP.”  Brother Stokes and his players set a goal of winning a state title, and that’s exactly what they did. Winnfield played a seven game schedule that year and they not only won all seven of those games but they did not allow any of their opponents to score a single point; outscoring their opponents by a combined margin of 220-0. Louisiana had yet to install a playoff method for determining the state champion in the 1910s.  Instead, the champion was “declared” or chosen by a panel of voters, much like the college national champion was selected throughout the twentieth century.  After the high school football games of 1919 were completed, Winnfield was declared state champions by such a vote.  Since there were no classifications, the honor of being declared state champions meant you could lay claim to the distinction of calling yourself the best team in all of Louisiana.    
     The Marbloid chronicled the season this way: "The season began on the hop, both by the players and spectators. Oakdale was the first victim. Winnfield dominated everything on its way to a 31-0 victory.”  Weston was the next opponent and the Marbloid called them "the strongest opponents for the state championship......It was a hard-fought battle, no one scoring until the end of the third quarter when (Victor) Matthews received a long forward pass, running across the goal line, which netted the seven (Winnfield won 7-0).”  In the third game, Winnfield scored more points than any other Winnfield team would score during the entire twentieth century.  In that game, the Tigers easily downed Coushatta 94-0. The fourth game was played against Shreveport High School on Shreveport’s home field. Winnfield scored twice, once on a long run by Kenneth Watts and the other on a blocked punt by A. P. Smith. Those were the only points scored by either team.  Winnfield preserved a shutout by holding Shreveport out of the end zone by way of a goal line stand late in the game. Winnfield traveled to Monroe for the fifth game of the season and found an "opponent” they couldn’t overcome - not the Monroe team but the hometown Monroe fans. The Marbloid described it this way: "We left home in the finest of spirits determined to bring back Monroe’s goat, but met with a strong volley of opposing spectators who swarmed on the field so we could not continue the game.”  The game was called in the second quarter and Winnfield won the game 2-0 by virtue of a forfeit. Winnfield and Alexandria (Bolton) had played against each other all ten years that Winnfield had fielded a football team.  They would face each other in the seventh game of the 1919 season. Winnfield beat their rival by a score of 8-0, after which they were scheduled to play New Orleans for the state championship.  However, New Orleans backed out of the game, resulting in Winnfield being declared the state champion. The Crimson Tigers played Jonesboro instead and walked away with a 64-0 win.  The 1919 team was only one of five Winnfield teams in the twentieth century to go through the regular season undefeated. They are one of only two Winnfield teams to win a state championship in the twentieth century.  They are the only Winnfield who can claim the title, "Undefeated State Champions.”                  

Enter content here

Enter content here

Enter content here

Enter supporting content here