Seattle’s Early Football Legacy: Huskies, High Schools, and Community Traditions

MOHAI, PEMCO Webster & Stevens Collection, 1983.10.10125.2

The first UW football game on Thanksgiving Day in 1889 was a loosely organized match, with a side of eleven from UW facing off against alumni from Eastern College. By 1892, the team was organized with regularly scheduled games against other institutions. In 1903, the UW football team won their first championship, defeating Oregon and Nevada for the Northwest Athletic Association title.

A few years later, UW hired Gilmour “Gil” Dobie as the new head coach in 1908, ushering in an era of domination for the team. In his nine seasons, Dobie did not lose a game, with a record of 58-0-3. Dobie was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1951.

MOHAI, William Jennings “Wee” Coyle Photograph Collection, 1960.1821.37

In this image, taken on Thanksgiving Day 1910, the UW football team battles the Oregon Agricultural College (now known as Oregon State University) Aggies at Denny Field, which was located on the northwest corner of campus near 45th Street.

UW won the match 22-0, with over 6,000 fans in attendance. Here, quarterback William Jennings “Wee” Coyle (1888-1977), who later became Lieutenant Governor of Washington State in the early 1920s, is being tackled by three Oregon players on the left. Jennings never lost a game in his four years at UW.

MOHAI, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection, 1986.5.15972.1, photo by Stuart B. Hertz

In 1920, the University of Washington decided to build a new stadium. They broke ground at a new site on the southeastern edge of campus, and Husky Stadium opened on November 17 of that year, with a capacity of 30,000. This aerial photo of the season opener from 1945 shows the bowl-shaped stadium packed for the Huskies winning game against the University of Oregon.

MOHAI, SHS16508

As UW rose to football prominence, the sport also became a force at Seattle area high schools. While athletics would not be part of the curriculum until the 1910s, students began to pick up the sport with sponsorships from private citizens. This 1896 photo from the South School shows the football team sitting on the steps of the school. The school was located at Twelfth Avenue South and South Weller Street and operated from 1889 until 1909, when the building was torn down.

MOHAI, McBride & Anderson Collection, 1974.5923.194

These early high school teams had several standout players, including Franklin High School’s Brice Taylor, shown in this photo taken during his high school career. Taylor was only 5’9″ and 185 pounds, but despite his smaller size and being born with an underdeveloped hand, Taylor became an All-American on his collegiate team at the University of Southern California in 1925. The descendant of both Chief of the Shawnee Tecumseh and enslaved African Americans, Taylor would go on to coach college football teams through the South after graduation from USC. He ended his career in football as a high school teacher and coach in Los Angeles.

Ballard High School football players, Seattle, September 1954
MOHAI, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection, 1986.5.3398.1, photo by Tom Carson

By the 1930s, Seattle area high school teams regularly faced off in championship games to raise money for local charities. In the 1950s, cross-town rivalries included the annual East vs. West Jamboree at Memorial Stadium. At the event, each of four West teams (Ballard, Lincoln, Queen Anne, and West Seattle) played 15-minute quarters against an East team (Roosevelt, Garfield, Franklin, and Cleveland). This photo from 1954 features three Ballard players jumping for the football.

Explore more historic images of high school and collegiate football from our region in our new High School and College Football in Seattle Themed Collection.

Some of these images were added to MOHAI’s online collection thanks to a grant supported with funding provided by the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services administered by the Library Services and Technology Act, through the Washington State Library, a division of the Office of the Secretary of State. Information from this expanded blog benefited from additional research on HistoryLink and from the archives of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, accessible through the Seattle Public Library’s online newspapers.