The Kicking Women Of 1937

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Women playing football is not a new concept as we have seen time and time again through history. Heck we have even read and heard of some ladies that play on the men's teams.

Timothy P. Brown does an outstanding job of retelling the story of 1937 when some young ladies vied to play NCAA Football with the men.

-Transcribed Conversation with Timothy Brown on the 1937 Kicking Women

Hello, my football friends, this is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And welcome to another Tuesday as FootballArcheology.com's Timothy P. Brown joins us each and every Tuesday to talk about one of his recent tidbits that he writes about football history past and shares it with us. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Hey, thanks, Darin, for the chat. I hope the listeners get a kick out of this evening's topic.

Well, I don't know if the men will, but maybe the women will, because it's OK. Yeah, you have a great title that really grabs the reader's attention.

And I remember when this came out back a few months ago, the Kicking Women of 1937, that could, you know, grab attention in multiple different ways. But from a football aspect, it's really intriguing to think about women kicking football anytime, especially back in the 1930s. So why don't you share the story, please? Well, I mean, you know, now it's not entirely uncommon, right? You know, I mean, it's been, oh, whatever, past 15 years, something like that.

You know, there's been various women at the high school or college level doing some kicking and recently had a woman playing defensive end or outside linebacker and putting the putting a smack on the quarterback. So this one is kind of one of those stories where it's like, you know, it's one of these where I stumbled across it when I was reading something else. And I saw this story about George Washington University, which is based in Washington, D.C. They have had what would never be considered a storied football program.

For whatever reason, they could never get it together. They were not a very good team, but they played football from 1928 to 1941.

And they're trying to turn the program around. I mean, it's a fine university and everything. They want to be proud of their of everything that they do.

So they went out, and hired Gus Welsh, to be their new head coach in 1937. So Welsh was the quarterback at Carlisle when Jim Thorpe was playing. And then I think he was a little bit younger than Thorpe, but he continued playing there.

He ended up playing in the NFL for four or five years. Then he went on to be the head coach at Washington State and then somewhere in Virginia. Then he was the coach at Haskell, you know, which is one of the Indian schools in Kansas.

So he'd been around a little bit but ended up at George Washington University. And, you know, he's trying to get this program resurrected and get some attention because, you know, he at one point made a quote that it was like, you know, the only way we're going to get any attention is to play a halftime of the Redskins game. So, you know, so he's just trying to get some attention for the team.

And so, you know, in October of 37, the story starts floating around that that he's got a co-ed, so a woman who's attending George Washington who's going to kick for him, you know, kick extra points. And. You know, it just kept popping up in the paper.

She's going to she's going to kick in the upcoming game or this Saturday. And then it didn't happen. And, you know, it goes on a couple of two, three times.

And so. And there's even, you know, I found one photograph that was in the newspaper of him holding the ball. So, you know, Gus Welsh is holding the ball.

And this kicker was supposed to be a barefooted kicker. But there's this woman wearing a skirt and she's got shoes on, but she's still, you know, so publicity kind of picture. But it kind of just goes on and it's going to happen.

And the student body votes for it. They support this program or, you know, having a female kicker. And then they kind of at the last minute, the faculty says, no, go.

You know, they would not allow one of their women students to to participate in the football program. So the day that that hits the newspaper, there's a story right next to it that talks about Tuskegee Institute down in, you know, in the south where they're claiming they have a kicker as well, a woman kicker. And that the plan is that she's going to kick in the rivalry game on Thanksgiving Day against Alabama State.

So the difference, though, is that Tuskegee's article names the woman and it was Mabel Smith. And so as I dug into, OK, well, who's Mabel Smith? You know, what's your background? It turns out that Mabel Smith, at the time, was the American record holder in the long jump, which, you know, she had set she had set the record at the AAU meet in 1936, which was the qualifying meet for the 36 Olympics. And unfortunately for her, the women's long jump was not an event at the 36 Olympics.

It didn't come into like 48. So she would have been the U.S. rep had she had they had the long jump at the time. But they didn't.

So she but she held that record. I mean, it really it was an amazing jump. And she held that record into the 1960s.

And she said in 30, that would have that would have been the Berlin Olympics. Right. We're Hitler.

That's right. Jesse Owens. Yeah.

OK. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

So. Yeah. And in fact, I think she had a teammate at Tuskegee who made the team because she ran in the sprints or something like that.

But in the event, so, you know, obviously a premier athlete. So, you know, it's certainly believable that she could be an effective kicker. And then, you know, as it turned out.

On game day, she was on the field, but she was only there because they were recognizing that year Tuskegee had won the AAU championship, which was not just colleges; it was, you know, any club team, anybody at the time. They were the national champions for women's track and field. And so she was on the field to be recognized for that.

And Tuskegee won the game 14 to nothing. So they did kick two extra points, but it was there, I think, half-baffled back, you know, but one of the male players who kicked the extra points. But the other thing about Mabel is that she, you know, graduated from Tuskegee.

And then I forget where she did her master's, but she got a master's degree. Then she ended up getting a doctorate at Cal Berkeley. And then, you know, became a faculty member at Texas Southern and taught there for, you know, basically spent her career teaching, teaching at Texas Southern and kind of an education department sort of arena.

But anyway, so just an amazing, amazing person. And, you know, life, life history is just kind of cool. Even though she didn't get to kick in the game, you know, she had a pretty amazing story.

Yeah, boy, the brains and the athleticism. That's pretty amazing to be a world-class athlete at the time in multiple sports, you know, get attention. And you named four different universities.

There was a tour of the whole United States where she went and taught. So that's pretty incredible. And I'll start off with that sort of publicity stunt that the coach was doing at George Washington.

So interesting that that's kind of ironic that you found those in the same newspaper side by side of a woman kicker. So very, very. Yeah.

I mean, I suspect what happened is, you know, I don't know if Tuskegee picked up on the George Washington thing or if they were just kind of going to do it anyway. But I'm sure the editor found that second story and said, OK, let's put these two together. I was fortunate enough to find the one.

And that led me to the second one because otherwise, it was kind of like, oh, you know, it's a much better story with the Tuskegee side of it. Right. So definitely.

Well, Tim, you have some interesting items like this each and every day on some great football past stories and, you know, just interesting little tidbits that you call them appropriately. And maybe you could share with the listeners where they too can join in on the fun and read these tidbits each day. Sure.

So just go to www.footballarchaeology.com. That's a Substack application and our newsletter blog site. And so if you do that, you can subscribe, and you'll get an email at seven o'clock Eastern every night, and you'll get the story delivered to you that way. Then read it at your leisure.

You can also follow me on threads or Twitter, where I go into the football archaeology name. And then, or if you have the Substack app, you'll get it in your feed that way as well. Well, lots of different ways.

Whatever works for you. Yeah, that's a great variety. And, you know, no excuse not to be able to get it, whether you're on the go or at home or want to catch it a couple of days later or a week later or a year later.

I find myself going back through some of the ones I read a year ago. And they're still interesting. They're evergreen, with their history and fascinating stuff.

And you do a great job. So I appreciate it. Well, I sometimes find myself going, oh, boy, I don't remember writing that one because I've got 800 of them out there now.

So something like that. So, yeah, I forget that I've even written on some of the topics. Yeah, it's a it's great, phenomenal pieces that you write there.

And they're very interesting. So we appreciate you coming on here each Tuesday and talking about one of them with us and sharing your knowledge and some football history. And we would like to talk to you again next Tuesday.

Very good. Thanks, Darin. Look forward to chatting.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.