Monday, March 05, 2007

 

Baylor History, Part 16 (The Ice Hockey Part)


The fifth imperative of Vision 1930, to seek out success in sports not involving a ball, was somewhat successful. Baylor’s very well-funded equestrian team, for example, came close to winning Baylor’s first national championship, as described at greater length in a later chapter.

The ice hockey team was similarly successful. After a series of 0-0 ties, the squad made it to the national championships in 1924, losing to Harvard in the finals. Because the Baylor student body consisted almost entirely of people from Texas, there were none who knew how to skate or had access to the other accoutrements of ice hockey, such as hockey sticks or (most importantly) ice. Nevertheless, the Ice Bears (as they were called) played their matches in boots while wielding large sweep brooms. They played all of their games at opponents’ venues, and were in the Minnesota-Texas Friendship League, together with St. Olaf, Carleton College, Trinity College (International Falls), Gustavus Adolphus, the University of Minnesota-Duluth, St. Cloud State and the now-defunct Lumberton Tech. The Ice Bears were at first fabulously unsuccessful, losing games by horrendous scores and incurring several injuries of the coccyx and skull due to inadvertent slips on the slick ice surface. In 1922, however, the boys in green and gold employed a tactic devised by legendary coach Grant Teaff, who in his later years coached the Bears’ football team. Teaff bundled the players together with gaffer tape and placed them in front of the net, completely blocking any chance the other team might have of scoring. The tactic was effective, though the games were invariably low-scoring as the tied-together Baylor squad had almost no offensive potential. Teaff was less successful years later, when he tried to apply the same tactic to football, owing to the much larger area in which scores could be made.

Sad, isn't it, that somehow none of this is known to the "scholars" over at Beer Mat? Some "sports blog"....

[Does a photo of Prof. Serr skiing fit here? I'm not sure.]

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Comments:
The BearMeat Editorial Board has voted 2 to 1 to change our blog's name to BeerMat, since topically its a much better fit. However, the change is conditional upon a certain zany professor's renunciation of his heretical views of WacoU's illustrious history.
 
Just because the exploits of the ice hockey team have been covered up by a chagrined Grant Teaff does not mean that a true recitation of that story is heresy.

While you fellows at Beer Mat do a fine job of covering such modern sports as the playing of the basket-ball, you seem to have thin knowledge of those historical antecedents upon which modern Baylor sport rests.
 
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