The quilt is indifferent. A number of browning pages are, too. Some data is lacking.

And it’s the very best 35 bucks ever spent.

In 1926, a soccer superfan in Maine meticulously chronicled the state’s highschool and school gridiron adventures in a thick scrapbook. On the duvet, in very light white letters, you may barely make out the title: “FOOTBALL 1926.” When one (gently) removes the duvet, the reader finds greater than 150 pages of newspaper clippings, all regarding — you guessed it — soccer. 

Six years in the past, I searched “Maine Soccer” on eBay, hoping to search out one thing cool like an previous College of Maine jersey or program. As a substitute, I discovered a list for an historical scrapbook crammed with Maine-related soccer articles and images. The return handle: Framingham, Massachusetts. The asking value: $35. 

Let’s see … spend my money on a soccer scrapbook or some groceries? For sure, the rooster, milk and eggs needed to wait a couple of days. 

What I acquired within the mail surpassed my wildest expectations: This wasn’t a soccer e book, this was a time capsule. Articles. Photographs. All-Star groups. Assorted tidbits. Season summaries. A full chronicle of a season none of us alive skilled firsthand. 

Many of the clips seem to come back from the Man Gannett household of papers: the Portland Press Herald, the late, nice Night Specific and the Portland (later Maine) Sunday Telegram.

Lots of the clippings, as you may think, are free, and it’s a minor miracle they didn’t get misplaced. Some seem to have by no means been pasted down within the first place.

The e book is split into “chapters,” with each few pages dedicated to a specific college. The guess right here is that the e book’s unique proprietor attended Deering Excessive in Portland, as a result of the within cowl has an illustration of a purple-clad participant slightly below the schedule and outcomes (Deering went 7-3 and outscored its opponents 195-38). Moreover, the e book’s first 18 pages are dedicated to the college.

After Deering, comes Lewiston, Waterville, Sanford, Portland, Westbrook, Skowhegan, Cony. It’s simple to note highschool soccer within the Nineteen Twenties was reserved for the large boys. Eight-man groups and co-operative packages needn’t apply.

The faculty groups, led by the College of Maine, additionally get their due. A number of pages are dedicated to Maine’s 21-6 season-ending victory over Bowdoin. (As loopy because it sounds now, that was a giant rivalry recreation for many years, typically drawing upward of 10,000 followers.) Bates, Bowdoin and Colby additionally get some love, together with prep colleges comparable to Maine Central Institute and Bridgton Academy.

The e book concludes with clippings of enormous school video games (ah, the times when Boston School-Holy Cross would pack previous Braves Discipline), how-to columns, Grantland Rice prose and different oddities (Babe Ruth in a soccer uniform?).

In the event you’re in search of professional soccer, neglect it. The NFL was nonetheless going via start pangs and the New England Patriots had been only a gleam within the eye of a younger Billy Sullivan. 

Sullivan owned the Boston Patriots franchise within the American Soccer League from 1960 till its sale because the New England Patriots within the NFL to Victor Kiam in 1988.

This cartoon was a part of a group of previous newspaper clippings that comprise a 1926 scrapbook, which Kennebec Journal employees author Dave Bailey bought on eBay. The e book comprises pages of newspaper clipping from 1926 Maine highschool and school soccer groups. Wealthy Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

Upon going via the e book, one is struck how soccer and journalism have modified during the last 96 years. The footballs are fats, the pads are skinny and the helmets are product of leather-based. The jerseys don’t have any numbers on the entrance and those on the again are sometimes rudimentary. The “greatest” uniforms may go to Skowhegan, whose jerseys featured horizontal black-and-orange loops, making the gamers look extra like pumpkins than athletes. At the very least they match; the Cony workforce photograph exhibits gamers carrying a mishmash of recreation jerseys, observe shirts and sweatshirts.

Even the cheerleading uniforms are unusual; a photograph exhibits two Deering cheerleaders in dishevelled golf pants. One is holding an enormous megaphone.

Few colleges had nicknames then, past their college colours. Lewiston, now the Blue Devils, was often known as the “Blue Streaks” (perhaps the coach talked a blue streak to his gamers in observe?) and South Portland’s Pink Riots had been known as the “Capers,” a moniker used in the present day for close by Cape Elizabeth Excessive.   

The printed recreation recaps are usually lengthy and wordy, with detailed play-by-play, blow-by-blow accounts. The sport story for a Maine-Bowdoin recreation, for instance, takes up two pages within the e book, adopted by a number of pages of images and different information. Keep in mind, there have been no TV highlights then, and even radio was in its infancy. Nobody’s face was buried in a cellphone in search of tweets on the Skowhegan-Gardiner recreation. The native papers WERE the sports activities media in 1926 Maine. 

And a few of the articles had been, nicely, colourful. Take this lead from the Oct. 22 Bowdoin-Colby recreation, gained by the Polar Bears, 13-7:

“The lengthy lean finger of Girl Luck was pushed right into a White Mule’s eye at Whitter Discipline Saturday afternoon. It was pushed as soon as and withdrawn. The Colby Mule, briefly blinded, staggered on, recovered, swept to the lead, after which bumped into that finger once more and was blinded for good.”

A scrapbook bought on eBay by Kennebec Journal employees author Dave Bailey comprises pages of newspaper clippings from 1926 Maine highschool and school soccer groups. This web page options Skowhegan, which gained a Somerset County championship. Wealthy Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

I believe the author is making an attempt to say Colby had a run of unhealthy luck.

The headlines are additionally distinctive:

• “As Colby Crunched The Bobcat Underfoot, 14 To 0, Brother Battles Brother, And Motion Guidelines The Day”

• “Blue Streaks Present Crushing Energy In Downing Recreation Preventing Fitzmen By Line-Smashing Recreation to 13-6 Tune”

• “Deering Completes Its Solely Ahead Move” (Keep in mind, groups within the Nineteen Twenties threw that fats ball about as typically because the moon modified phases.)

The motion images are usually fairly good, contemplating the restrictions of Nineteen Twenties pictures. Whereas some footage function gamers leaping for the ball, others make you surprise what’s happening in that mass of humanity. Within the background, followers typically line the sphere in entrance of rickety wood fences.

As beforehand famous, workforce images acquired loads of area. The one for Sanford Excessive contains a dwell goat mascot named Charcoal posing with the gamers (hope he didn’t eat the playbook).

A 1926 scrapbook, bought on eBay by Kennebec Journal employees author Dave Bailey, comprises pages of newspaper clippings from Maine highschool and school soccer groups in 1926. This clipping of Babe Ruth in a soccer uniform was additionally discovered within the scrapbook. Wealthy Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

There are many great tidbits scattered all through:

• Portland Excessive finish Jimmy Maguire being dominated ineligible as a result of he turned 21(!).

• Farmington Regular Faculty, a forerunner of in the present day’s UMaine-Farmington, fielded a workforce and went 5-2-1, largely taking part in excessive colleges, prep colleges and alumni groups.

• A word on how “trendy” athletes obtained to drink water “out of paper cups from a specifically constructed container” as an alternative of “an quaint pail.”

• A cartoon of two pigs gazing a soccer with the caption, “Their Son Who Went to School.”

A few of the names might ring a faint bell almost a century later. Deering coach and athletic director Carl Lundholm’s title graces the gymnasium on the College of New Hampshire, his alma mater. UMaine finish Rip Black was a bronze medalist within the hammer throw on the 1928 Olympics; his soccer coach, Fred Brice, is memorialized within the Brice-Cowell Musket introduced to the winner of the Maine-UNH soccer recreation. Portland coach Jimmy Fitzpatrick is the “Fitzpatrick” in Portland’s Fitzpatrick Stadium and the James J. Fitzpatrick Trophy, given yearly to Maine’s high highschool senior participant. 

Oh, and who gained the state highschool title — and there was just one champion in these days, in contrast with in the present day’s six? Lewiston wrapped up its third straight undefeated season to say the 1926 crown, as playoffs didn’t occur till the Nineteen Sixties. The Blue Streaks outscored their foes, 199-19. On the opposite excessive, poor Morse Excessive went 0-7-2 and was outscored 97-6.

The sport has modified. Journalism has modified. Even the colleges have modified. However one fixed has remained: Whether or not in 1926 or 2022, followers in Maine can’t get sufficient soccer and proceed to savor each rating, each large play, and each championship. 

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