Sports in secondary schools popular

Not surprisingly, the Arizona high school sports scene in 1912 was not as lively as it is today.

But even a century ago, high school sports generated considerable interest among the new state’s residents and, quite often, were the only spectator athletic competitions available to locals.

Perhaps the most notable high school sports contest of 1912 occurred on Nov. 23, when the Phoenix Union High School Coyotes took on the Phoenix Indian School Braves in a football game. The Braves won 47-6.

The game is significant because it began a Thanksgiving tradition between the two schools that would continue for 46 years.

Neither school exists today, with Phoenix Union High closing in 1982 and the Indian School shutting down in 1990.

reported on the game the next day, writing that fans from all over the Valley attended and that “the football game at the Indian School ended in disaster for the high school” as “the Indians took the Coyotes in tow.”

Also included was a lengthy, quarter-by-quarter summary of the contest.

Arizona’s statehood also paved the way for another historic tradition to be started. In December, published its first “All-arizona Football Team,” honoring 22 players from the five high school teams across the state. One peculiar aspect of the list and all other high school stories of the time is that only the last names of the players were printed, so the full names could not be gathered strictly from the newspaper.

In1912, the football and basketball seasons ran concurrently in the fall, whereas now basketball typically ends in February or March.

With only a handful of high schools participating in each sport, schedules were also considerably shorter 100 years ago — no team played more than 10 games in any sport. Playoffs were also a foreign concept, as the team that possessed the best record at the end of the season generally was proclaimed state champion.

That honor went to Tucson High in football.

It finished a perfect 5-0 record, beating out Phoenix Indian School at 4-1.

The basketball season went down to the wire, as the champion was not decided until the last game of the year — Tempe High vs. Tempe Normal School on Thanksgiving Day.

Tempe High entered the game 6-1, and Tempe Normal was 5-2. If Tempe Normal won, both teams would have ended the year in a three-way tie with Mesa High, which already had finished the season 6-2.

Tempe High avoided that scenario, however, winning 29-14 in a game that included “some of the prettiest baskets ever thrown on the local courts.”

Tempe Normal did not end the year without a championship. It had been crowned the champion of the Valley baseball league in May. It nearly finished undefeated, going 8-1 to narrowly beat out Phoenix Indian School, which ended 7-2.