“I Think More of Developing Manhood Than Winning” Says Coach Blood, Whose Teams Set World’s Record for Victories.
By: Burris Jenkins, Jr.
“If a man builds a better mouse trap than his neighbor, the world will beat a pathway to his door.
A man out in Passaic has done something better than anyone else. He has built a high school basketball team which has set up a record of 116 consecutive victories and not lost a game in four years. And the world, recognizing genius, has figuratively beaten a pathway to his door by covering the pages of newspapers and magazines all over the United States as far west as California, and even newspapers of France, Germany and other European Countries, with the little man’s name, “Prof.” Ernest A. Blood, and accounts of coach Blood’s “wonder team” of
Passaic High School.
In fact so proud are the citizens of Passaic of their miracle team and the little master coach, Blood that the whole town is now in agitation and holding mass indignation meetings over certain rulings of the Passaic Board of Education which prohibit the team from playing in another championship. The Board of Commissioners has appointed committees to protest to Mayor McGuire against these rulings and alleged censuring of Coach Blood, Passaic’s idol. It is even possible that President Benson of the Board of Education may be asked to resign. It is intimated that members of the school department are jealous of Blood’s frame and popularity.
“This publicity is getting to be almost a nuisance,” chuckled Mr. Blood yesterday to an interviewer as the stocky little man with bristly mustache and eyebrows placed a stack of clippings a foot high on the table of his home on
Spring Street, Passaic. “Takes all my time cutting out clippings and filing them away. Here’s one that came yesterday from the front page of a Pasadena newspaper, written by Charley Paddock. When we won the 100th straight game I learned that the news of Passaic’s victory was flashed to a seaport in Germany and printed there, and that the Paris papers follow our progress even now pretty closely.
“The funny part of it is that we don’t care a hang about winning so much as building up a good type of manhood out of those boys. I try to teach them to play the best basketball they can —clean, sportsman-like basketball. I don’t care whether they win as long as they play the best they know how. We don’t go in for winning just for it. But somehow, under this system, the boys keep on winning. I don’t know why,” he added with another of his
contagious chuckles.
It’s not hard to tell why when one watches the “Wonder Team” in action. These young lads have somehow developed a “superiority complex” which makes them sure of victory without worrying about it. Every one of them looks and acts like a winner. And to see stalwart grizzled little coach, who is also Director of Physical Education at Passaic School, don gym clothes himself, and put the youngsters through a bit of practice before a game, reveals the secret where the “superiority complex” comes from. Coach Blood puts pep and fire into his youngsters by showing them himself how to make a difficult shot and driving them to put everything they’ve got into the practice or the game.
(Note: start of new column and beginning sentence first few words missing. this article was written shortly after they set victory mark at 112 in 1923. The 157 win mark with one loss it mentions is including 17 year coaching career of coach Blood before streak started including grammar school teams. At this point in 1923 the season will end at 118 wins and the streak is still going.)
….boys call him, has been coach at Passaic High. One game lost out of 157! That was the only official game a team coached by Blood has lost in the seventeen years Blood has been a coach in grammar and high schools. How that one dark hour of defeat felt to the little Napoleon he would not say.
From then on, Passaic did not lose. The 1920 quintet, what Blood calls the real “Wonder Team”—“If any are,” he adds modestly—was composed of Johnnie Roosnia, forward, now captain the West Point team; Herbert Rumsel,
all-State center; Charles Lent, captain and brilliant guard; Milton Schnider, the other guard; and De Witt Keasler, now the star of the present team and in his fourth year as an all-State forward.
The teams which followed and which helped build up the ninety consecutive victories handed to this season’s team at the beginning of their career contained other stars. “Bob” Thompson, now captain of the Syracuse Freshman team and who was severely injured in practice last Wednesday, was one of these. Also Paul Blood, who captained the Passaic Five last year and played with brilliance characteristic of his father.
This year’s five has added twenty six straight victories to the ninety. They are mostly new men, just brought under the influence of Coach Blood’s system which does not seem capable of resulting in defeat. There is
“Fritz” Marseles, sixteen, center, six feet four inches tall, weighing 180 pounds, a sophomore in his first year on the team; Michael Hamas eighteen six feet one inch tall, weighing 165 pounds, the eighth on last year’s team and highest scoring forward this year, a senior. Captain Wilfred Knothe, nineteen, five feet eight inches tall, weighing 170 pounds, now in his fourth year as an all-State guard; Meyer Krackovitch, fifteen, five feet eight inches tall, weighing 165 pounds, a freshman guard who takes to Prof. Blood’s system like a duck to water; and the above mentioned De Witt Keasler of the earlier teams, Twenty, five feet eleven and a half inches tall,
weighing 172 pounds.
Coach Blood is reticent about his far-famed system. But it is pretty well known that he stresses the offense and almost ignores the defense. He figures that it makes no difference how high the score goes as long as Passaic makes two goals to the other fellow’s one. And this usually happens. In the 116 straight victories the average points over opponents for Passaic has been forty-two points a game.
Recopied 1923 article after 116 wins
By: Bob Meli
September 22, 2017
