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The Dragons’ first season of football began in the fall of 1944. America was fighting in World War II and local headlines listed the names of dead Sonoma County soldiers. For families with members fighting far from the oak-studded hillsides of northern California, the constant worry must have been a tremendous burden. Dragon’s football came to the rescue; a pastime guaranteed to alleviate the heavy load war can bring to a community. Football’s origins can be traced more than 100 years prior to the first league kick-off between Sonoma and Healdsburg high schools.
Historically, homecoming and football go together like hot apple pie and vanilla ice-cream. The two can be traced back to the University of Missouri in 1891, when the Missouri Tigers went head-to-head with the Kansas Jayhawks. Twenty years later, in 1911, Athletic Director Chester L. Brewer invited all alumni to “come home” and cheer the Tigers on to victory. The festive get-together included a football game as well as a parade and bonfire. In subsequent years a variety of traditions developed around what came to be known as homecoming, particularly the crowning of a king and queen. Sound familiar?
Yet the heart of any homecoming celebration is its football game, generally promoted as a long-standing rivalry. Football as we know it today evolved from rugby and soccer. Many east coast colleges – Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth and Harvard to name just a few – played a mob-style game with an inflated ball as early as 1827. This early form of football was eventually abandoned by the schools in the early 1860s due to its extremely violent nature. It was Walter Camp, a young man from Yale in 1876, who had the most influence in the development of the game, promoting rules, side-lining the early mob-style free-for-all – once and for all.
High school football began to take off in the early 1930s and was greatly influenced by Glenn “Pop” Warner who coached at the universities of Georgia, Pittsburgh, Temple, Cornell and Stanford. Warner published a book in 1927 titled “Football for Coaches and Players,” which promoted single- and double-wing formations, modern blocking techniques, the three-point stance and the reverse play. The Junior Football Conference, a youth football organization founded by Joe Tomlin in 1929, provided activities and guidance to teenage boys who were caught vandalizing his factory. Tomlin asked Warner to speak to the boys in 1933, and in Warner’s honor the league was renamed the Pop Warner Conference. Today, the Pop Warner programs enroll over 300,000 boys and girls across the nation.
It is interesting to note that these eastern colleges opened for enrollment before the arrival of the Spanish in what is now California. When football was being played at east coast colleges, Sonoma’s Mission was a mere five years old.
Here in Sonoma, Dragon Football got off to a late start with its first game being played in 1944. With the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Mare Island naval base increased their operation ten-fold. Families from across the country were moving to the Valley and surrounding area as naval personnel were reassigned to Mare Island. In turn, Sonoma High’s enrollment reached new levels, allowing them to support a football team.
Sonoma’s first non-league game against the Petaluma High School Reserves took place on Oct. 6, 1944. They won the game 13-6 and as football enthusiasts exclaimed in the 1940s, “the pigskin hit the pay dirt.” It was noted in the local newspaper that many of the spectators had never seen a football game before. The first league game against Healdsburg High did not go as well, the Dragons taking a 20-13 loss.
Coach Pyke, Sonoma High’s first football coach, was a redheaded leader with a message that rings through today. He never extolled the virtues of any one player but rather, emphasized the efforts of the team saying, “It’s a team that wins games!”
